Birth date: Jan 30, 1951 Death date: Jul 19, 2018
Kris Knab, who quietly turned a law degree and a solid-gold heart into an unparalleled career as the Big Bend’s best-known voice for the voiceless, is now at peace. Kris died Thursday, July 19, at age 67 – after 2½ years of giving Read Obituary
I was eight about to turn nine when Kris Knab moved into the house next door. The four months’ difference in our ages meant nothing more than that she was in the grade level below me. We became inseparable and planned pranks (short-sheeting her brother Kurt and decorating his pillow with a caricature of him as “Wart”), nurtured nature (leaving a Tiny Tears basinet full of tadpoles on her screened-in back porch until they turned into frogs, which her mother made us catch and release), created clubs (the Hayley Mills Fan Club singing “Let’s Get Together” in unison at every meeting), mocked our moms (hers defrosted the freezer putting all the meat into the oven and then forgot it; mine ate a banana while driving, rolled the window up, and then flung the banana at it), and played a-plenty (at horses, with dolls and cats, on skates and bikes, about cloud shapes, under tents made of blankets and lawn chairs, in trees and behind bushes). She was everything - the spark to our imagination, the north of our moral compass, the genesis of every joke, the lodestone of eternal friendship – creative, ethical, funny, compelling, loyal. When the summer of love bit and everyone was infected with the altruistic dream of making the world a better place, it was more than a passing fever for Kris. She devoted her life to the service of others, she never missed an opportunity to right an injustice, and she changed the lives of hundreds of people. That I squandered the time that I could have had with her, I will always regret. That she is no longer in this world, all I can say, like Kris, is "fuck that shit".
Mary Pittman Jones
Maureillas-Las Illas, France
A beautiful lady with a beautiful soul and a bountiful heart.
Cheryl Oakley
