Karen May Mitchell

Karen May Mitchell, formerly Thompson, maiden name Perkins, passed away at ProCare Hospice in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 13, 2026, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. She was born on May 10, 1945 in Takoma Park, Maryland, the third of four girls born to Linnaea Elizabeth Perkins (Erickson) and Glen Dale Perkins. The family lived in Vienna, Virginia during her early childhood, where her father, an electrician and architect, built several houses. They moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, when Karen was in elementary school.

She worked in a mill and drove a school bus while her boys were little. Later she became a Registered Nurse. She was a massage therapist and yoga instructor. She retired from Bronson Hospital.

She owned several rentals over the years. She wanted to modify every house she entered. She knocked walls down, physically and metaphorically. She made recipes healthier and arguably better. She helped strangers. She was a Christian, a member of the Battle Creek Tabernacle. She avoided all drugs and alcohol and she did not gossip. She lived independently in her home through stoic effort after developing Parkinson’s. In recent years she was able to travel with family to see a total solar eclipse and she visited the ancestral lands in Sweden and the UK.

She loved nature and music. She studied her faith, expanding its compass. She valued humility. She emulated the unconditional love of animals. She enjoyed simple pleasures of great quality. A perfect strawberry or a funny movie could move her to rhapsodies.

Karen was preceded in death by her mother when she was 17, her stepmother Ann, her father, her stepmother Freida, and by her sisters Ruth Ann and Gail. She married twice, to Nels Thompson and John Mitchell.

Karen is survived by her sister, Eva Cloud, and by her sons, Bryan (Mary) Thompson of Lockport, New York, and David (Elizabeth) Thompson of Las Vegas, Nevada, her friend Carol Ann Wilder, who enabled her to live at home through her illness, her six grandchildren and two step-grandchildren, Lillian (Jake) Schnitzler, Mark Trapp, Joseph Trapp, Ginger Thompson, Clifford Thompson, Makayla (James) Pontal, Angus Thompson, Rhiannon Thompson, and four great-grandchildren, Sophia, Heidi, Pheonix, and Rose. The family will hold a celebration of her life at a later date. She desired no gifts in her memory. Her ashes will be buried at Glenwood Cemetery in Lockport, New York.