Kenneth Poe Funeral Services

November 21, 2019

CHARLOTTE - Kathryn Wilson Greenhoot, M.D., 83, of Charlotte, died peacefully on November 21, 2019 at Levine & Dickson Hospice House in Huntersville, NC. A memorial service will be held Saturday, December 28, 2019 at Belk Chapel, on the campus of Queens University in Charlotte at 11:00 AM.

Kathryn was born to Harriet and Austin Wilson, in Minneapolis, on August 13, 1936.  The family grew and relocated to Long Beach California where Kathryn attended high school, and Long Beach City College.  Despite aptitude tests which indicated that she could be either a musician or a mathematician, she was advised to become a kindergarten teacher, and when that was proved mistaken, a lab technician.  No one considered what she ultimately became, a physician, in what was then a “man’s world.”  

It was at LBCC that she met the love of her life, a Pre Med student, Jerry Greenhoot, and a teacher, Noble Hines, who insisted that she look beyond limitations, and suggested a career in Medicine.

Within a few months the bond between the two young people developed and grew powerful and strong enough to last a lifetime.  They planned the course of their lives, together.  They would both transfer to UCLA to complete their undergraduate studies and attend a Medical School, together.  They would stay together at whatever cost; they would overcome whatever obstacles, together.  

And they did just that.  From the inception of The Plan, they made their lives so completely intertwined as to be identical: academic honors and  Medical School at UCLA, marriage at age 24, postgraduate specialty training at the University of Washington in Seattle, Kathryn in Anesthesiology, and Jerry in Neurological Surgery; career positions at MCV in Richmond, VA, and later at U.C.S.D. Medical School in San Diego, CA., their lives never separated.  Ultimately the family grew and they relocated to make their marks in a single place, a place where there’d always be their home, Charlotte, NC.  Here was to be the place for their family, which was the most important piece of Kathryn’s life.

In her professional life, Kathryn was a true expert and contributor.  Jerry remembers that “Kathryn literally invented Neuro-Anesthesiology one night in a Seattle operating room” and improved the outcomes for countless patients thereafter.  She was an early leader in the dramatic improvement in Charlotte’s hospitals.  One of the first women anesthesiologists, she was a mentor to young people, and a friend to anyone who’d be her friend.   In all things she was resource and a role model.  It was claimed that younger colleagues (after a while, everyone was a younger colleague) referred to her privately as “Mom.”  As in, “if you have a question, go ask Mom; she’ll know.”

In her private life she was always “Mom.”  She was “your Mom,” our Mom,  Mom, the source, the fountain of love from which flowed  everything that counted for all of her family.  She was the expert gardener and master bridge player.   She loved the whole of her life, from the glories of music to exploring a Bahamian mangrove forest in an 8’ dinghy, or riding with Jerry on their motorcycle over mountain passes in Western Montana.  Above all, she loved us, her family, her children and grandchildren.

Kathryn is survived by her daughters, Deborah Rogers, and Jennifer Greenhoot, her son, Christopher Greenhoot, her grandchildren Augustus “Gus” Greenhoot, Gracia Greenhoot, Isaiah Heinz and Silas Heinz, her sisters, Betti Harris and Anne Lane.  And by her husband, Dr. Jerry Greenhoot, who despite her absence after 59 years of marriage, loves her more and more. Every. Single. Day.

Forever.

Arrangements are in the care of Kenneth W. Poe Funeral & Cremation Service, 1321 Berkeley Ave., Charlotte, NC 28204; (704) 641-7606. Online condolences can be shared at www.kennethpoeservices.com.