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08/11/2022 12:00 PMArtist, teacher, and passionate gardener Katherine Lathrop McSpadden died at her home in Essex of a cerebral hemorrhage on July 26. Born on July 18, 1982 in New York City, Kate attended the Chapin School and graduated from Miss Porter’s. An art history major at Vanderbilt University, she won the Phi Beta Kappa writing prize as a freshman and the prestigious Margaret Stonewall Wooldrige Hamblet Award in Studio Art her senior year.
It is hard to imagine a world without our beautiful, brilliant Kate. Her spirit lives on in the art she created and curated and in the students she inspired at Avon Old Farms, where, for seven years, she taught architecture, studio art, art history, photography, ceramics, and French in addition to being a dorm parent and yearbook advisor. A self-described “plant nerd,” Kate had been studying horticulture through the Master Gardener program at the University of Connecticut while working at Ballek’s Garden Center in East Haddam. She had just established her own fledging landscape design business.
Kate was a generous and thoughtful friend with an innate sense of empathy and an extraordinary intellectual curiosity. She reveled in a heated political discussion, live jazz, modern art, philosophy, and a great pair of Jimmy Choos.
She is survived by her parents, Ruth Ann and Jack McSpadden; her sister Margaret McSpadden (Todd Ostrow); her brother Charlie McSpadden; grandmother Beverly Spooner; beloved dog Toby; and fiancé Tom Taylor, with whom she shared a deeply loving partnership.
A celebration of Kate’s life will be held at 4 p.m. Sept. 15, at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Essex Land Trust (P.O. Box 373, Essex, CT 06426) or to the Art Department at Vanderbilt University. To share a memory of Kate or send a condolence to her family please visit www.rwwfh.com . Arrangements by the Robinson, Wright & Weymer Funeral Home in Centerbrook.