Age 97, slipped peacefully away on January 5, 2013, at Cottage Hospital. A California native, Anna Cathrine was born in Salinas and raised in the Hawaiian Islands, where her grandmother and mother had been born, and where her father worked as an agricultural chemist. She attended Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu and then returned to California for further education at San Francisco School of Fine Arts. She worked first as a jewelry designer at Granat Bros. in San Francisco, but then moved to Manhattan, and designed jewelry for Harry Winston. There she met and married Daniel E. La Mothe, DDS. Through many years of Navy duty, in Boston, Guam, Long Beach, Bremerton, and Monterey, they raised their three children. After his 1961 retirement from the Navy, they made their home in Pebble Beach.
Anna is remembered as an able and easy-going hostess, who always made her guests feel welcomed and comfortable. She was a hospital volunteer, a long-time member of the Monterey History and Art Association, the Monterey Peninsula Watercolor Society and the Central Coast Art Association. She also served as chairperson of the Adobe Tour. She was a docent of the Monterey Museum of Art, and was a member of the Daughters of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Historical Society. In the 1980’s, working with her sister Marguerite, now 99, Anna explored her family’s history, from France at the time of the Revolution, to Hawaii in the mid-1800s. The two sisters then co-authored a family history.
Anna moved to Santa Barbara in 2006. She is survived by her sisters, Marguerite, of Los Alamitos, Jeanne, of San Jose, and her brother William, of Bethesda. Survivors also include her three children, Louise LaMothe (and her husband David Kaplan) of Santa Barbara, Michelle (and her husband Jean Karoubi) of New York and Pierre (and his wife Eileen) of Carmel, as well as her grandchildren, Eve (and her husband Guillaume Vitrich), Anne-France, Gabriel, Claire, Daniel and André. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations in her honor to St. Barbara’s Parish, 2201 Laguna St., Santa Barbara, CA 93105 A Memorial Mass in celebration of her life will be held on Saturday, March 2, at 1 p.m. at the Carmel Mission Basilica.
Visit Anna’s online guest book at
www.wrhsb.com/obituaries/Anna-Lamothe/
