An Incredible History

Even through cancer, Stabelfeldt taught children strength, perseverance

Family photo

Karen Stabelfeldt taught at MacDowell Montessori School in Milwaukee.

For nearly 40 years, Karen Stabelfeldt taught the children.

As a Christian educator, she taught them the value of faith. As a music director, she taught them the beauty of rhythm, melody, harmony.

She taught compassion by example as a foster parent for children with medical needs, and she taught them strength by continuing to teach through a 15-year battle with cancer.

"She retired in June because she didn't think it would be fair to her students if she didn't make it through the next year," said Andrea Corona, principal of MacDowell Montessori School in Milwaukee, where Stabelfeldt taught since 2008.

"But she came back during the first semester to volunteer."

Stabelfeldt died Thursday at 63.

"She was really good at meeting the individual needs of every child," said Paula Ambos, a teacher at MacDowell and a friend of Stabelfeldt for the past 10 years. "And she really worked hard to educate parents on how best to support their children's development."

She was born Karen Jill Younger on Feb. 15, 1951, the third of five children of George and Mary Janice Younger.

She grew up in West Allis, graduating from Nathan Hale High School before earning a degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

She later earned an associate degree in culinary arts from Milwaukee Area Technical College and a theology degree from Concordia University and studied at the Milwaukee Montessori Training Center, said her husband Kimm Stabelfeldt.

Her Christian education career included work at New Life Community Church in Milwaukee, Brookfield Presbyterian and Trinity Presbyterian in Milwaukee, he said.

"Children are what drove her," said Kimm Stabelfeldt, who is director of Heal the Children of Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization that arranges local medical care for impoverished children from around the world.

Karen and Kimm Stabelfeldt provided foster care for five children brought to Wisconsin through the organization for heart and cosmetic surgery.

"It's a world community. Who is to say when a child is born, that the child can't receive the medical care needed?" Karen Stabelfeldt said in a 1995 newspaper interview.

After she was diagnosed with breast cancer about 15 years ago, Stabelfeldt stopped foster parenting but continued to teach, even through remissions and bouts of reoccurrences that included bone, stomach, intestinal and liver cancer, her husband said.

"Her Montessori training at MacDowell was very taxing, but she was committed to the children to get it done," Kimm Stabelfeldt said.

Karen Stabelfeldt also played the organ at Good Shepherd-Trinity Church and conducted the bell choir at Community United Methodist Church, her husband said.

And even after her illness forced her to leave the payroll at MacDowell in June, Stabelfeldt returned during the fall semester as volunteer, tutoring kids in reading, Corona said.

"She knew she only had a few months left," Corona said. "And she chose to spend it helping our children."

In addition to her husband, Karen Stabelfeldt is survived by daughter Danika Rzentkowski and sons Brett Stabelfeldt and Derek Stabelfeldt.

Karen Stabelfeldt

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday at Good Shepherd Trinity Church, 3302 N. Sherman Blvd., with a visitation from noon to 3 p.m.