Katharine Ryerson Welles Piper passed away surrounded by family on December 1st, 2023, in Houston, Texas. She was 94 years old. Known to her friends as “Kay”, she was born on July 22nd, 1929 in Beijing, China. As a young girl, she lived in Shanghai on the campus of the Shanghai American School where her father, Henry Welles, was headmaster. In 1938, she and her family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. There her father became headmaster of New Canaan Country Day School, and Kay enrolled as a student. She attended high school at Putney in Vermont, where she developed an interest in English literature and a love of singing.

Kay spent most of her summers during late childhood on Lake Temagami, a sprawling 40-mile long lake 5 hours north of Toronto. Temagami had special significance to the Welles family. Kay’s father brought his family there and taught them how to paddle and carry canoes on long camping trips to remote lakes, as he himself had as a boy. Kay marveled at the haunting nocturnal calls of loons that echoed across the water as she and her older sister Holly lay beneath their Hudson Bay blankets.

In 1951 Kay graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from Vassar College, where she sang in the college choir. She received a Master’s degree in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. While there, she met William Bowman Piper, (“Bill”), whom she married in 1955. Kay and Bill had four children, Henry Bowman (1957), Walter Hammond (1959), Anthony Welles (1963), and Anne Clothier (1966). The family moved often, living first in Lexington, Kentucky; then Ithaca, New York; Louisville; Cleveland; and finally Houston, where Bill became a tenured professor at Rice University.

Kay devoted her early decades in Houston to raising her family. She loved her children fiercely and nurtured their academic, artistic, and musical interests. In so doing, she had lasting positive impacts on their lives. She encouraged Henry’s interest in photography; he became a passionate photographer who developed negatives and produced prints in his own darkroom. He continues his interest in photography — now as a means to support his study of medieval churches in France. (He is a philosophy professor.) Kay took Walter on countless bird-watching trips to foster his interest in birds, and he is now an ornithologist at Chapman University in California who studies loons. She encouraged Tony’s musical study, and he became an accomplished player of both piano and clarinet. (He later earned an MBA and became an accountant.) Finally, Kay spent years and countless hours driving Annie back and forth to acting classes, rehearsals, and performances with a local professional theater company. (Annie is now a professor of performing arts at NYU and Yale.)

After her two eldest children left for college, Kay went back to school, earned a master’s in social work, and embarked on a career as a psychiatric social worker at Ben Taub Hospital. It was challenging and often frustrating work. Her patients were people with limited financial resources and severe mental illness. Kay’s efforts focused on supporting them and their families as they tried to stay on their medications and resume normal, productive lives. The writing skills she had honed during her study of English literature came in handy; she became known for her thoughtful, incisive, and well-written reports that helped the medical team devise an effective treatment strategy for each patient.

Kay remained active after retirement, frequently attending birding trips guided by local experts, reading voraciously, and traveling. She toured Russia with a friend in 1993. Six years later, she and her sister Holly returned to China after a 60-year absence. She visited Italy with her four children and four grandchildren in 2014. In her last decade of life, Kay spent many relaxing weeks with her children and grandchildren during summers on Lake Temagami, the coast of Maine, the lakes of New Hampshire, the Adirondacks, and Cape Cod.

Her family recalls fondly the many years spent with Kay: learning how to fish from her; taking long canoe trips with her in Temagami during which chocolate bars often went missing; watching her prepare her famous Thanksgiving stuffing; singing madrigals during long trips in the car from Houston to New Hampshire; laughing at family jokes; and playing board games that Kay lugged to their vacation spots in one very large suitcase.

Kay is survived by her four children, Henry, Walter, Tony, and Annie, and her four grandchildren, Benjamin, Allison, E, and Cosmo.

Memorial services will be held in the spring of 2024. Please contact Annie Piper (yogannie.piper@gmail.com) for location and time information.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Houston Audubon Society.

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