From the 25th Reunion Book, 1996:

Karin Sundquist was killed in an avalanche on February 12, 1995. while she was crosscountry skiing outside Denver, Colorado. She was with Mike Martin, who survived the accident. Karin had been living in Denver with Mike for three and a half years.

Karin talked me into going to Swarthmore. We had been pen-pals since we were ten years old, thanks to our parents' graduate school friendship. Karin and I were roommates in Willets freshman year and then had a triple in Parrish sophomore year with Barbi Hunter (now Chaffee). Some of Karin's classmates may remember her as serious and studious, a peace marcher as a freshman, and a campus journalist the next year, reporting for the college paper on the political strife of 1968. Others may remember a loopy grin, or perhaps some idiosyncratic behavior - like Karin's habit of spiking strong coffee with several teaspoons of Nescafe as a study aid.

Karin left for Berkeley junior year and stayed in California to finish her undergraduate degree and do graduate work in biochemistry at Cal Tech. We were in touch only sporadically, but I know Karin did laboratory research and ran a sporting/camping goods store. She also became an accomplished rock climber. At some point in the '70's she married and moved to Seattle, where she worked in cancer research, mostly at the University of Washington.

When I caught up with Karin again in 1990, she had been divorced for several years and was spending most of the time she had away from the lab skiing and climbing in the mountains. That year she met Mike on a mountain climbing expedition with some of her Seattle friends, and the next year she moved to Denver, where Mike teaches mathematics.

Karin lived with Mike for a only a few years, but from our few visits and periodic phone conversations, I know that those years were both a voyage and a homecoming. Her parents have said that those last years were her happiest, and I believe them.

(Submitted by Deborah Whittle Harrawood who included contact information for Karin's parents and Mike Martin.)