Kathleen Wilson

Kathleen Williams Wilson, age 65 of Idaho Falls, Idaho, passed away on December 31, 2011 after nearly a two-year battle with cancer. She was blessed to be surrounded by her family at her passing, and had the opportunity to share profound experiences with countless family members, friends, nurses, doctors, and others both during her sickness and during the many earlier years of her life.

Kathleen loved to teach, share, and build. Each person that came in contact with her, when they finally and reluctantly parted company with her, left having been changed for good, having been reassured of their own tremendous worth and goodness. She put her entire heart and soul into everything she did, having learned from good parents the value of hard work and service.

She began studying at BYU as a young woman, but her studies were interrupted by a dashing young Curt Wilson whom she chose to marry in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple in September of 1965. Her studies were temporarily put aside, for about 30 years, as she put her full energy into raising a large and very active family while also honing her comically dramatic skills as part of local melodrama productions, and her artist’s touch by painting bellows for many years.

She was undeterred in her determination to finish her college degree and when her sweetheart passed away she took the opportunity, more than 30 years in the making, to complete her degree in the Marriage and Family Sciences at BYU. Her education and opportunity to work as part of LDS Family services further refined her ability to lift hearts, and she focused all of her efforts toward building every person she came in contact with, no matter how incidental the contact may be, be it a grocery store clerk or her dearest life-long friend. All knew that they were greatly loved and appreciated.

Kathleen was reunited with and preceded in death by her husband Curtis P. Wilson, her mother Luana Johnson Williams, her father Ross G. Williams, and her step-mother Naomi Williams. She is survived by her siblings Janet Williams, Gerald Williams, Susan Stephens, and Tim Williams; by her children Taylor (Jennifer) Wilson, Stephanie (Darrin) Wray, Cody (Bart) Wattenbarger, Jessica (Edward) Cather, Heather Thomason, Adrienne (David) Robinson, and Matthew (Alanna) Wilson; and by a rich supply of grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, and great friends.

Funeral services will be held on Monday, January 2, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. at the Home Ranch Ward Chapel (2051 S. Emerson Ave.) in Idaho Falls. Those wishing to pay their respects are invited to the funeral and to a viewing preceding the funeral from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 1 at the Nalder Funeral Home (110 West Oak) in Shelley, and Monday morning 9:30 till 10:40 a.m. at the church. Kathleen will be interred alongside her dear husband in the Shelley Cemetery following the funeral services.