A 13-year story of faith and love came to an end this weekend, with the death of Kathy Anderson, 18.
Kathy, her family remembers, was ”an average beautiful little girl”
with brown pigtails and big blue eyes back in 1977, when she fell into a Northwest Side swimming pool.
”It was her 5th birthday. Dad took us all to the pool and we had a little surprise birthday party,” recalled Chris Anderson, 17, the youngest of Kathy`s seven brothers and sisters.
But, somehow, amid all the splashing and yelling, both Kathy`s family and lifeguards didn`t see her sink to the bottom of a smaller children`s pool, away from the big pool at Portage Park. When family members found her, they estimated that she had been under water an hour and 22 minutes, Chris said.
She was revived at a nearby hospital, but the doctor`s prognosis was grim: Kathy was in an irreversible coma.
”They told my father, `We don`t give her any hope. She`s going to be a vegetable. Why don`t you put her in a home?` ” Chris said.
”But my Dad said, `If she`s going to be a vegetable, she`s going to be my vegetable,` ” Chris said. So they took her back home, at 4438 N. Lamon Ave.
Since that day, and up until her death Friday, Kathy had remained a member of the Anderson family, almost exclusively through the efforts of her devoted father, Richard Anderson, her brothers and sisters say.
”My father stayed up hours and hours taking care of her,” Chris said.
”Him and me and Mom and my older brothers, we fed her and took care of her, but he took care of her most.”
Kathy never came out of her coma, but Chris said she hardly seemed inanimate.
”She yawned and moved her arms up and down. When she knew somebody who came into the room, her eyes would roll around and she would smile,” he said. The family threw her parties on her birthdays, big parties ”with the relatives and neighbors over,” Chris said. ”It let her know she means something.”
On Christmas, he said, ”Dad brought her out in a wheelchair. We got her a present and we`d help her tear it open.”
Over the years, they watched her body, curved by scoliosis, grow into that of a 14- or 15-year-old`s. They sat by her bedside in the hospital when she went in for her numerous operations, for gallstones and a tracheotomy, and to have a stomach tube installed.
”My father always said, `One of these days she`ll come out of it, and she`ll outlive us all,` ” Chris said.
Then, last year, Richard Anderson, a part-time painter, died of cancer. But ”he told us when he died that he knew she would be very well taken care of. He trained us all,” Chris said.
So the family kept up his work, taking turns feeding Kathy on a regular schedule, bathing her and including her in the family activities.
The thought of putting her in a home never came up, Chris said.
”I always told Mom if something happened I would let her live with me,” he said. ”We did our best.”
But Friday, after one of her daily feedings, Kathy`s older brother, Steven, returned to her room to find her dead of natural causes.
Her funeral was Saturday, but the family`s grief was not one tempered with relief.
”We`re all sad and depressed,” Chris said. ”We still love her and we always will. That was our sister.”
![The Ravinia Festival Association filed a motion to dismiss the complaint by Karen Ettelson, former member of the organization’s Women’s Board, who sued the musical festival nonprofit and it’s Board of Trustees for “defamatory conduct,” along with seven other counts, after the Board of Trustees expunged her from the working board for an alleged conduct violation. The motion from the music non-profit, which hosts an annual music festival of the same name each summer, argues the lawsuit should be dismissed because there is no justified reason for the courts to intervene with Ettelson’s volunteer status, board members are immune from […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Lake-County-News-Sun.jpg?w=620 "The Ravinia Festival Association filed a motion to dismiss the complaint by Karen Ettelson, former member of the organization’s Women’s Board, who sued the musical festival nonprofit and it’s Board of Trustees for “defamatory conduct,” along with seven other counts, after the Board of Trustees expunged her from the working board for an alleged conduct violation. The motion from the music non-profit, which hosts an annual music festival of the same name each summer, argues the lawsuit should be dismissed because there is no justified reason for the courts to intervene with Ettelson’s volunteer status, board members are immune from […]")
