Kay Graber

Kay Marlene (Ewert) Graber, beloved wife, mother, and grandmother, passed away peacefully on February 7, 2026, at the Hallmark Care Center, with her family present.

She is survived by her husband Cot; sons, David (Brian Victor) and Jack (Patricia Alvarez); grandsons, Alex, Alan, and Andrés; her brother, Dick (Harriet); and many nieces and nephews whom she loved dearly. She was preceded in death by her parents, Henry and Helen Ewert, and her son, Mark.

Kay was born July 23, 1936, in Salina, Kansas, and grew up in Abilene, Kansas. In 1954, she entered the Mennonite college that her great-grandfather had helped to found, Bethel College, Newton, Kansas, where she was valedictorian of her freshman and sophomore class. It was here that she met her future husband, Harlan Duane “Cot” Graber of Kingman, Kansas. Her junior year she transferred to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where she graduated from the English Honors Program and the School of Education.

On August 10, 1958, Kay and Cot were married in the Abilene United Methodist Church. While he was finishing his doctoral work at the University of Kansas, she taught English at Lawrence High School while pursuing an MA in American Literature, which she earned in 1965 with a thesis on the author Willa Cather. Two boys were born in Lawrence: Mark in 1959 and David in 1962. The family moved to Mount Vernon in 1962, where Cot taught physics at Cornell College, and where Kay spent the next sixty-four years. A third son, Jack, followed in 1964.

Kay’s life in Mount Vernon was dedicated to family, community, church, education, and the disadvantaged. Once the boys were old enough, she began teaching part-time pre-school and giving piano lessons at home. She then went to work for Grant Wood Area Education Agency as director of community relations, where she helped shape the educational landscape in Eastern Iowa for the next 25 years managing relationships between the state, the schools, and the public.

Kay was at the forefront of the movement for women to get involved in politics, and for this the Iowa chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) named her a “Woman of Achievement,” while the Mount Vernon-Lisbon League of Women Voters honored her as “Woman of the Year.” She served nine years on the Mount Vernon Community School Board, the last two of those years as President. She was involved in many local efforts to help others, including Meals on Wheels, foster care, and immigrants who spoke little or no English. Kay was also very active in the Methodist Church, where she sat on numerous committees, spearheaded fundraising drives, volunteered, sang in the choir, and participated in state church conferences on issues important to her.

The Grabers’ life changed dramatically in 1980, when a jeep accident and brain stem injury left Mark comatose and then completely paralyzed from the neck down. After experts determined that there was no hope for rehabilitation, Kay brought him home, hired a nurse and a physical therapist, and took care of him herself on weekends. In response to the lack of information and resources for individuals and families dealing with brain trauma, Kay organized a support group and later a state organization which became one of two founding chapters of the Brain Injury Association of America. Mark lived another three years before dying of pneumonia, but after that Kay continued to advocate and lobbied often at the state and federal level on brain-injury related legislation. In recognition of the scope and impact of her work, she was selected by a local news station as “9 Who Care”, and went on to represent Iowa in Washington D.C., where she was honored with a national Jefferson Award for public service.

Kay and Cot loved to travel. In 1968-1969, they took their boys, ages 4, 6 and 8, to the Netherlands for a year, where Cot did research at the University of Utrecht. The family returned there for another six months in 1976. After retirement, they took many trips, sometimes accompanied by dear friends, across the globe, including Russia, Egypt, Australia, and China.

Kay’s legacy lives on in the values she instilled, the love she gave freely, and the memories she leaves behind — each one a reminder of a life well lived and a heart well shared.

A celebration of Kay’s life will be held at the United Methodist Church of Mount Vernon, 304 1st Street W, Mount Vernon, at 11 a.m. on Saturday, February 28, 2026. There will be a visitation at Stewart Baxter Funeral & Memorial Services, 715 10th Avenue SW, Mount Vernon, from 4-7 p.m. on Friday, February 27, 2026. Private family burial will be held at the Mount Vernon Memorial Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, the family invites donations to the United Methodist Church of Mount Vernon Memorial Fund.

For those unable to attend in person, the service will be available via livestream.  Please find the livestream link on this obituary page.