Biography
The life of Kathleen Kendall Ellett
1937-2023
Kathy was born and raised in Hobbs, New Mexico, a small town by the western Texas border. After graduating high school, she studied Microbiology at New Mexico State University before continuing to UC Berkeley to receive her Master's in Protozoology. Before pursuing her college career she even got married! Though he went to serve in the military, and they had divorced by the time he got back. Being a woman in the STEM field during the 1950's was no humble feat.
Career
After graduating from UC Berkely, my grandmother began working at the Naval Research Lab in San Francisco, CA, where she met my grandfather. Together with my grandfather they moved to England in 1967 as he pursued a PhD in Radiation Physics, and had my mother in the summer of '68. They lived in Oregon for a short time before finally settling in Maryland in 1970, where they lived out the rest of their lives.
When my mother was 16, my grandmother went back to work at the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, where she helped locals living on the water monitor and test water clarity in the Chesapeake Bay. She worked there from 1984 to 1989 before moving to the Department of Natural Resources where she then worked until she retired in 1991 at the age of 62. My grandmother adored the organisms she could only see under a microscope, so we would collect samples from the creek by her house and learn to identify them. My grandmother was not only adorable, but incredibly intelligent, and a feminist inspiration for my sisters and I.
Ireland and Norway, Summer 1968
American Southwest October 1991 (item 1)
In the fall of '91, my grandparents road-tripped across the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. It was during this trip that they explored the Mesa Verde National Park, and bought the Wedding Vase in Cortez, Colorado. My grandmother, having grown up in New Mexico, was always interested in Native American art and history. The Navajo people first settled in Mesa Verde around the late 15th-early 16th centuries, a couple centuries after it was abandoned by its earliest inhabitants, the ancestral Pueblos. Below is an image of the Cliff Palace built by the ancestral Pueblo people, most likely during the 13th century CE.
Yucatán Peninsula March 1991 (item 2)
At the age of 10, my grandmother read a book on the ancient civilizations of the world, and it was then that her fascination with the Mayans and Aztecs began. As an adult, she joined the Archaeology of the Yucatán Peninsula American Museum tour, where she visited many Mayan sites in Mérida, Chichén-Itzá, Cobá, Tulum, Xel Ah, Akumal, Chetumal, Kohunlich, Calakmul, Chicanná, Becán, Palenque, and Villahermosa. It was in Xel Ah that she purchased the Mayan Plaque thought to be a portrait of King Pacal. It is a modern copy made of the same material as the original limestone carving likely located in either Xel Ha, a small site on the Eastern Coast of the Yucatán, or the larger neighboring site of Tulum. This image is her in front of "El Castillo" (The Castle) in Chichén-Itzá!
Japan February 1983 (item 3)
Despite the Celadon Vase being of Korean origin, it was actually purchased during her trip to Japan, where she accompanied my grandfather in his research of the after-effects of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. Korean Celadon was valued highly not only domestically, but abroad as well, so it is not surprising that Japan had Korean imports to offer to tourists.
My grandfather (right) in Nagasaki with the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.
My grandmother (left) touring the pottery country around Arita.