Kathrine Mott Johnson Cays (Kay, Mamie) died of natural causes at the age of 99 in Reeders, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at her home on Cays Road. Her family was closely caring for her at the time of her passing.
Kathrine was born November 23, 1908, in her home named Cloverlea on the Johnson Road in Oswego New York. As the oldest daughter, she lived there with her father Francis Masters Johnson, mother Kathrine Louise Mott Johnson and her five siblings, Bud, Fan, Elliot, Sis and Jim.
As a young woman growing up on Lake Ontario, she was an accomplished long distance swimmer and equestrienne. Her five-gaited horse, Terry and her German shepherd, Sambo were her favorite companions with whom she spent many summer days riding in the lake region landscape. She was a passionate classical pianist and a painter. She blended her passion for both art and music in several synaesthetic works she called “musical paintings” that she experimented with at different points in her life. She took on the challenge to capture and transpose on canvas musical qualities of Chopin, Debussy and Rachmaninoff.
Kathrine graduated from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY in 1927. The school was founded and run by her great aunts Lillie, Sallie, and her grandmother Fannie Masters. She attended the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Students’ League in New York, NY where she studied under George Bridgeman. As a student, she spent summers abroad in Europe and traveled with her Aunt Sallie and sister Fan on the Grand Tour of Europe and Great Britain in the spring and summer of 1928. In 1932, she won the National Academy of Design’s Julia A. Shaw award for her painting “From a Provincetown Roof.”
Kathrine was wed to John Duncan Cays (Jack) on August 31, 1933, at Cloverlea in Oswego, New York, to whom she was married for 53 years. Soon after her two sons were born, the family moved to Bronxville and Yonkers, New York and finally settled in Reeders, Pennsylvania in 1948. Kathrine moved the family by “following her nose” across the Hudson River and New Jersey, evaluating each property not by inspecting foundations or considering square footage, but by asking the real estate agents to simply open the front door where she then poked her head in and “sniff-sniffed.” After “sniff-sniffing” the scent of the farmhouse that sat on a dusty milk path next to a stream on 100 acres in Reeders, she nodded and proclaimed, ”This is it.” As an idealist with a healthy dose of entrepreneurial spirit she decided she would share this Arcadian dream setting with others and she founded Gaybrook Vacation Farm. She took out an ad in the New York Times directed at those suffering in the sweltering summer heat that read “Would you like to sleep under a blanket in July?” Gaybrook operated for many successful summer seasons and at the height of its success, was sleeping 50 guests at a time as people flocked from the city to a country getaway even if it meant sleeping under a blanket, next to Kathrine’s Steinway concert grand piano in the converted barn. After she closed the farm to guests in 1954, it continued as a working farm, including 2,500 chickens and various other farm animals, all in keeping with her ideal of beauty combined with utility. Even after the family left farming on a large scale in the late 1950’s, Kathrine continued to plant a flower garden next to her house and a small, acre and a half, vegetable garden across the road. It was here that she began instructing her grand children in the ways and benefits of organic farming 40 years before the term gained the popularity it now has. She taught by example, by storytelling and through her connection to the land, the virtues of being thrifty, trustworthy, self sufficient, optimistic, creative, enthusiastic, perseverant and how to live fully. Most of all, she valued her family and worked tirelessly to create a place for them to come together and share her ideal. She would say, “Family is everything.”
By extension, she was engaged in the community maintaining affiliations in organizations and clubs including: the Monroe County Arts Council, the Jackson Township Fire Company Auxiliary, the National Republican Party (although she did actively campaign for the independent candidate, Ross Perot in 1992), and several garden clubs.
She is preceded in death by her husband John Duncan Cays (October, 1986), brother Francis Masters Johnson (January 1995), sister Fannie Masters Johnson (January 1977), brother Elliot DeWolf Johnson (December, 1932), sister Louise Wheeler Johnson (August 2005), and brother James Burbank Johnson (October 1990)
Kathrine is survived by two sons, John Bennett and his wife Victoria Cays and Robert Egerton and his wife Marjorie Cays, all of Reeders, PA; eight grandchildren, Elizabeth Cays Miller of American Fork, UT, Kathrine Marie Cays of Fuquay-Varina, NC, John M. Cays of Nutley, NJ, Deborah Cays of Bethlehem, PA, Donna Cays of Reeders, PA, Stephen Cays of Morristown, NJ, William Cays of Tannersville, PA, and Susan Cays Caravello, Reeders, PA; fifteen great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.
A memorial service for Kathrine will be held on Saturday, June 21 at 2:00 pm at the William H. Clark Funeral Home, in Stroudsburg, PA and a reception will be held immediately after the service at the Jackson Township Fire Hall on 715 in Reeders, PA. Interment will take place at a private ceremony for family on Monday, June 30 at the Riverside Cemetery family plot in Oswego, NY.
In lieu of flowers please send donations to Greater Delaware Valley Multiple Sclerosis Society, 1 Reed Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19147 (215) 271-1500.
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
