Kathryn Anita Wolfmueller Kruse
Published July 28, 2026
Kathryn Anita Wolfmueller Kruse
September 30, 1934 – June 12, 2026
Our gracious, kind, loving, compassionate, giving, talented, and endlessly creative mother, Kathryn Anita Wolfmueller Kruse, passed from this earthly life on June 12, 2026. Kathryn was born on September 30, 1934, to Robert Wolfmueller and Anita Granville Wolfmueller in Kerrville, Texas.
At the age of three, Kathryn suffered the loss of her mother in an automobile accident on a bridge in Houston, Texas. The accident occurred shortly after a boating outing with her mother and friends. Kathryn’ remained in a coma for several weeks after her mother’s passing.
Kathryn’s paternal grandparents, C. H. and Martha Wolfmueller, took full custody of Kathryn, and her maternal grandparents, Chester and Selma Granville, were granted summer and holiday visits.
As a child, Kathryn was described as a natural musician, and was privileged to begin her classical piano studies with Kate Heard. She sang and played the piano at community programs, Rotary and Kiwanis programs, school programs, summer camps, and church
programs. Singing was her celebration, and playing the piano by ear was her natural high, blending her passions for playing pop, jazz, ballads, and standards.
From the age of twelve, and throughout her years at TIVY High School, Kathryn served as organist for Zion Lutheran Church in Kerrville, Texas. She was cast as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Olga Seth, and sang in the Sextette in Tivy Elementary. She was invited to sing in the TIVY Trio by Laverne Bennett in TIVY High School, marched in parades with the Tivy Antlerettes, and performed at half time at TIVY football games as a Majorette and Drum major.
Kathryn attended Texas Lutheran College as a music major.
On Easter Sunday morning, April 21, 1957, Kathryn married United States Air Force pilot, Dean Kruse at Zion Lutheran Church in Kerrville, Texas. They moved together to Dean’s assignment at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California, where Dean became a member of Stan/Eval, evaluating pilots to fly in the Strategic Air Command.
Dean and Kathryn were blessed with the gifts of three children: Karl Robert Kruse, Anita Kay Kruse and Stanton Dean Kruse, all born in Riverside, California. The family followed Dean to later assignments in numerous states in the U.S. and in foreign countries: Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, Fuchu Air Base in Tokyo, Japan, and Southern Command Quarry Heights, Panama Canal Zone.
Kathryn played the piano at fashion shows, parties and weddings, filled in as church organist, in Idaho, Florida, and Louisiana, and played Country Club engagements in California, all the while attending classes on college campuses in Nebraska, Texas, and California. She studied classical piano with Jack Weld in San Diego, and Charles Fulkerson in Trinidad, California.
Kathryn was charter member of NAMI in North San Diego, Escondido, California, served on the Santa Barbara County Mental Health Advisory Board, Santa Barbara, California, and founded the Peninsula Community Mental Health Center Family Support Group in Port Angeles, Washington.
After Dean’s retirement in 1999, Kathryn and Dean traveled the world. In the words of Cafavy’s Ithaka…”with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time…but don’t hurry the journey at all…better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the
time you reach the island….as wise as you’ve become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”
Kathryn loved animals and nature, and truly loved life. She is survived by her daughter, Anita Kruse, son, Stanton Kruse, and grandson,
Dean Kruse.
Kathryn asked that memorial gifts be sent to:
Purple Songs Can Fly
Anita Kruse, Founder and Executive Director, Houston, Texas
Best of Olympic Peninsula
