Memorial Gallery

This memorial website was created in the memory of our loved one, Rosemary McMahon. We will remember her forever.

December 6, 1929 – August 24, 2020

Katherine (Lambeth) Zarker, 90, bid the world farewell on August 24, 2020, at Carol Woods Retirement Village, Chapel Hill, NC. The youngest of three children of the late F. Leslie and Margaret (Maggie) Smith Lambeth of the Monticello/Browns Summit community in Guilford County, she attended the local Monticello School through grade 10, graduated from high school at Brevard Junior College in 1946, attended WCUNC (UNC-G) in Greensboro, graduating in 1950. She continued her studies at the University of Miami and UNC Chapel Hill, receiving an MA in English in September 1951. It was at UNC Chapel Hill she met her best friend, devoted companion and husband, John (Jack) Zarker. They were married December 1951 and shared fifty-eight wonderful years filled with love, joy, respect, and family on an interesting, remarkable, busy life journey until his untimely death September 12, 2009.

During those years, she had an interesting and satisfying professional life: Teaching high school English; editorial assistant at the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW); assistant editor of The Race Relations Law Survey at Vanderbilt University Law School; Director of the Foreign Languages Lab at Winchester, MA High School; Vice President and General Manager of the US home office in Winchester, MA of Allen & Unwin International Publishers, London. While enjoying career successes, her work experiences were arranged around the lives of her family and their needs and schedules. She is survived by four daughters and a son: Professor Leslie Zarker-Morgan (Richard) of Baltimore; Jean Frisbie (Russell) of Newport, RI; W. Jefferson Lambeth Zarker of Medfield, MA; Carol Z. Rogers (Robert) of Chapel Hill, NC; Sarah Hand (Michael) of Maumee, OH. Her seven grandchildren: Claire Frisbie (Jeff), and Margaret (Meg) Frisbie; Abigail Zarker and John (Jack) Zarker; Rebecca Hand Rodewald (Alex), Robert Hand (Katelyn); Steven Hand; and six great-grandchildren, Emilia, Jackson (Jack), Alaina, and Bennet Rodewald; Kylie Rose Hand; and Kai Leon Frisbie Maki.

Endowed with a keen mind and wry sense of humor, she was devoted to and enjoyed her family, friends, classical music, reading (mainly nonfiction), learning, crossword and double-crosstic puzzles, recognizing and appreciating beauty in all nature, being a patron of the arts, playing bridge (especially duplicate), and traveling. She was a member of the Triangle Freethought Society and an ardent life-long active supporter of the Democratic Party.

There will be neither funeral nor memorial service. The family will gather at a later date to combine her ashes with those of her late husband's which then will be scattered in the ocean along the New England Atlantic coast. For those who wish to remember her, contributions in her name may be sent to either the Board of Directors for The Carol Woods’ Charitable Fund, Inc. (Resident Assistance) at 750 Weaver Dairy Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 or to the Trustees of Tufts University for the Professor John W. and Katherine L. Zarker Award for Excellence in Classical Studies; Attn: Director of Gift Planning; Tufts University, 80 George Street, 3rd Floor, Medford, MA 02155.

To Jack, in memory of our many happy years together:

It is the hour to leave my earthly place

Ah! Now onto the long road. And you so far away

As I seek you in anticipation of a loving embrace!

Do you think there's a far off ancient Roman/Greek site, somewhere,

Perhaps a desert's edge, or one of the many foreign lands we know,

For a timeless eventual end to our flight,

In which I'll find you, My Love, waiting; and we'll go

Together, hand in hand again, out there,

Into the waste we know not, into the lasting night?

The family wishes to thank the doctors and staff at Carol Woods Retirement Community and its Health Center in Chapel Hill, NC for their professional and compassionate care.

(Obituary was written by the deceased prior to her demise. This is the full, uncut version, while the published obituary was edited for length.)