Carolyn Schorfheide Mann 1942 - 2025

Carolyn Schorfheide Mann was born July 8, 1942, on the family farm in Nashville, Illinois, the sixth and youngest child of Fred H. Schorfheide and Caroline Charlotte Doelling. She died peacefully on April 23, 2025, at home in McMinnville, Oregon, attended by family, from complications of a brain tumor diagnosed in 2021.

She attended Nashville Community High School and then graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Illinois. She completed a master’s degree in German language and literature at the University of Kansas that included a year of graduate study at the Free University of Berlin in the then-divided German city. She took full advantage of her time abroad to travel extensively throughout Europe and the British Isles and then served on the faculty of Northern Illinois University as Instructor of German prior to her marriage.

On May 30, 1970, she married Thomas Mann, then a graduate student at the University of Michigan. She also enrolled at the university where she completed two additional master’s degrees—in historic Germanic linguistics and library science. In 1972, Carolyn and Tom moved to Iowa, where she served in both public and academic libraries. She served initially as a traveling consultant to public libraries in rural communities and then as director of public libraries at Iowa Falls and Lamoni, Iowa. She then served as professional librarian at Graceland College, now University, where she spearheaded the transition to library automation under a Title III federal grant. Their daughter Kathrine was born during their years in Iowa. As a family, they spent an additional year in Munich, Germany.

In 1991, Carolyn and Tom moved to West Virginia, first to Buckhannon, and later to Elkins, following his work. This move gave Carolyn the opportunity to engage with her lifelong passion for the fabric arts, specifically, creating wearable art influenced by Asian traditions. Her exploration of these traditions included fabric and dyeing trips to Japan and Bali. She marketed her work—chiefly jackets and scarves that incorporated vintage Japanese kimonos—through Studio 40 at the Greenbriar Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and at a local art gallery in Elkins. Her work is currently on display at Currents Gallery in McMinnville.

For 32 years, Carolyn and Tom summered in Westport, New York, on Lake Champlain, where they owned a summer home. In 2020, to be nearer their daughter and her family, they moved to McMinnville, where Carolyn is a member of First Presbyterian Church.

Carolyn was preceded in death by her parents and five siblings. She is survived by her husband, Tom; daughter, Kate, and son-in-law, Max Kalchthaler; granddaughter, Maggie; sisters-in-law, Norma Schorfheide and Arlene Mitchell; brother-in-law, Arthur Schmittler; and 12 nieces and nephews and their families.

A celebration of Carolyn’s life will be held later in the spring.