Welcome to the website celebrating the life of Kay Kazuko Wheeler.
On this site, you’ll find photos and memories from throughout Kay’s life, from her earliest extant photo, at left (age 14, standing, with her friend Ume Sato, seated), to recent photos showing Kay with her grandchildren and enjoying life in Del Mar, California.
Check out the Kay’s Early Years page for more information about Kay’s remarkable life history, including her life in Japan through age 29, and her early years in the United States. Sadly, the last chapter of her life was largely written by Alzheimers Disease, but even in her last weeks and days, she recognized and enjoyed the company of her loved ones, and had a big smile for all visitors. On Friday evening, October 14, 2011, she died peacefully. The gradual loss of her memory prompted us to preserve what should be a very memorable life story. We’re doing that through this website, and also by assembling medical records and personal history that will form a part of her legacy through The Brain Observatory (see the Links page for more information about this compelling project).
The colorful design of this site evokes many memories of Kay’s life as a dressmaker and seamstress: pinning a pattern onto a beautiful piece of fabric spread out on her cutting board; toiling late into the night at the sewing machine in the corner of her living room; circling around a customer standing before the three-way mirror in a partly-finished dress, pinning the seams to mark adjustments, and marking the hem with a chalk marker. (See the photo at right for a vintage version of this dressmaking tool, much like the one we remember Kay using, with a clear container holding powdered chalk, and a red bulb to squeeze to leave a chalk line to mark the hemline, repeated all around the dress.) The border of this site’s design looks like ric rac, bringing back memories of some of the clothes Kay made for her young daughters.
The design also reminds us of the beatifully dyed kimonos and colorfully printed yukatas from her early days in Japan, and the times, later in her life, when she would participate in San Diego-area bon odori dances at the Buddhist temple, or visit her family in Japan.
Most of all, the colorful design reminds us so much of Kay’s vibrant, colorful personality. She so loved brightly colored clothes, and anything in her favorite color, purple, that she had to specially buy a black jacket to have something suitably subdued to wear to her mother’s 50th hoji, the Buddhist ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of her mother’s death, which she attended in Japan with her two daughters.
Click on any photo to see a larger version. Feel free to add your comments to any post. To send in photos or memories for this site, see the Contact Us box at right.
Thanks for visiting this site, and for adding your comments or memories.
