Carolyn Mann

Carolyn Schorfheide Mann was born July 8, 1942, on the family farm in Nashville, Illinois, the sixth and youngest child of Fred H. Schorfheide and Caroline Charlotte Doelling. She died peacefully at home in McMinnville, Oregon, April 23, 2025, attended by family, from complications of a brain tumor diagnosed in 2021.

She attended Nashville Community High School and then graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Illinois. She completed a master’s degree in German language and literature at the University of Kansas that included a year of graduate study at the Free University of Berlin in the then-divided German city. She took full advantage of her time abroad to travel extensively throughout Europe and the British Isles and then served on the faculty of Northern Illinois University as Instructor of German prior to her marriage.

On May 30, 1970, she married Thomas Mann, then a graduate student at the University of Michigan. While at the university, she completed two additional master’s degrees, one in historic Germanic linguistics and one in library science. In 1972, Carolyn and her family moved to Iowa where she served in both public and academic libraries. She served initially as a travelling consultant to public libraries in rural communities and then as director of public libraries at Iowa Falls and Lamoni, Iowa. She later served as professional librarian at Graceland College, now Graceland University, where she spearheaded the transition to library automation. Their daughter, Kathrine, was born during their years in Iowa.

In 1991, Carolyn and her family moved to West Virginia, first to Buckhannon where her husband, Tom, served as Academic Dean at West Virginia Wesleyan College and later to Elkins where Tom served as President of Davis & Elkins College for nearly 10 years. Carolyn had a lifelong passion for the fabric arts, specifically, creating wearable art influenced by Asian traditions. Her exploration of these traditions included fabric and dyeing trips to Japan and Bali. She marketed her work–chiefly jackets and scarfs that incorporated vintage Japanese kimonos–through Studio 40 at the Greenbriar Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and at a local art gallery in Elkins. Her work is currently on display at the Currents Gallery in McMinnville, Oregon. In 2020, to be nearer their daughter and her family, Carolyn and Tom moved to McMinnville, where she became a member of the First Presbyterian Church.

Carolyn was preceded in death by her parents and five siblings. She is survived by her husband, Tom; daughter, Kate; son-in-law, Max Kalchthaler; granddaughter, Maggie; sisters-in-laws, Norma Schorfheide and Arlene Mitchell; brother-in-law, Arthur Schmittler; and 12 nieces and nephews and their families.

A memorial service is planed in McMinnville, Oregon on Saturday, June 21, 2025.