Our deepest thanks to all the many friends and family who have reached out to let us know how Kathryn impacted their lives. Your flowers, meals, and fellowship have meant so much to us. We encourage you to add stories, tributes and photos to this site to help us create a lasting memorial to her life and adventures.
In tribute to the pivotal role higher education played in Kathryn's life, donations in her name to the Addie Travis Brookins Endowed Council Scholarship at Jackson State University can be made via this link:
Jackson State University Giving. Look under "choose an endowment" for the Addie Travis Brookins Endowed Council Scholarship. The scholarship was established in honor of Oscar's mother to support students at this historically black university in the Brookins's home state of Mississippi.
Much love,
The Brookins/Lloyd Family
Website background music: Anamaria Lloyd, vocals.
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Kathryn Juel Weibel Brookins
Kathryn Brookins died at the age of 83 on July 25th, 2020, finding peace at the end of a struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was the publisher of the
Mission Hill News, a visible neighborhood activist, a wife and mother, and a dog-lover. She took the world seriously and expected it to return the favor.
She was born Kathryn Juel Weibel in North Platte, Nebraska, on October 31, 1936, the only child of engineering mechanic Frank Weibel and school teacher Irene Bell Weibel, née Hill. Her beloved father died when she was just 20 years old and from then on, she and her mother were seldom far apart. Irene died in 1987 at age 89.
A gregarious, tall, beautiful woman, Kathryn nevertheless derived her commanding presence more from her incisive intellect and formidable sense of justice.
As a child, she moved frequently around the Pacific Northwest as her father worked on some of the large infrastructure projects that contributed to the development of the region. She graduated from Gresham Union High School outside Portland, Oregon, and attended Reed College for one year before marrying her first husband, Cliff Lloyd, with whom she had four children.
The young family set off on global travels as Cliff built a career as an economist, living in the Sudan and England; she never stopped questioning and learning about the institutions and cultures in which she found herself.
Thanks to her keen intellectual curiosity and considerable personal courage, she overcame the disadvantages of an uneven academic background to earn a graduate diploma in social anthropology through Nuffield College at Oxford University, studying with such luminaries as E.E. Evans-Pritchard. She went on to teach sociology at Purdue University and Buffalo State College.
Kathryn married Oscar Brookins in Ghana in 1973 and, devoted to each other, the two formed an exemplary, forty-seven-year partnership. They lived initially in Buffalo, NY and South Bend, Indiana, where Oscar was on the faculty at Notre Dame University. Here they first became active in local political affairs and Oscar served on the South Bend School Board. In 1983 they moved to Massachusetts, where Oscar taught at Northeastern University. To their surprise, the Boston area would prove to be their home for the next 36 years. Their two daughters were born overseas during short-term academic appointments in Ghana and Tanzania, and would grow up to know Boston as their hometown.
Kathryn liked to say she was a student of politics, and as a Boston resident she was deeply engaged on both local and national issues. She was known in local circles as fearless and vocal, never one to back down from a battle when she felt fairness and the law were on her side - no matter how prominent or deep-pocketed the adversary. In her Mission Hill neighborhood she sought fair laws for small property owners and the consistent enforcement of zoning regulations to protect green space and livable housing from over-zealous developers.
Other issues close to her heart included enforcement of anti-bias in housing laws and opposition to racial discrimination in education. Acutely aware of her privilege as a middle-class, highly educated white woman - though long before this consciousness became a buzzword - she advocated fiercely for the fair treatment of all. Whenever the occasion arose, she fought for black and otherwise disadvantaged family members, friends and neighbors across the legal, political and educational systems she knew were inherently stacked against them.
Her self-published newspaper,
Mission Hill News, served for many years as a venue for her and a close circle of like-minded associates to make sure their voices and perspectives were heard. She and Oscar would scramble late into the night to meet their printing deadline and Kathryn proudly distributed the final product directly to prominent, elected officials all over Boston City Hall.
Outside the political arena, Kathryn loved her dogs, gardening, foreign travel with her husband and children, and her lifelong connections to family and friends around the globe. She teared up when she watched the Kentucky Derby, as it reminded her of the horses that had populated her childhood, and she loved to celebrate her birthday by handing out Halloween candy to neighborhood children. She often said hers had been a charmed life, full of lucky breaks and exceptional opportunities to which she always said “yes.”
She is survived by her loving husband, Oscar T. Brookins, Northeastern University Professor Emeritus; her six children: Anamaria Lloyd of Seattle, Clifford Lloyd of Hamilton, Ontario, Elisabeth Fulton of Paris, France, Ariana Packard of Providence, Rhode Island, Mary Laura Brookins of Washington, DC, and Julia Brookins of Austin, Texas; Felix Yeboah of Boston, a lifelong friend of the family and "adopted son"; twelve grandchildren, and one great-grandchild named Sunshine.
She was loved and she will be missed.