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Catherine S. ‘Kitty’ Douglass, key player during transition of General German Aged People’s Home to Edenwald, dies

September 30 at 5:00 AM ET via the Baltimore Sun

 

Catherine S. “Kitty” Douglass, former controller of the General German Aged People’s Home in Irvington who played a significant role in the facility’s transition to Edenwald Senior Living in Towson, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at her Reisterstown home. She was 85. Catherine Scheper, known as “Kitty,” was the daughter of Clements Scheper, owner of a plumbing company, and Catherine Scheper, a homemaker. She was born at home on North Ellwood Avenue, near Patterson Park, and raised in Randallstown. Her three aunts, who were part of the religious order Sisters of Mercy, made sure that she went to parochial schools. She attended the old All Saints School in Gwynn Oak, Little Flower School in Granite, the old Seton Keough High School in Charles Village and the old Mount St. Agnes High School in Mount Washington, from which she graduated in 1956. “We were in the same classroom at Mount St. Agnes, which was a small Catholic girl’s school,” Sister Patricia Smith, a Sister of Mercy, said. “There were only 43 girls in our class and we did everything together. I remember when we were getting ready to graduate, girls would be talking about going to work or college, and I can hear Kitty saying, ‘I want to get married,’ and she did.”

While at Mount St. Agnes, Mrs. Douglass served as president of its science club. “I was looking at our senior yearbook, the class of 1956, and there are two phrases that describe Kitty perfectly. Having ‘chronic spring fever’ and ‘She could be provoked to laughter or tears.’ Those two phrases to me capture a very nice woman,” Sister Smith said. “You would never find Kitty without a book in her hand. She would often miss her morning school bus because she would be sitting on the bench busy reading,” wrote her daughter, Amy Grutzik of Marriottsville, in a biographical profile of her mother. “This love of books followed her throughout her life.” “For anyone who does not already know, I’m a liberal Democrat with a deep interest in history, women’s studies, human rights and social issues,” Mrs. Douglass wrote in an autobiographical sketch.

In 1957, she married her high school sweetheart, Joseph V. Douglass, an electrician, and settled in Woodlawn where they raised three children. While raising their family, she earned an associate degree from what is now the Community College of Baltimore at Catonsville, and was 55 in 1993 when she graduated magna cum laude from what is now Notre Dame of Maryland University, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Mrs. Douglass achieved this while heading the Sunday school program at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Irvington, serving as president of several PTAs, teaching women’s history classes at the Community College Baltimore County at Essex and working as a Baltimore County Public Schools substitute teacher for almost a decade.

In 1980, she started working as activities director and bookkeeper at the old General German Aged People’s Home of Baltimore in Irvington. The retirement home’s roots date to 1881, when it was founded as the Allgemeines Deutsches Greisenheim von Baltimore, and opened its first home at Baltimore and Payson streets, and then in 1925 moved to S. Athol Avenue. Mrs. Douglass was promoted to accounting manager and in 1987 to controller. She played a significant role in the purchase of land from Goucher College, the design and transition of the German Home to a multi-million dollar facility on Southerly Road in Towson that was rebranded as Edenwald Senior Living and opened in 1985.She was the first woman on the retirement community’s finance committee, but a bout with breast cancer in 1999 forced Mrs. Douglass into retirement. She continued to present lectures on Edenwald’s history to residents. “Working at the German Home and then Edenwald became a way of life,” Mrs. Douglass wrote. “Residents have always been family to me and Edenwald was my home away from home.” “Her empathy was deep and she constantly worried about other people,” her daughter wrote. “If she saw someone on the street in need, she would give a few dollars knowing that the person probably had a worried family somewhere.”

Mrs. Douglass had been a member of the League of Women Voters, where she wrote numerous reports for its newsletter and served as president of her neighborhood association. She volunteered with Carroll County Food Sunday, a Westminster food bank, and sat on its board. “She was a wonderful cook and seamstress. She made clothes for her children, herself, and many Barbie dolls,” her daughter wrote. Several years ago, Mrs. Douglass and her husband moved from Woodlawn to a house in Reisterstown that her father built. She was also the repository of the family’s history, her daughter said. Mrs. Douglass wrote that, “London is my favorite city after Baltimore, and I became homesick for England after only two visits. I was English in a prior life!” She was a former communicant of Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Randallstown. A Roman Catholic prayer service will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at the Haight Funeral Home and Chapel, 6416 Sykesville Road, Sykesville. In addition to her husband and daughter, Mrs. Douglass is survived by two sons, Brian Douglass of Ocean City and John Douglass of Granite; a brother, Patrick Scheper of Westminster; two sisters, Maureen Fox of Kent Island and Mary Murdy of Pittsburgh; eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.