Kathleen Gibbons Hoyle lived a truly beautiful life centered around family, faith, and treasured friends.  She started out as a New Yorker, born in Brooklyn on February 8, 1936 as the youngest child of an immigrant family from County Galway, Ireland.  Her childhood years were spent in and around Our Lady of Lourdes where she happily participated in band and Irish step dancing.  Her friends from those years remain her friends today.  Kathleen so distinguished herself as a step dancer that she and her partner competed on and won the nationally syndicated television program, the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.  Always an adventurer, she took up skiing as a young adult, joining the ski club at AT&T and spending weekends in Vermont. 

It was while working at AT&T that she met and married the love of her life, George James Hoyle. Kathleen noticed George at Chock Full of Nuts coffee shop near AT&T, where he also worked, and instantly liked him. The feeling was mutual, and George wisely asked for her number, beginning a remarkable 60 year partnership. George and Kathleen settled in Bayside, N.Y., where three of their five children were born.

Kathleen embraced North Carolina as her home when George was transferred there for work in 1969. As the story goes, she had to take out a map to figure out just where Winston-Salem, N.C. was. But, as she did so often in her life, she turned to her Catholic faith and identity, and jumped full force into the St. Leo’s school and parish community in Winston-Salem. When her youngest daughter went to St. Leos’ kindergarten, Kathleen went as well, serving as a teacher’s aide for countless young students, who remember her fondly to this day. She cherished the St. Leo’s and Bishop McGuinness faculty and parents and counted some of her dearest friends amongst them, along with her wonderful neighbors on Englewood Drive who she considered family. Recent years were spent in Sunset Beach, N.C., her favorite beach and chosen retirement spot, where she was always excited to entertain friends and neighbors and receive visitors, especially her precious grandchildren.

Kathleen was a lifelong learner who loved music, books and newspapers and kept well apprised of current events and sports. A person of exceptional judgment, her friends and family often looked to her for advice and counsel, which she typically dispensed with her incredible humor and humility. She in turn looked to her faith, beginning each day with a Jesuit meditation, and acting with purpose to put that faith into practice. For Kathleen, those words had to be lived, with positivity and lightness, of course.

By far, her husband, children and grandchildren were the focus and delight of her life. She is survived by her beloved husband, George James Hoyle of Sunset Beach, N.C.; her five children, PeggyAnn Hoyle (Charles Kosak), Eileen Hoyle Bockstahler (Greenville, S.C.), George Gibbons Hoyle (Kathleen Kelly)(Greensboro, N.C.), Michael Patrick Hoyle (Natalie Hoyle)(Raleigh, N.C.) and Kathleen Patricia Hoyle; her darling grandchildren, Madeline Taylor, Margaret Anne, and Mackenzie Gibbons Bockstahler; Jordyn Alissa Hoyle, Elizabeth Delia Hoyle, Cooper James Hoyle, and George Albert Hoyle.  If she were writing this, she would remind them that happiness is a decision and kindness is everything.    

Kathleen passed away at her home, with George by her side, on her 88^th birthday. She will be interred at the St. Brendan the Navigator Columbarium in Sunset Beach, N.C., following a family funeral liturgy. Donations may be made in Kathleen’s memory to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania Retirement Fund, c/o Sisters of St. Joseph Development Office, 9701 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118-2694 https://ssjphila.org/contact-us/