Kathryn Payne

Kathryn Ogden Payne, age 59, of Cupertino, California, passed away unexpectedly December 10, 2011, at her home. A child of the Midwest, Kate was born September 11, 1952, in Des Moines, Iowa. She graduated from Jefferson City Senior High School in 1970, and was awarded her B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Missouri - Rolla, in 1974. She married Ensign Robert Allan Payne, a high school classmate, and recent graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. As a Navy wife, Kate traveled with her husband to assignments in Pensacola, Corpus Christi, Mountain View, and Oahu, Hawaii. In 1983, after her husband left active duty in the Navy, he and Kate attended graduate school at Corpus Christi State University (CCSU). Kate worked in the university computer lab, assisting students while she earned an M.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in English. Her master's Project was "A Graphical Display of Whole Orbit Type 1 Telemetry from UoSat/AMSAT-OSCAR-9". After graduation, she taught Introduction to Computer Science courses at CCSU for several semesters. In 1987, Kate and Robert moved to Silicon Valley, where she started her career as a technical writer. As her career progressed, she pursued increasingly challenging opportunities at Amdahl, Computer Science Corp. at the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Facility NASA/Ames Research Center, Rational, Taligent, Hewlett-Packard, Magma Design Automation, Google, ACCESS, and Starview Technology. At the time of her death, Kate was working for Nuance Corp. A life-long student, Kate continued her studies at U.C. Santa Cruz Extension, Stanford Continuing Education, and the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. She always enjoyed attending evening lectures at U.S. Geologic Survey, local community colleges, and the SETI Institute. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area gave Kate the opportunity to attend Science Fiction conventions and prompted her to join the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). She presented several papers at SFRA's annual meetings, the first one being "Computers We Have Known and Loved: Artificial Intelligences in Recent Science Fiction Novels and Films". She was also a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Chemical Society (ACS), and Society for Technical Communication (STC). Kate is survived by her husband, Robert Payne; sister, Louise Ogden of San Jose, California; brother, George Ogden Jr. of Lone Tree, Colorado, and a wealth of friends. Visitation will begin at 1:00 p.m. and a memorial service will be conducted at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 11, at St. John's Lutheran Church in Schubert, Mo. Interment will be at Hawthorne Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Kate's name to the charity of your choice.