Kathleen Marie Pettigrew

Kathleen Marie “Kay” Pettigrew was born on June 9, 1918, in Nez Perce, Idaho, to Mary and Louis Koenigs. She died peacefully on July 23, 2020, at the age of 102. She was predeceased by her husband, Jerry Pettigrew, in 2004 after sixty-two years of marriage, and by her eldest son Neil in 2011. She is survived by four sons - Gary (Patti), Rick (Dorthe), Jim (Maria) and Tom (Teddi), eleven grandchildren - Colleen, Annie, James, Chris, Laura, Jennifer, Samantha, Tony, Jason, Briana, and Alyssa, and eleven great-grandchildren. When Kay was a young girl, her family moved to Spokane where she spent much of her life, attending St. Aloysius Grade School and Holy Names Academy. She was the fifth of six children with four older brothers and a younger sister. After graduating from high school in the midst of the Great Depression, she was employed as a comptometer operator at Old National Bank. She met Jerry, the love of her life, on the steps of St. Aloysius church. An avid figure skater, she had noticed Jerry - a strapping Canadian hockey player - on the ice practicing with his Gonzaga University hockey team. One of the first things they learned about each other was that they shared the same birthday, a coincidence which helped cement the relationship. When Jerry was called back to Canada to serve in the war effort, he and Kay were married in a small ceremony in Vancouver, BC in February 1942. They lived near Vancouver for the remainder of the war and had their first two children in Canada. After the war, they returned to Spokane. While Kay was hoping to eventually have a daughter, it was not to be. She had the last three of her five boys at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. A devout Catholic her entire life, Kay and her family were members of St. Francis of Assisi parish on the north side of Spokane. All five of her boys would go to Catholic parochial school there and then attend high school at Gonzaga Prep which was a great financial sacrifice for Kay and Jerry. Once the youngest of her boys reached grade school age, Kay began a long career as the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics ‘consultant’ at The Crescent which was Spokane’s premier department store. She had many customers, perhaps the most interesting of which were the ‘ladies’ from certain ‘establishments’ in the mining towns of northern Idaho who relied on Kay for their best rouges and powders. In 1972 Kay and Jerry were pioneers in the health and organics movement when they signed on to begin selling Shaklee products. They prospered with this business well into their 80s, eventually traveling all over the US and Europe. Kay credited much of her longevity to the daily regimen of Shaklee vitamins and protein and her use of their non-polluting products for the home. As advancing age approached, Kay and Jerry moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1992, leaving the family home of 50 years, to live close to their third son and his wife. They would remain there through Jerry’s passing in 2004. In 2005, Kay moved to Shoreline to be closer to her youngest two sons and lived at Crista Senior Living. Her final years were spent there where she thrived, including driving herself to Mass in her own car until she was 97 years old. At the end, Kay passed easily and quickly and is now in heaven with her parents, brothers and sister, husband and son. She will be laid to rest in Eugene, Oregon at Mt. Calvary Catholic Cemetery.