Obituary for Karen Grech

Karen Grech was born on in Minneapolis. She started school at Holy Cross in NE Minneapolis. The family moved to Robbinsdale in 1952 and she continued her education in the Robbinsdale school system graduating from Robbinsdale High School in 1958.

She followed her mother and aunt and worked at the telephone company. She had training in Iowa and a bad plane ride there caused her to never fly again!

Karen hated the cold weather in Minnesota and moved to California where she continued working for the phone company. Her job included making cold calls selling ads for the yellow pages. Children today won’t know cold calls (human robocalls) nor yellow pages (printed book of business phone number listings).

Karen enjoyed the opera and stage plays. Her visits to MN always included tickets to whatever was at the Guthrie. When we cleaned her apartment, we found scrapbooks of every opera she attended including her ticket stub, the program and libretto, as well as newspaper review clippings of each performance. She had opera LP’s, tapes, and CD’s – enough to fill two grocery carts. Leaving a voice mail on her phone was always a laugh, as she sang the taped announcement that she couldn’t take a call at this time. Fellow residents of the building she lived in said she would sing in the lobby as she waited for her taxi ride.

She enjoyed visiting with people and made friends wherever she went. I’m sure by the time she reached MN on the train or bus (never a plane), she knew the life story of all the other passengers. Karen was a joiner and we found membership cards to many organizations. There was a very high stack of unopened letters asking for donations in her apartment when we got there. She was very generous to many organizations.

Karen loved to knit. She even started a knitting group in the apartment building. She always had a project going and would knit while she visited us. In the last few years, she knitted colorful baby hats for disadvantaged families. She also made padded clothes hangers by knitting a cover around a wire dry cleaner’s hanger.

Karen had surgery in July of last year and didn’t tell anyone cancer was found. Her health declined quickly, and she died on 9 April 2024. She is survived by a brother and his wife, a niece and nephew and two grand nephews and two grand nieces and many relatives and friends across the nation.

There will be a graveside memorial service at Gethsemane Cemetery 8151 42nd Ave N, New Hope MN on Friday, May 10th at 1:30 PM. Donations preferred to American Cancer Society.