KAREN A. PETTERSEN

FERRISBURGH — Karen Ann Pettersen of North Ferrisburgh passed away peacefully this past May in hospice after a long illness. Karen was a year-round resident of Bay Road at Long Point. She was famed there for the flying heron she created in shingle-art on the exterior of her cottage, one of many creative improvements she made to that old “camp” she had purchased about 45 years before. Among the year-rounders at Long Point she was also well-known for the Christmas cookies she baked and delivered with a warm smile in the darkest days each year.

She was born April 13, 1947, in Brooklyn, N.Y. to Thor and Mary (Belski) Pettersen. Karen attended high school in Port Washington, N.Y. In 1968 she graduated from the SUNY College of Environmental Studies and Forestry at Syracuse University. She was trained as a Landscape Architect and spent the rest of her life designing and building living spaces. After graduation, she married classmate Bill Moulton they moved to Morrisville, Vt. Eventually, they relocated to a new-built home on Hollister Hill Road in Marshfield, a house built to Karen’s specifications.

With her neighbors in Marshfield, Karen was active in a feminist discussion group. Keeping engaged with the landscape design, she served on a citizen’s committee dedicated improving the gardens at Goddard College. While in Marshfield, Karen was employed at the Vermont Department of Parks to identify sites for recreation and park development. Eventually, Karen left VT Parks to work independently and with great intensity on a new project as the designer of the new Wrightsville Reservoir Recreation Area on the Winooski North Branch, upstream from Montpellier.

As that project ran out, Karen left Marshfield and moved on her own to Ferrisburgh in 1978. She eventually joined Truedell Consulting Engineers in Williston. Karen self-identified as the Queen of Parking Lots at TCE, having worked on the UMall parking. But her pride was in her design for improvements to the canoe access at Vergennes Falls.

Karen’s avocation was always to encourage the health of native plants and the preservation of wildlife corridors in Addison County. She was an active member on the Ferrisburgh Conservation Commission and a contributor on the Ferrisburgh Zoning Rewrite advisory panel. Additionally, Karen volunteered with the Lewis Creek Association’s work protecting Town Farm Bay from invasive aquatic plants.

Karen was an active outdoor enthusiast going on frequent group excursions such as hiking up Snake Mountain and cross-country skiing at Stowe with the Women of UVM and the Charlotte Senior Center. At Long Point, Karen especially enjoyed being on the water in either in her yellow sea kayak or her 20-foot sailboat on Long Point Bay. Her motto was “Welcome to the Lake.”

In later years she enjoyed watching bird life throughout Addison County, often with the Charlotte Senior Center. She was 87th in the lifetime ranking of the county’s birders for the greatest number of species identified.

Karen is survived by her second husband, Dan Connelly of South Burlington. She is fondly remembered and missed by all who knew her.

Contributions in her name can be made to the UVM Cancer Center.◊