Cathryn Curley is being remembered this week for championing the fight against domestic violence, co-founding Duluth's first women's shelter and founding the Lake Superior Regional Family Justice Center.
But those who knew her best will remember something much more basic.
"The one thing ... that absolutely everybody mentions is her laugh and her smile," said Curley's daughter Abby Johnson on Friday. "(Her laugh) was very unique. ... You could recognize it anywhere. And she had a really, really big smile."
Curley, 61, the director of the Family Justice Center at 414 W. First St., Duluth, died on Tuesday at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minn., of massive infection after a short illness.
Her death leaves a void in the fight against domestic violence in Duluth, associates say.
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"It was a very sudden illness, so there was no plan B; it was just all Cathryn," said Sgt. Ann Clancey, who supervises the domestic violence unit for the Duluth Police Department. "We're still all feeling kind of like we walked into a brick wall, because what do we do now?"
In a Feb. 29, 2008, News Tribune story, Curley told about the first night the Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women opened in 1978. One woman came through the doors. "And then as the week went on, we got more women who came in, and I'm not aware that there's ever been a night that we have been empty in those 30 years," she said.
In a documentary film, Curley told about starting to operate Safe Haven as an all-volunteer collective, then drawing pay of $4 an hour after the shelter received a grant from the Department of Corrections. She also told of early days when relationships with Duluth police were rocky. But she also spoke of the "wonderful relationship" that had developed with Duluth police. "You know they would respond in a second if we called them," she said.
Clancey said Curley deserved much of the credit for building that relationship.
"She just has a way with people," Clancey said, continuing to speak of Curley in the present tense. "She's not confrontational. She's not pushy. When you walk into a room where Cathryn is, she's not always the first person that jumps out at you in the room. She's not that kind of personality, but she has a way of educating you."
The cooperation includes Safe Haven and the Family Justice Center designating an advocate to work alongside investigators in the Police Department and two police investigators having offices in the Family Justice Center, Clancey said.
Curley had twin daughters, Abby Johnson and Liza Tickle, 31, who live across the street from each other in St. Louis Park, Minn. "Her two passions in her life were all the work that she did in Duluth and then my sister and I," Johnson said. "She just lived to be our mother."
Curley had been in good health before experiencing abdominal pain on Aug. 7 and being taken by ambulance to St. Luke's hospital. She was airlifted to Rochester on Aug. 29. Her bone marrow stopped producing white blood cells, and a last-ditch effort to provide white blood cells donated by family members failed.
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Johnson and her sister were driving to Duluth on Friday to meet with family friends and determine funeral arrangements.
