Necrology
Kathleen Ann Facos Markees '80
Jul. 29, 1958-Jul. 23, 2021
Kathleen Ann Facos Markees ’80 died at her home in Worcester, Mass., on July 23, 2021. Born in Tonawanda, N.Y., on July 29, 1958, she was raised in Kenmore, N.Y., and came to Hamilton from Kenmore West High School.
At Hamilton, she majored in music, sang with the Oratorio Society, and played in the woodwind quintet. In her senior year, along with her future husband, Tomas G. Markees ’81, and two other men, she formed a rock band in which she played electric bass guitar. She was also a member of the Charlatans, worked on The Spectator, and was a freelance graphic designer.
After graduating, Kathleen relocated to the Boston area and briefly took a secretarial job at the Berklee College of Music. She then pursued a master’s of library science degree at Simmons University, graduating in 1984. Thereafter, she went to work at Harvard University’s libraries. She supervised a microfilm preservation project, became a curatorial associate for public services (an archivist) at Harvard’s Widener Library, and worked at the Harvard Theatre Collection at the Houghton Library, cataloging non-book materials and installing exhibits for the Dance Coalition Project. In the midst of all this, she married Tom on July 5, 1986, and earned a diploma in book binding from the North Bennet Street School in Boston.
In 1996, following the birth of their daughter, Genevieve, the Markeeses moved to Worcester where she worked in the archives and special collections of Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s library.
Kathleen was a woman of many talents. In her spare time, she gardened; built a spinet piano; took up the bass again, playing with Tom in a band called Wooing Dorothy; and renovated their home. Their daughter would later dance with the MetroWest Ballet Co., and Kathleen worked backstage during her performances.
Beyond its other influences, Hamilton taught her an important lesson about failure and how to address it. Flunking calculus in her first semester as a student on the Hill, she took it again during winter term and earned a B. She recalled: “I learned that making a mistake isn’t so bad, and it’s how you fix the mistake that counts.”
Kathleen A. Facos Markees is survived by her husband, and daughter.
