Posted: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:00 am
Kamber-O'Brien
May 20, 1927 - March 21, 2009
Colleen M. Kamber-O'Brien died on Saturday, March 21, at Heart of the Valley Nursing Home in Corvallis. She was 81 years of age and had been ailing from diabetes and congestive heart failure for months.
She was born in Mitchell, Queensland, Australia, to T.L. Wilton O'Brien and his wife, Emily Isabel Munro O'Brien of Walgrove Station near Yeulba. She was educated, both academically and musically, by the Sisters of Mercy, in Mitchell and Toowoomba.
She excelled in singing from a very young age and studied and trained seriously, year after year winning awards. She trained so rigorously, that by the time she was 20 her coach demanded that she stop singing for a year to rest her voice before continuing with her training toward a singing career.
She studied at Queensland Teacher's Training College, now part of the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Australia, with special focus on physical education and the training of children with special educational needs. She was graduated in 1948, after which she was appointed to several teaching positions throughout Queensland.
In 1950, she was invited to conduct radio broadcasts on junior folk dancing through the Youth Education Department of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, in Brisbane.
In 1960, she married Karl Kamber of Langenbruck, Switzerland, in Basel, and immigrated to America, settling in the San Francisco Bay area. Colleen taught second grade at Corpus Christi School, in Piedmont, Calif. She soon discovered that her first child was on the way, and knew that she wanted to devote her time to raising Jacqueline, Roland and Pierre. She provided a creative environment for her children - they were allowed to explore and play and create from the youngest ages. Their lives were filled with cooking, paints, thread, yarn, glue, wood, anything you could think of.
Later she provided crucial support and encouragement to her husband as they built a business around his professional expertise as a Swiss trained precision machinist/engineer.
Colleen's other interests in life were highly eclectic, revealing her facile intelligence and creativity. Her favorite subscription was to "Smithsonian" magazine, and she often ventured into exploring her varied interests including pottery, woodworking, architecture and garden design.
Intensely interested in teaching techniques and methods of encouraging children to learn, she took the opportunity to reconnect with her teaching career after her children were grown. Discovering that all of her credentials from Australia needed to be augmented to be valid in the United States, Colleen was not deterred and began college all over again when almost 60. She gained an associates degree from West Valley College, in Saratoga, Calif., where she gave the valedictory address in 1988. She then was admitted as a junior to San Jose State University, studying her passion in linguistics. She gained membership in the Golden Key National Honor Society at San Jose State, and was admitted as well to to The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.
She is survived by her children, Jacqueline Hosford of Riverdale, N.Y., Roland Kamber of San Jose, Calif., and Pierre Kamber of San Jose, Calif; her former husband, Karl Kamber, of San Antonio, Texas; and her sister, Veronica C.E. Sitton, of Corvallis; her niece Ruth Sitton DeMaio, of Corvallis; her nephew, Patrick Sitton, of Corvallis; and a great many loving grandnephews and grandnieces.
The family invites friends and family to attend an evening gathering to celebrate Colleen's life, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 24, at McHenry Funeral Home, Corvallis. A funeral mass will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 25, at St. Mary's Catholic Church, in Corvallis. A committal service will follow at 1 p.m. in McBride Cemetery, in Carlton. Arrangements are by McHenry Funeral Home, Corvallis.