Katharine Woodwell Obituary

Katharine Alice Rondthaler Woodwell of Woods Hole, MA died surrounded by family on April 11, 2025 at the home of her daughter and son-in-law in Arlington, MA. She was 95. *** Katharine was a musician, a reader, a voracious consumer and analyzer of news, and an active community volunteer. She had a 25-year career as Administrator of the Woods Hole Research Center (renamed the Woodwell Climate Research Center) in Falmouth. *** Born in 1929 in Winston Salem, North Carolina to Alice Billings Keeney and Theodore Edward Rondthaler, Katharine grew up steeped in the soaring music and the traditions of the Moravian Church. When her parents moved to Black Mountain, NC, she finished her last two years of high school at Black Mountain College. There she developed an appreciation for art, history, philosophy, and she expanded her love of music. At Reed College she discovered science, completing a thesis on the flowering plants of Ocracoke Island, NC where her parents had a simple wooden old island home. Katharine kept that home, and Ocracoke was an important and beloved spot for her for the rest of her life. As a masters candidate in biology at Duke University, she met and married fellow student George M. Woodwell. *** They moved first to Orono, Maine, and then to Brookhaven, New York where Katharine was a passionate community activist, serving as President of the Suffolk County League of Women Voters, as an active member of the Old South Haven Presbyterian Church during the time that brought religion and politics together to protest the Vietnam War. There, she acted in the Poet's Repertory Theater, which produced plays that spoke to the social justice issues of the time, she sang in the choir, played autoharp and dulcimer. *** In 1975, she and her husband moved to Woods Hole where she joined the Woods Hole Folk Orchestra as pianist and was active in the Theater Company and the Historical Society. She served as long-time treasurer and secretary of the Woods Hole Community Association, she sang with the Falmouth Chorale, and for many years she volunteered at the Church of Messiah Exchange Thrift Shop. She enjoyed an annual week at Pinewoods Dance Camp in Plymouth. Her four children played musical instruments and she loved nothing more than organizing family music afternoons, where everyone played together around the piano. *** With an eye for design, Katharine decorated her homes with driftwood, shells, watercolors and unusual objects using deceptively simple minimalism to bring a feeling of warmth and calm to the rooms around her. *** In 1985, when her husband had an idea for an independent ecological research institute, she joined him as administrator. Together they spent 25 years in a partnership of ideas and logistics, building both a program in ecology and a fossil-free office building in the former Hilltop House in Falmouth, MA. *** She followed the local and national news with a sharp, analytical mind, able to untangle and at any moment explain the shifting alliances in complicated global conflicts. A quiet but ardent donor, all her life she supported organizations working for justice, equality, environmental protection, education, democracy, arts and music, both in the local places she loved and at the national level. *** Katharine was preceded in death by her husband of 69 years, George Masters Woodwell, in June, 2024. She is survived by their four children, Caroline Alice Woodwell (Chris DeForest) of Spokane, WA, Marjorie Virginia Woodwell (Woody Swan) of Arlington, MA, Jane Katharine Woodwell (Chris Soper) of Malibu, CA, and John Christopher Woodwell (Marie Hull) of Annandale, VA. She also leaves four grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, three nieces and her sister-in-law, Virginia Woodwell. She was preceded in death by her older brother, Howard Mayro Rondthaler. Gifts in Katharine's memory can be made to the Woodwell Endowment Fund at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.