Obituary of Kitty Lee Breskin

Kitty (Kalia) Lee Breskin, 66, was an engineer, gifted musician, teacher, mentor, tri-athlete (avid runner, swimmer, cyclist), sailor, sea kayaker, sail maker, seamstress, gardener, political activist, and restaurant-quality chef. Kitty got involved in competitive athletics through swimming. At age 12, she held the speed record in butterfly. Her older brother, a bicycle enthusiast, lent her his bike for a race, and at age 13, with very little experience, she won the grand prize: a really nice racing bike. She won the paddleboat division of the Damariscotta Pumpkinfest Regatta in 2012, (but did not get to keep the pumpkin). Music played an important part in Kitty's life, beginning at a very early age. Presented with a toy accordion when she was 5 years old, Kitty kept reaching for notes that weren't there, so her father got her a real one, with enough keys to make music but small enough for her to handle. At age 12 Kitty joined the school band. The director handed her the schoo's huge baritone horn, and that, in a little girl's arms brought chuckles from audiences. She took it to try-outs for the Seattle Youth Symphony and was accepted, but there were few notes for her big horn to play, and her father was ordered to buy her a French Horn. When her teacher needed a second horn for the Verdi Requiem, he invited Kitty to play. In her first round of college at the University of Washington, Kitty planned to major in engineering but ended up studying poli-sci and music because there were no women's bathrooms in the engineering buildings in those days. Disaster struck in her last year of music school. She lost her 'lip' in a car wreck and could no longer play her horn. She moved home to recover, went to work as an auto mechanic, built a racing sailboat in her dad's garage and sewed her own sails. Those beautiful sails got her hired as a sailmaker. In the mid 1970's she partnered with a Boeing hydrodynamicist to build sailboats in Port Townsend WA. On her 27th birthday she was handed a French horn by her sister and discovered that her nerves had regrown enough that she could play again. Her infatuation with really fast sail boats began in Bay City, Michigan when she and Jan Gougeon -undisputed light-air champion- tossed a DN iceboat together out of spare parts, and she out-sailed him repeatedly. Iceboats sail on "apparent wind" and maximum speed is limited by the goggles you wear, because eventually your eyelids freeze and you cannot see. That adventure led to the DN iceboat World Championship, in which she was defeated by sailors whose starts involved kicking the sailors on either side off of their feet. Kitty eventually headed east as an itinerant sailmaker, and after working in Erie, Pa making cruising spinnakers, ended up at Nat Wilson's sail loft in East Boothbay, Maine. Kitty finally got fed up with having her opinions dismissed by men who knew less than she did, just because she was a woman and 'not an engineer'. Between that and repetitive motion injuries from sailmaking, she decided to return to school to get a civil engineering degree. In May 1991 Kitty started her graduate work in CIE on the basis of a BA in Music: 'math you can hear.' In an era of big fancy calculators, Kitty chose to do her coursework on a slide rule. She also learned to program in Fortran and assembly language. An accomplished and well-respected member of Maine's Civil Engineering community, Kitty held positions with consulting firms Robert G. Gerber, Inc. and DeLuca-Hoffman Associates, Inc. before joining the Maine Department of Transportation in 1996. By 2010, Kitty was promoted to the position of Civil Engineer III and Senior Geotechnical Engineer in the Highway Program until her retirement in April 2015. Kitty balanced multiple competing interests including public safety, the environment, cost, aesthetics, and durability. No compromise was ever to the detriment of public safety. Nothing kept a smile on Kitty's face more than intelligent, perhaps novel, but most importantly - safe design. She was active and engaging - unreserved, extremely competent, all about results - practical and timely, and a blast to work with. She brought innovations to Maine highways such as the Route 2 rock anchor project in Bethel, developing unconventional yet simple and inexpensive solutions. MaineDOT's Chief Engineer noted that Kitty's rapidly designed repairs were instrumental in keeping Route 27 in Carrabassett open after it was damaged by Tropical Storm Irene. She designed Maine's first roundabout at Gorham, as well as a recent GRS-IBS bridge in Bremen, recently named the Kitty Breskin-Muscongus Bridge. She was president of the Maine Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers 2001-2002 and a founding member of the Maine Chapter of Women's Transportation Seminar International. Kitty was a gifted musician and a skilled music teacher. She demanded an enormous amount from her students, who were rewarded by becoming excellent musicians themselves. Kitty rarely charged for lessons; she wanted to give the gift of music to young people. But, if a student wasn't putting enough effort into their musical studies, Kitty wasn't shy to 'fire' them. Kitty ran a 7:00 am horn clinic at Lincoln Academy for high school students. Kitty accompanied choirs, played in pit bands and orchestras for theater, was part of a brass Quintet, a woodwind ensemble, played in the Midcoast Orchestra and the Seacoast Orchestra and supported youth performance. She sang in St. Cecilia Choir, Sheepscot Valley Chorus, and played keyboard for contra dances & in the DOT Thrash Band She served as Municipal Chair of the Boothbay Harbor Democratic Committee around the year 2000. Kitty is survived by her mother, Maryann Breskin and her siblings Joe & Flip Breskin, all of Washington State, her goddaughter Teiga Martin at U-Maine Orono, and her house-mate Jason Sheckley, of Boothbay. Kitty fought an epic battle with pancreatic cancer and outlived her doctor's expectations by nearly a year. Donations in her name may be sent to: Sheepscot Valley Chorus P.O. Box 50 Wiscasset, ME US 04578 A celebration of life will be held Saturday, September 26, 2015, at 2:00 PM at the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor, 125 Townsend Ave, Boothbay Harbor, ME 04538. Everyone is welcome. There will, of course, be awesome live music.