By Gail Kimball and Barbara Setzer
For The Salisbury Post
Katharine Osborne writes columns for the Salisbury Post in which she remembers her life, both her joys and her miseries.
That’s Katharine (with an A) ó able, adaptable, accepting, accountable, adept, agreeable, apt, author … and awesome! She’s not your average woman. In her columns, she shares how she copes with rheumatoid arthritis, growing older, managing her life, loving her children, grandchildren, and friends, as well as how much she enjoys the beauty in art and nature.
She’s an octogenarian with pizzazz. She likes her coffee hot, prompt, and preferably at the College BBQ every morning at 8 … when and where she starts her busy day.
She drives, cooks, shops, writes, reads, emails, telephones, exercises, plants, studies, and collects … art, clippings, notes, poems, columns, and quotes. She attends writers’ conferences, joins community debates, enjoys her book clubs, hosts out-of-town guests, attends church, supports all the arts, participates in a diversity group and is a regular at the productions of the Piedmont Players, the St. Thomas Players, the Catawba College student plays, and the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra.
She is also supportive of Livingstone College’s activities and has sponsored their Women in History Month Brunch and Author Series for many years. She participates in the community-wide Summer Reading Challenge, joins poetry readings, and has authored two books, “She Done What She Could” and “A Heap of Sun and Shadow.”
She is a Catawba College trustee and is a major supporter of the Waterworks Visual Arts Center. She funds many community projects, contributes of many charities, and anonymously helps people in need.
Yet, she is humble, kind, thoughtful, approachable, gracious, grateful and embraces and values a host of friends.
Her columns have been absent from the pages of the Post for the past several weeks because Katharine is in the intensive care unit of Rowan Regional Medical Center. While she may be down, her indomitable spirit is up and her mind is still active and restless. Her many friends are confident that she will have some perceptive and heartfelt comments and observations for her readers in the near future.
Katharine has experienced a series of events that have had her bouncing back and forth like a boomerang. She was admitted to ICU from the emergency room. She went from doing well to a setback, to doing well, to a setback, to doing well again. She seems to be on the upward trajectory these days, thanks to that strong spirit of hers and the exceptional care she is receiving at the medical center.
Katharine is the most interesting woman that we know. How does she do it?
She’s got pizzazz!
nnn
Kimball and Setzer are longtime friends of Katharine Osborne.