Bonnie Jean (Klein) Karsten

KARSTEN
BONNIE JEAN
Age 76, victim of ALS on August 1, 2016. Bonnie was born in Milwaukee, May 13, 1940, to Lorayn (Michler) Klein and Harvey Wilke Klein. She is survived by her husband, Peter Karsten; her sister, Geraldine Helfrich; her loving children, Heather Karsten, Adam Karsten, and Amanda Damjanovic; and wonderful grandchildren, Liam Karsten Junco, Lucas Damjanovic, Isabella Damjanovic, Keeley Karsten, and Rowan Karsten. Bonnie grew up in Milwaukee enjoying her family, ice skating, swimming, and cheerleading among other activities, and experienced a different world as an AFS student in Greece as a high school student, living with families in Athens and Heraklion, before attending college at Miami University in Ohio, and then transferring to the University of Wisconsin where she graduated. She worked for a year at the AFS headquarters in New York City, leading a bus tour for foreign AFS students of the eastern U.S. that summer. Bonnie then returned to Wisconsin, attended the University in Madison, and earned a Master's degree in History and a teaching certificate where she met and soon married her husband. Not long after they moved to Forest Hills, Bonnie attended Duquesne Law School and passed the Pennsylvania Bar Exam while raising her three young children with her husband. She practiced family law for several years before retooling in what she regarded as the more effective role in family law, as a mediator. For many years she mediated disputes of all kinds, and also worked as addiction rehabilitation counselor at POWER, while beginning to serve for 20 years as a tax preparer for H & R Block. She also served as Vice President of the board of trustees and was an active member of the Social Events Committee of the First Unitarian Church in Shadyside. In the course of their 51 years of marriage, Bonnie and her family spent a year enjoying life in the Algarve, Portugal; a year in Dublin, Ireland; a summer in Cambridge, England; a winter in New Zealand; and trips to the US National Parks, multiple Caribbean Islands, Bavaria and Croatia, Fiji, Australia, Canada, and a year at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina with her husband. But she loved Forest Hills, and her many friends in Forest Hills and Pittsburgh, her Book Club, and those at the First Unitarian Church in Shadyside; her former family dogs, her garden, the birds and wildlife, the borough pool, and the many venues for the children and guests in the Pittsburgh region. She was a loving and caring wife, mother, and grandmother to her family whom she inspired, and with whom she shared her enthusiasm for many things and activities including reading, gardening, spending time with family and friends, enjoying and caring for the environment, cooking, swimming, tennis, walking, and ice-skating. A breast cancer survivor since 2004, she retired from H & R Block in 2015, and was diagnosed with ALS a few months after. That disease cut her life short within 15 months, despite the help of the ALS Foundation, her family, friends and many wonderful caregivers. She will be missed by all of them. A Memorial Service in her name will take place at First Unitarian Church, at Moorewood and Ellsworth, on August 13, 2016, at 11 a.m. Donations in her name may be sent to either the First Unitarian Church, Morewood Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213, or The ALS Association, Western Pennsylvania Chapter, 416 Lincoln Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15209, or at:http://webwpawv.alsa.org. Funeral arrangements entrusted to WOLFE MEMORIAL INC. FOREST HILLS CHAPEL, 3604 Greensburg Pike, 412-731-5001.