Kathryn Gobie Vowell's Obituary
Kathryn Gobie Vowell, born Kathryn Ellen Gobie on November 29, 1940, passed away on May 1, 2026, at Baptist Hospital in Memphis, with her son holding her hand. She was 85 years old.
Kathryn grew up in Miami, where her beauty and grace were evident early — she appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine in the late 1950s. She went on to study English and Journalism in college, where she pledged Alpha Gamma Delta and was named Pi Kappa Alpha sweetheart, a distinction that introduced her to the chapter's president, Gabriel Martin Brady, who would become her first husband.
At her father's urging, she left school to join National Airlines as a flight attendant, and she was aboard the first commercial jet flight from the East Coast to the West Coast — a multi-stop journey from New York to Los Angeles that placed her at a small but genuine moment in aviation history. She lived for a time in Queens before marrying Gabriel and beginning a life that took them from New Orleans to Atlanta, where their son Patrick was born in 1963, and then to Memphis, which became her home for the rest of her life.
In Memphis, Kathryn raised Patrick and her daughter, Erin, born in 1969. Erin earned a degree in French from the University of Memphis, spent time as an au pair in France, and worked as an esthetician in Charlotte, North Carolina, before her death in 2014.
After she and Gabriel separated in 1984, Kathryn reentered the workforce, working first for an antiques dealer and then for a specialty food shop that awakened a passion for exceptional coffee. In 1995, she opened Crema, which became Memphis's destination for fine coffee, rare teas, and specialty foods. She stocked fifty-dollar bottles of balsamic vinegar at a time when no one in Memphis was doing that, and she made it seem perfectly reasonable. But Crema was more than a shop. Kathryn had a rare gift for seeing potential in the young people who worked for her, and over the years she helped launch dozens of them — encouraging them to name their direction and find the confidence to chase their dreams. Many of them would count her among the most formative figures of their lives. When Byron retired in 2005, she sold the store, leaving it in good hands.
In 1989, she married Byron Vowell Jr., a man she was, by all accounts, utterly crazy about. They shared a long and happy marriage of 23 years, traveling to New York and Italy and building a life together that suited them both beautifully. Byron preceded her in death on November 18, 2012.
In her later years, Kathryn volunteered at Mewtopia, Memphis's cat rescue, and was a regular at the Jewish Community Center gym. She remained a devoted lover of art and music — she once made a special trip to St. Louis to see a major exhibition of Monet's work, and her listening ranged from Bach to Stevie Wonder to the Modern Jazz Quartet. She was the one who bought her son his first bicycle, and she never stopped encouraging him to ride when life got heavy. Through his writing about cycling, she once told him, she knew the joy of it herself.
If you knew Kathryn Vowell, you knew someone who made you feel seen. She was perhaps the most extroverted person in any room, and she had a gift for drawing people out. She knew every employee at her favorite restaurant, Houston's, by first name — and they knew her. Her nurses at Baptist Hospital remarked on her warmth in her final days. Even then, she was taking care of the people around her.
Kathryn is survived by her son, Patrick Brady of Santa Rosa; her grandsons Philip Brady and Matthew Brady; her stepsons Scott Vowell (and his wife Sherry) and Stewart Vowell; her stepgrandson Brandon; her great-grandchildren Dannie Mae and William Byron Vowell; her sister Jackie Ekholm; and her nephews Craig and Chris Ekholm. She was sweet, and she was beloved, and she will be missed by more people than she ever knew.
Arrangements have been entrusted to Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery, 5668 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee 38119 (901) 767-8930.
“Where Memphis comes to remember, since 1924.”
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