Katherine Dinep

1932-2022

Katherine Dinep died peacefully at home within the circle of her family on Christmas after a long and joy-filled life. Her sunny, positive, and giving disposition is sorely missed, but she lives on in all those here and in Switzerland whose lives she touched.

. . . .

It was Saint Patrick’s Day, 1957. Instead of proceeding to the runway at Idlewild, the pilot of the PanAm transatlantic prop plane first made a circle around the Statue of Liberty. “We have so many immigrants on board today that I wanted to show you Lady Liberty. Welcome to America!”

Geneva, Paris, Shannon, Keflavik, Gander, and finally New York City. Most of the passengers spoke little or no English, so a young woman from a small mountain village in Switzerland helped as many of them with their immigration forms and customs declarations as she could. Käthi Dinep, from the Simmental, was about to descend into a wholly different world and to meet her new husband’s American family for the first time.

Born in 1932, before WWII changed the world forever, the short story is that she became a teacher, and after her marriage to Martin Dinep in January of 1957, wife, EKG technician at the New Britain General Hospital where Martin was doing his residency and internship in General Surgery, and then mother of three, grandmother of six, great-grandmother of two.

Käthi was the youngest daughter of Marie and Fritz. Marie’s family, from a village further up the valley, were respected farmers who pioneered exportation of the Simmental dairy cow to North America. Fritz, taken in by his extended farming family as a young boy, had been set up in a very practical way by his kin as a baker—one of three in the village of about 700. Their house was set right on the road leading down to the Simmen River and to the village church beyond, and was located on family land. Marie not only carried the household, but also ran their shop, open 6 days a week. There they sold their own breads and rolls, and also everything from coffee to chocolate, salt, notebooks, sewing needles, and washing powder. The girls helped everywhere—with the baking, in the shop, with the butchering, and on the family farms during haying season.

You could set your watch by the village church bells, or alternatively, by the trains passing a few hundred meters from the house. Occasionally, everyone stopped work to watch an extra train carrying Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, or other royalty, resplendent in their personal rail cars, to the opulent spa and mineral baths nearby. Sundays were often spent by the family on excursions through the Swiss Alps in Fritz’s pride-and-joy British-manufactured Riley, for a long time one of only three autos in the village.

After graduating from the primary school next door and from the secondary school one village via train down the valley, Käthi applied to the teaching college for Home Economics in the capital city of Bern. There the three sisters shared an apartment on Länggasse, not far from the Toblerone chocolate factory. And from that spot, they watched the antics of the neighboring apartment full of crazy foreigners studying medicine on the G.I. Bill who didn’t know that playing Beethoven’s 9 ^th at full volume after 10 pm was verboten , who spoke in funny accents, and one of whom cleaned up his smashed jars of yogurt out on the sidewalk with a dustpan and broom. That young American would turn out to be Martin, who eventually gathered his courage and asked Käthi to go dancing. She and her sisters weren’t sure about him, so she told him she didn’t know how. But she actually loved dancing, she eventually said yes, and they dated.

Käthi taught for several years during which Martin had to return home via freighter during the summers to earn money for school. But finally, he proposed to her, writing, “Der stiller Stein muss sprechen.” … The silent stone must speak! He left once more for a summer of work back in the States, and then on a sunny and cold January day in 1957, Martin and Katherine (as he called her) were married in the village church in which she had been baptized and confirmed.

After Katherine’s arrival in the United States, the new couple settled into a cozy apartment in New Britain, Connecticut, just down the block from The Hospital on the Hill, as New Britain General Hospital was called. They both worked long hours. She took a course to learn silk screening, they skied together with friends in winter and visited with his family in summer… until their life was upended a few years later by the arrival of Andrea, followed after intervals by Helena and then Claudia. Now they worked still longer hours, Martin in his surgical practice, Katherine at home with three young children and two dogs. Diapers and tantrums, spelling words and arithmetic, gardening, walks in the woods, family trips to New Hampshire and Long Island and Switzerland, school concerts and birthday parties. Then suddenly graduations, college applications, boyfriends. Katherine learned to weave baskets from Kari Lonning, was accepted into the Society of Connecticut Craftsmen, and the house was filled with round reeds, dye baths, and perfectly symmetrical, gorgeously patterned baskets of all sizes.

The daughters eventually produced grad school applications and then the first wedding, which brought together family from overseas as well as from the United States. When their first grandchild started talking, Katherine and Martin stopped being called “Muetti” and “Vati” and became “Nadidi” and “Baba” instead. Two more weddings… more grandchildren… more weddings… and now great-grandchildren.

Katherine spent most of her creative energy on her children. Birthday parties meant weeks of preparation and the making of elaborate party favors. Cakes were works of art. Sankt Nikolas filled the children’s shoes each 6th of December not only with oranges, chocolates, and nuts, but also brought exactingly handcrafted Christmas tree ornaments carved from wood or made from clay, fabric, or colored wood shavings.

During her children’s younger years, she invented marvelous stories about the adventures of Sebastian and Annie, bakers who (coincidentally) had three girls with (coincidentally) similar personalities to her own three. She told stories about a family of tiny people who lived in the woods and hitched rides in the cuffs of Martin’s forest-green pants when he walked the dogs daily.

She never missed a lunar eclipse, but rousted her children from their beds to watch sleepily in the dark driveway. She climbed trees. She spent hours observing ants and caterpillars. She named and wondered at insects. “Dr Maa mit’em grüene Rägäschirm” aka “The Gentleman with the Green Umbrella,” was an iridescent-green tiger beetle who owned the patio, excavating holes between the flagstones and dragging bug carcasses down into its burrow. A special chipmunk got peanuts left for it on the big rock out back, and Mr. Robin came daily for his ration of green grapes, cut carefully into halves and quarters. She volunteered at the hospital, worked on the school PTAs, always laid an extra plate for “Uncle,” the old family friend who’d appear almost nightly after his hospital rounds, always just in time for dinner, no matter what time that might be. She cared for numerous elderly friends as though they were family: Karoline, Dora, Ruth and Charlie. She knew the names and the lives of the milkman, the mailman, the paperboy, even of the occasional repairmen she called upon.

In the last five years she almost rejoiced in her more limited mobility, finally finding time to sit outside and listen to the birds, watch the clouds make shapes. She never did get around to sorting all the recipes and articles she’d clipped for “someday” because she was always too busy living right now . Singing, dancing in the kitchen, baking bread, listening to and caring for all those around her.

Katherine died peacefully at home on Christmas 2022 in the circle of her husband, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Her sunny, positive, and giving disposition is sorely missed, but she lives on in all those here and in Switzerland whose lives she touched, including:

husband Martin Dinep; daughters Andrea, Helena, Claudia and their families;

sisters Ruth Wegmüller, Rosmarie Balmer and their families;

as well as her in-laws, her nieces and nephews, and their families.

A Celebration of Life is being planned.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a cause near to Katherine’s heart:

Unicef for Children: www.unicef.org

Greenpeace: www.greenpeace.org/global

Berghilfe, helping small farmers in Switzerland: www.berghilfe.ch

American Indian College Fund: www.collegefund.org