Kathryn Ann (Goering Klassen) News, 88, died Aug. 12, having returned to Bloomington, IN, where she lived in the 1960s and ‘70s, after 40 years in the Philadelphia area. She was a professor, magazine editor, world traveler, music lover, and beloved wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, and with her second husband, Frank News, neighborhood elder of Drexel Hill, PA.
She was born on a Kansas wheat farm March 16, 1934, the youngest (and last to pass) of Mary (Kauffman) and Henry Goering’s six children. Her grandparents had joined an 1874 Mennonite migration from the Ukraine, lured by railroad companies to farm the Great Plains. She married Albert Dale Klassen at 17, had Teri, Jean, Eric, and Rachel by the time she was 26 (1960), and at 37 had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees (1968, with honors, Roosevelt U; 1971, creative writing, Indiana U).
Kathy inherited values of hard work, education, love of children, cleanliness, thrift, importance of appearance, independence, family as primary social bond, the arts, caring for material things, and supporting charities geared to self-sufficiency such as Heifer International and Mobility Worldwide. On Al’s graduate student income, their commitment to music and education led them to invest in a used upright piano (Kathy painted it gray with white and brown spatters) and piano lessons for the children. Later, when a housekeeper accidentally broke Kathy and Frank’s Turkish decorative plate, they did not toss it (or the housekeeper) but glued the 10 pieces back together.
When Al entered the U of Chicago’s sociology PhD program and the family moved to Hyde Park, they joined a nearby Unitarian church for its children’s and adult choirs and its commitment to liberal social action. One of Kathy’s proudest moments was singing a second-soprano solo at a service there, accompanied by a Chicago Symphony Orchestra ensemble!
In late ‘60s to mid-‘70s Bloomington, where they moved when IU’s Kinsey Institute hired Al, Kathy got her MA, published a short story, got hired as travel writer at Indianapolis-based Holiday magazine, and was promoted to editor (1973-77). During her stint, Holiday published literary luminaries such as Annie Dillard, Paul Theroux, Jorge Luis Borges, and Calvin Trillin. She lost that job when Holiday changed hands and accepted a job offer from an East Coast magazine. She and Al had divorced in 1976; Rachel, 16, was the only child still at home.
Now a full-fledged career woman, Kathy held a series of editor positions in the Philadelphia area: Going Places travel magazine, 1977-79; Réalités “international arts and culture magazine,” 1979-81; and Rodale Press’s Spring, a women’s magazine, 1981-82. It was at Réalités that she met Frank, native Irish-German Catholic Philadelphian, widower, and company financial officer. He fell for her when they met at her request to discuss her acquisitions budget. They married in 1982; the blended family included Ellen and Jean, Frank’s daughters with his deceased first wife, Muriel.
In 1983 Kathy became head of the Temple University journalism department’s magazine sequence. She started Philadelphia People magazine with her students and took them on summer trips to London (accompanied by Frank). She got tenure about 1987, arguing that her professional experience substituted for a PhD. In the mid-1990s, she followed Frank into retirement to pursue their shared dream of world travel. Trips over the years included a Mennonite heritage tour of Poland and the Ukraine; Italy, where Frank’s daughter Jean then lived; the US from coast to coast; Antarctica, Australia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Nova Scotia, Scandinavia, Peru (Machu Picchu!), Turkey, and many more. Kathy preserved these adventures in photo albums.
This joyful time was cut short when Kathy’s kidneys, as Frank said, “went South.” After three years on dialysis, she found a donor in her daughter Teri. After the transplant operation (2009 in Indianapolis), her health remained too fragile for extensive travel. Still, she and Frank attended Goering family reunions and Philadelphia Orchestra concerts, went birding to the Jersey Shore, and doted on grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Kathy flew to Chicago to be with her daughter Jeannie in 2014 when she was dying of an autoimmune
Sadly, Frank died of cancer in January 2020. Kathy sold their beautiful 1930s home and returned to Bloomington, near Teri, Rachel, several grandchildren, and old friends. Eric, in Florida, grandchildren in Georgia, North Carolina, and Colorado, and relatives around the country kept in touch via visits, phone calls, email, and Facebook. As pandemic restrictions loosened, Kathy connected with other Bell Trace residents in the dining hall, on the Trace trail, and attending classical music events. She died eight days after having a stroke. Her memorial is this Saturday, Aug. 20, in the Bell Trace Commons Room. Visitation starts at 2 pm, the service at 3.
