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Karen Holloway
Karen Holloway
Posted
Well-known local artist and volunteer Karen Holloway passed away Dec. 12, 2014, one month shy of her 80th birthday.
She was born Jan. 22, 1935, in Chicago but was raised in Maine.
Upon her graduation from the prestigious Swarthmore College in 1958, she was recruited by the National Security Agency to learn Chinese and interpret messages collected during the Mao Tse-tung regime.
She later attended and graduated from the JFK School of Economics at Harvard University.
Upon moving to Arizona she was employed by the Arizona Department of Transportation to travel to leading universities and recruit their best civil engineering students to build a highway system to remote villages and towns.
She also started the first highway adoption anti-litter program and designed the first posters to advertise it.
After full retirement, she moved to Fountain Hills, where she has been busy making collage art and purses, currently being exhibited and sold at the Fountain Hills Artists’ Gallery.
Holloway also helped start and organize Senior Services, and was co-director of the Senior Center for many years.
Holloway also was active in the Fountain Hills Sister Cities program, serving as both treasurer and secretary for many years.
She is survived by two sons, William and Samuel; two grandsons, Thomas and Daniel; a sister, Sonja; and her very close friend for the past eight years, Dr. Chuck Kachel, a retired family doctor and widower since 2005.
