Kathryn Lee Pride (née Piper), 83, of Denver, a longtime communications executive and community activist, passed away on April 8, 2023.

She was the daughter of Dean Piper and Dell Piper, and married William Pride on December 27, 1962. She was born and raised in North Dakota until her family moved to Colorado Springs, where she graduated high school in 1957. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Northwestern University, where she met William. After their wedding, they moved to Denver and started a family, having two sons, Dean and Stephen. They were married for 48 years, until William's passing in 2010.

While her children were still young, she cared for them at home while also working as a freelance journalist. Shortly after they started school, she joined the public relations team for Mountain Bell, then the Denver-area phone company. She rose to the ranks of management there, despite the obstacles that she faced as a woman in the workforce. In 1989, she became the communications director for Jefferson County Schools, where she worked for about ten years. She managed communications for the district during the Columbine school shooting and its aftermath, which she later described as the most difficult period of her professional life. Afterwards, she moved over to become the public relations director for the Jefferson County Library system, where she spent the rest of her career. This was a particularly appropriate position for her, given her lifelong love of reading.

Her long list of other professional accomplishments includes being appointed by Mayor Federico Peña to the Denver Planning Board and serving on the board for the Friends of the Denver Public Library. She also played important roles in numerous local community groups. A professional women's group that she founded in the 1970s still meets today. She was instrumental in the founding of the Telecommunications History Museum (now called the Connections Museum). She also played a key role in establishing the Jefferson County Schools' Good News Coalition.

In addition to being an avid reader, she was a great lover of the opera. She had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera's The Met: Live at Home broadcasts, and met regularly with a group of fellow opera devotees to watch operas on DVD. She was also a member of more than one long-standing book group and assisted with a great number of political campaigns. She was a lover of and authority on Colorado, with her husband, and a systematic traveler to the four corners of the state. She always maintained close ties to her circle of longtime friends, but nothing was more important to her than her children and grandchildren.

She is survived by her sisters, Mary Sheehan and Louise Piper; her two sons, Dean Pride and Stephen Pride Raffel; and her six grandsons.

The family intends to hold a memorial service at a later date.