I lit candles for you today, my mom....I miss you just as much today as I have everyday since God took you to his side. You are our angel now....Sing the stars, sunbeams, snowflakes, and warmth down to us to help fill our hearts.

I think of Kay each time I pass Her Mother / Father's Gravestone at Cliff Hill as you pass on Monroe Street here in Versailles, In. Kay was like my older Sister and I will love her forever ...... Jack Demaree

I think of Katie often, especially when I sing De Colores which I did recently. We learned that song from her at a campout at Rancho Corrido. She sang a verse I’ve never heard anywhere else. It had the most beautiful words and painted such a beautiful picture. She sang it with Carol Garro.

Remembering Katie on the anniversary of her birth. She was born just one month before me. She shall be remembered forever by loving hearts.

We just recently learned of Katie’s passing. Our feeling of deep sorrow was immediate. Katie was an amazing person, she was kind, caring, helpful and loving; attributes she shared so generously with others.
We met Ted and Katie shortly after buying property in San Juan Vista in the late 1980’s. They were easy to get to know and we quickly understood that they were going to be our best hope on how to survive high mountain living. We, like many on the mountain, were “wanna be” mountain folk and didn’t have much of a chance of enduring the environment without some tutoring and help which they so willingly gave. We remember times during construction when Ted and Katie would stop by to see how we were doing and Katie, standing there with her hands in her pockets, telling Ted to help with something we were struggling with. I’m sure she meant to help get it done right and before the snow starts flying! Over the years they were easy to love and we appreciated the knowledge they shared. They became one of the true joys of our family’s mountain life adventure. Our grandkids, Taylor and Logan, came to our cabin with us from the time they were two years old. They took stories home to their mom and dad about seeing Ted and Katie. They would giggle and laugh about seeing the “monkeys” on top of the totem poles.
As we reflect back it has been difficult to refer only to Katie. To us, Ted and Katie are uniquely one, the most identical pair of people we have ever known. Our hearts go out to our friend Ted and the Moews family. May God comfort you and bring you peace.
Katie, we will miss your smile, your warm heart and your kind loving spirit. You were a treasure to know, a true lady and a very special person. Your songs and spirit will live on forever in the hearts of all who knew you. God rest your soul in the comfort of His arms.
Darold and Jeanne Sloan
Cedaredge, CO

We first met Katie at a campout of three folk music groups at Rancho Corrido in Southern California. She was singing "De Colores" with Carol Garro. Such a beautiful voice!! We became friends with her and Ted over the years at the meetings of the Riverside Folk Song Society. The last time we saw her was at our home in Covina prior to our move to Cambria in 1987. She and Ted were visiting from their new home in Colorado and surprised us by showing up at the folk club meeting at our house. If Jerry had not passed away this past April we would have been attending Katie's Song. I am sending love to Ted, Megan and the entire family.

The first time I met Katie, she looked at my husband, Jeff, and said "you didn't tell us she was so pretty". That was classic Katie - always ready to make a stranger feel welcome. Over the next 20 years I grew to love Katie. She was uniquely compassionate and a fierce champion of the underdog. Jeff and I were married in Ted and Katie's back yard in Hawaii. Katie made our wedding much more meaningful and beautiful than it would have otherwise been. She and Ted hosted both my mother and daughter many times in their small Hawaiian paradise. They opened their home and hearts to people they had never met without a second thought. We ended up sleeping practically on top of each other but we were always welcomed with joy. I will miss my friend, her radiant smile and her "hello, hello" on the phone.

My husband Dave and I had nine wonderful years in San Juan Vista. Our friends Sylvia and Mike Geeslin brought us to the mountains and welcomed us as neighbors when we decided to build a place. They introduced us to Katie and Ted in the fall of 1993, and Ted helped us with our driveway, our well, a site and plans for our cabin and much more. Our friendships with the Geeslins and with Katie and Ted brought us to a greater appreciation of what we had in that beautiful location. We were good friends and had good times together. Sylvia gave me my first diary, and through the years I filled five more about our life on the mountain. Here are a few memories:

December 22, 1995
Katie and Ted loaned us a snowmobile to use while we are here this Christmas. We took a spin around the circle at dusk. I slid off the back and landed in the snow--didn't hurt! We had so much fun we drove to Norwood the next day and ordered a Bearcat 440, like Ted's.
October 28, 1996
Katie is making a buckskin, beaded, fringed skirt for Megan. If I were to receive such a gift, would I wear it or would I hang it on our wall, the work of art that it is? The moonrise was mysterious, backlighting low clouds over the ridge.
December 18, 1997
As we approached Katie and Ted's cabin this evening, it looked like a Christmas card, luminarias lighting the snow, candles on the porch, snow on the roof, smoke curling out the chimney. Dave told Ted he should draw this scene for a Christmas card. He already had. Inside was festive and ready for the holidays. Megan arrives tomorrow.
March 19, 1997
Beth and Ray and Dave and I traded numerous stories of how Katie and Ted and Pat and Chuck had bailed us out of difficult situations.
June 18, 1997
I took fruit salad to the surprise 30th anniversary party Megan arranged for her parents. We met the Knights and many others from San Juan Vista and beyond. Duane Beamer grilled brats, the food was wonderful. Marie Yates made Katie a birdhouse for their anniversary. Katie got Ted a buffalo robe, and she had pictures made of herself in Beth's wedding dress. Megan is in her fifth year at CU Boulder, working on a degree in marine archeology.
September 17, 1997
We cleaned and cooked for our party tonight. Rain came just as everyone arrived, then the sun came out giving us a huge, double rainbow, followed by a beautiful sunset and amazing cloud formations. There were eleven of us, Katie and Ted and guest Steve Peterson, Pat and Chuck, Barbara Z, Joe and Marie, and Joe's brother harpoon Harry. After dinner we looked at Jupiter and its moons. The moon rose among clouds, lighting the aspen bark in the meadow.
October 11, 1997
We had a wonderful evening at Barb's Z Lodge. We met Rusty and Keith McNeil, friends of Katie and Ted. Keith played "Amazing Grace" on his bagpipes, and we all sang "America the Beautiful" around a bonfire. Rusty, Keith, and Katie sang, then Jamie Peterson and Marie sang. Sylvia and Barb said it was a "Mountain Moment". After dinner we had a birthday cake and candles for Ted, October 19, and for me, October 17. Ted said I had a forest of candles, just like him. True.
November 28, 1997
We snowmobiled to Katie and Ted's, took our photos and talked about diving and Australia. Matt was there for Thanksgiving. He lives in Denver, works for a church, gets tuition and a salary, too. Pretty nice. Orion rose just above the ridge in the eastern sky, Venus in the southwest.
December 30, 1997
We spent the morning doing chores and preparing for our New Year's Eve party. There were twelve of us, Katie and Ted, Sylvia and Mike, Cheney and Jennifer, Jeannie and Darold, and Marie and Joe. Darold brought pork tenderloin, we had ham, scalloped potatoes, my mother's molded salad, green salad, and cookies and ice cream. A wonderful evening. After everyone left, Dave and I rode around the circle, the stars above the ghost-like aspen lit by our lights. As Dave drove through the groves, I hung on behind. We stopped by the willows at precisely midnight for a kiss under the starlit sky. Happy New Year!
June 4, 1999
Katie and Ted are headed for DIA tomorrow. Megan flies to Hawaii for the graduate program at the university.
September 18, 1999
The weather cooperated--more than that--it was a knockout day, even by San Juan Vista standards. Clouds hovered above the Sneffles Range, but no rain. We couldn't have ordered up a more beautiful day for Beth and Jay Bombardieri's wedding in their meadow. A touching ceremony, easy to see those two are destined for a long and happy life. A delicious lunch was followed by cake with raspberries and ice cream. Good friends and neighbors celebrated their happiness.
December 31, 1999
A New Year's Eve party at Sylvia and Mike's cabin, Cheney and Jennifer, Janice, Brian and Kevin Rogers, Katie and Ted, Jeannie and Darold and their two grandchildren, Joe Yates, Barbara and Gary and us. We ate a lot, toasted New Years New York time with sparkling cider and champagne. Sylvia had a burning bowl ceremony. We each wrote something down we wanted to get rid of in the New Year, gave it to her, she burned it in the wood stove, and in exchange, we received a new fortune. Dave brought the words to Auld Lang Syne, which we all sang, then he gave everyone a fortune cookie.
April 12, 2000
Ted called to say the road was being plowed today. We drove up to the A frame in the afternoon to see what everything looked like. Huge rolls of snow curled by the plow lined the road. I cooked for Dave's birthday party. We had sixteen people, counting us. Levi gave Dave a Mountain Power hat. I had a birthday cake with candles. Dave joked that I was happy he was 62 and could draw Social Security. Ted took Dave down to the parking lot to pick up Dave's sled left there by the Heinholts on their way home. Ted sank in the soft snow, right into a small pond. Dave had trouble, too. But, as usual, everyone got home in spite of the snowmelt.

Mike Geeslin passed away July 3, 2009, and now Katie is gone from us, too. She wrote a beautiful poem, "In Memory of Mike" which was read at his memorial service:
"He made the mountains ring with laughter
His stories...they were gold.....
And in his cabin on the mountain
Even greater would unfold.
Everybody loved him...and he loved us in return.
He'd give you anything he had
Or help you if he could...
Coffee was always ready - rum & coke was understood!
Sylvia was the best cook on the mountain
and they fed their friends so well....
Then we'd sit and tell our stories
And what stories we would tell!
Mike's eyes would twinkle brightly,
He'd chuckle and he'd grin, then he' laugh
and tell another and we'd go around again.
Mikie's part of this mountain!
His memory rings here still!
We ALL loved him dearly
and the mountain always will!"
          --km
If we could
We would write a poem as beautiful
as this one for Katie.
We all loved her.
We always will.
We will always miss her.
Love to all Katie and Ted's family and friends from Dianne and Dave

Thanks to long time friend Marilyn Sequoia for the beautiful poem:
"Katie’s Eyes…
Warm and so brown,
Deep and wide,
Her eyes caress you in welcome,
An invitation to the dance.
You can see
Her soul in those eyes:
She wants to know your life
And tell you hers…
Playful loyal leaf
Blown west from Indiana,
Witnessing the tall man falling in the stream--
She finishes his sentences ever more.
Mountain woman then,
Singing their songs.
Helping the helpless,
Everyone she meets.
Her soul our reflection
Held in Love."
~~~
Lovingly Dedicated to Marla Kay “Katie” Moews
August 5, 1941 - January 15, 2018
From Marilyn Smolik Sequoia (aka Leggett)

Katie's Love of God was a beautiful thing to behold. It was a deeply moving thing-living with someone who lived the kind of life that, I believe, God would wish us to live. She grew up at her Mother's side where she saw-first hand-the actions of someone who sought throughout her life to live by Christ's precepts. Neither seeking nor accepting approval or recognition of any sort for their actions, they both quietly went about God's handiwork. 

Katie spent much of her daily life alone in our remote Cabin, far away from towns & churches. She also suffered excruciating daily migraine headaches, relentlessly they shaped her life but could not hold her down. Chron's Disease would sometimes double her up in pain & render her unable to eat, (several times throughout her life she would weigh well under a hundred pounds due to the ravages of this chronic disease).. The only relief from which was often midnight dashes to the emergency room at the nearest hospital ( regardless of where we were in the world at the time). Consequently she did not have much opportunity to attend church regularly ( although when she was young-she earned her "16 year pin for never missing Sunday School!"

Katie read her Bible everyday without fail, using it as God intended as a guide and mentor for her actions. If she learned of someone locally who needed a helping hand, needed help financially, or just needed the comfort of someone's presence, Katie was there. Her reach was not just local, but her helping healing hands were extended around the world to help relieve suffering, poverty, & famine-to help with drilling wells in drought stricken lands, to providing school books to children in third world countries, to providing the tools, livestock or financial assistance necessary to give hope to the hopeless.

But don't get me wrong-Katie was no bleeding heart wimp. If there was injustice or perceived wrong, she was also fearless, confronting public officials, angry bullies, child abusers, or menacing gun-toting creeps alike-she would push ahead fearlessly-never heeding the potential danger-to help the abused, the downtrodden and the wronged. She would openly weep for those suffering from natural and man-made disasters & the unending heart-rending march of war-trying to carry the burdens of world on her back. Katie also prayed constantly, whatever she was doing if she wasn't singing aloud, she was praying for the sick, the "Lost, Lonely & Wretched".. for those whom nobody loves & those with nobody to love.