Mary K. Kerr of Ferrisburgh, Vermont, passed away quietly in her sleep on March 3, 2025, in her home on Lake Champlain that she fondly referred to as “the most beautiful place in the world.” She was one day shy of her 92nd birthday. Her family was with her.
Born Mary Sonja Krabbe in Bellingham, Washington, to Johan and Winifred Gamble Krabbe, Mary spent her youth moving about the west coast with her family. She attended Sequoia High School in California and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she graduated from the Medill in 1954. She also studied at the University of Copenhagen.
She first met her devoted husband, Joseph Minott Kerr, while skiing at Sugar Bowl in Soda Springs, California and continued their relationship at Northwestern, and were married on April 2, 1955, at Aftermath, the Kerr family summer home in Wainscott, New York. Joe preceded her in death in 2008.
While living in New Jersey, Mary and Joe fell in love with Vermont, invested in the then-burgeoning ski industry, and eventually built a “ski home” in South Fayston in 1962. They moved there full-time in 1965, where they raised their three sons. In addition to loving the mountains and skiing, Mary and Joe loved the water and sailing. In 1981 they bought a home on the shores of Lake Champlain near Basin Harbor, where they moved permanently in 1997.
For most of Mary’s life, she had a love affair with the Green Mountains and Lake Champlain. Her enthusiasm for the beauty of the natural world was truly evident in the plethora of gardens, flowers, birds, squirrels, and even chipmunks, she encouraged to grow around her home on the Lake. Inspired by the variety of birds she watched every day; she worked with the Vermont Bald Eagle Restoration Initiative to help return the American Bald Eagle to Lake Champlain.
Mary was an avid writer and photographer and capitalized on her training as a journalist. She served as the editor of two publications, Window of Vermont, a bi-monthly newspaper devoted primarily to the ski industry, and The Valley Reporter, the weekly newspaper for the Mad River Valley in Central Vermont. Mary had taught journalism as an adjunct professor at Saint Michael’s College in Burlington Vermont. She was also a prolific writer on skiing and the ski industry.
Mary wrote two books, The Tapestry of My Life, an unpublished autobiographical work that she gave to her sons. The second was what she called her “Life’s Work,” A Mountain Love Affair: The Story of Mad River Glen. It was a compendium of photographs and stories of the iconic ski area’s history.
Mary loved to ski. From the moment the mountains had enough snow until it was completely gone, you could find Mary and Joe schussing one of the 140 ski areas around the World where they adventured during their lifetime together. She loved organizing ski trips all over the World for the New York Amateur Ski Club of which she and Joe were lifelong members.
Above all was Mary’s passion for traveling and seeing the world, having been to five of the seven world continents. She loved to capture her travels in pictures, and her home is filled with carefully annotated albums documenting her exploits on the road. Even after Joe passed in 2008, Mary continued to travel the world, traveling extensively in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
Her most passionate project grew out of her senior thesis on women and leadership at Northwestern and her travels to Afghanistan, where she sought to help young women become strong and independent. She worked with the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), a boarding school for Afghan girls that operated in Kabul from 2016 until 2021, and since the return of the Taliban, now operates out of Rwanda. She made several trips to that war-torn country to mentor the girls as well as teach them writing and journalism.
Mary is survived by her three sons, Minott Kerr, Geoffrey Kerr (Dan Flanagan), and Gibson (Diane Lawliss) Kerr; five grandchildren, Kirstin (Seamus) Kerr O’Connor, Alyssa (Matthew) Kerr Pyrak, Maxer Kerr, Gavin Kerr, and Peter Kerr; and one great granddaughter, Rory Kerr O’Connor. Her surviving Minnesota nieces, Lois Meekins Croonquist, Lisa Meekins Meyer, and Heidi Meekins were very dear to her.
Though a devoted wife, she was fiercely independent, and she left this life exactly as she said she would to anyone who knew her well: “out of her house feet first, going up through the trees.” Her outgoing personality and strong belief systems will be remembered by many.
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/obituaries/pbur1110733
