IN LOVING MEMORY OF
Karen Gay
Gomes
March 27, 1946 – January 6, 2021
Obituary
Listen to Obituary
Karen Gay Gomes was born March 27, 1946 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the daughter of Dorothy Kent Gavutis and Fire Captain George Walter Gavutis. She died shortly after the new year in her Severna Park home, where she had lived for 41 years, lovingly raising her children, caring for a menagerie of pets, and creating a serene environment of trees, plants, flowers, water, and rocks that was an intentional habitat for all creatures, great and small. Karen's home was a longstanding backdrop for the joy, pain, and beauty of her life, which she exquisitely felt. Her life was rich and active, full of family, friends, pets, music, teaching, travel, and laughter.
As a young girl, Karen was enthralled with her dolls, animals, and the natural world. These caring instincts and interests nurtured and reinforced the strong, lifelong bonds she shared with her siblings, George (six years her elder) and Delphine (four years her elder). Karen spent a good part of her youth as brother George's "field agent" on numerous wildlife expeditions, where she was instructed to watch and learn. Among their exploits and adventures, they raised two pet crows. Young Karen collected neighborhood stray cats and kittens, sneaking them into the cellar at 333 Howard Street and hiding cat food in the back of the refrigerator to feed them. She was not allowed to keep the cats and was told repeatedly, as a consolation, that when she grew up and had a place of her own, she could have as many animals as she liked. This was not lost on Karen.
She shared her life and had strong bonds with so many animals, including the crows, Slim and Jim; cats Buffy, Ivan, Patches, Smudgie, Zelda Mae Marie, Zodiac, Raincloud, and Reggie; and dogs Stubby, Dusky, Duffy, Duster, Ebony, Jake, and Bailey. She had a special place in her heart for "granddog" SkipJack and "grandcat" Pearl. Her numerous wild animal rescues included a baby squirrel she named "Dilly," a groundhog, and a mother raccoon and babies, all of whom she safely and humanely released back to the wild.
Karen was a sponge for knowledge from the time she was the teacher's pet at Storrow Elementary School, through her university and graduate classes, and in countless continuing education and self-improvement courses throughout her adult life. While studious, she was highly social, with a vibrant and captivating personality. She was chosen as Homecoming Queen at Lawrence High School and queen of neighboring Brown University's Navy-Air Force Ball while she attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. At UMass, Karen was a member of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and met her future husband, Raymond Gomes, a graduate teaching assistant who was her math teacher. After getting married, Karen and Ray moved to Maryland. They started a family while Karen earned a Masters in English at the University of Maryland at College Park, focusing on Shakespeare and literature of the Renaissance period. Karen and Ray later divorced.
Karen's greatest joy was being a mother to Bryan and Heather. While they were children, she loved helping them with their homework, supervising their pet care, attending their swim meets, ballet classes, basketball games, and horseback riding lessons, volunteer-teaching Great Books in their schools, and generally acting silly with them. When they were adults, she was highly involved in their lives, so proud of their accomplishments and who they had become, which was largely a result of her love and investment in their lives.
Karen's other joys, talents, pastimes, and pursuits included working at Stone & Webster engineering firm in Boston for six summers, teaching English, practicing real estate, taking aerobics classes, playing bridge, listening to music, bird-watching, swimming, attending music, theater, and dance performances, volunteering as a docent at the William Paca House and Garden in Annapolis, doing genealogical research, participating in the Chartwell Garden Club, gathering for special family meals at Hemingway's restaurant overlooking the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and traveling and spending time with loved ones in England, France, and Lithuania. She loved cars (from her '64 Mustang to her '85 German edition BMW), pistachio ice cream, crackling fires, hot baths, sunsets, seeing horses run, quoting from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and being seaside, from Cape Cod to Delaware, with the wind in her hair and sand in her feet.
Karen's compassion, intelligence, humor, wit, and outgoing personality made it easy for her to connect with people - even strangers in the grocery line. And everyone's lives were fuller for having met and known her. Sadly, she struggled with anxiety and depression, which, along with other health issues, became especially challenging and debilitating in her later years, making daily activities much harder and often leading her to isolate when she wanted nothing more than to connect with her family and friends.
She is survived by her son Bryan Kent Gomes of Crownsville, MD; daughter Heather Lynn Gomes and son-in-law Stanley Grant Collins of Silver Spring, MD; brother George Walter Gavutis, Jr. and sister-in-law Sandra Gavutis of Kensington, NH; sister Delphine Anne Gavutis of Andover, MA; cousins Deirdre Kimball, Geoffrey Bell, Bruce Bell, and Melodie Playdon; third cousin Vytautas Gavutis, his wife, Janina, and their sons Martynas and Mindaugas of Vilnius, Lithuania; nieces and nephews, Kathleen Brown, Amy Duggan, George Gavutis III and Gregory Gavutis; and Olivia, her steadfast "puppy dog."
A service will be held later this year when family and friends can safely travel and gather. In the interim, Heather and Bryan invite you to view the photo slideshow and listen to some of the music that moved Karen to smile, laugh, cry, sing, and dance.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Karen's honor to WBJC classical radio station in Baltimore, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or the Maryland SPCA.
WBJC
WBJC-FM
PO Box 22342
Baltimore MD 21203-4342
National Alliance on Mental Illness
NAMI
PO Box 49104
Baltimore, MD 21297
Maryland SPCA
(Lucy Community Fund)
Maryland SPCA Inc.
3300 Falls Road
Baltimore, MD 21211
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