Kathleen Jayne Blakeman

Kathleen Jayne Blakeman

Kathleen Jayne Blakeman

KNOX — Kathleen Jayne “Merricat” Blakeman died on Thursday, March 6, 2025, at Albany Medical Center Hospital after a short illness. She was 76.

Born Kathleen Doetsch on Oct. 21, 1948 in Albany, she was raised in Selkirk by her parents, William F. Doetsch and Geraldine (née Thiessen) Doetsch.

She was a graduate of the Academy of the Holy Names in Albany, and of D’Youville College in Buffalo.

“A medical coder for Albany Memorial Hospital,” her family wrote in a tribute, “she had just retired on Dec. 31, 2024 after 50 years of service. She was also the owner of Fine Feathers, a jewelry design and manufacturing company for 38 years.

“Friendship and love surrounded her all her life.”

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She is survived by her husband, Stanley Blakeman, of Knox; her sister-in-law, Anita Allen of Laramie, Wyoming; her sister-in-law Kellie Southards and her husband, Jim, and their children, Gregory and his wife, Mandy, and their children, and Kourtney and her husband, Jim, and child.

A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated in St. Lucy/St. Bernadette Church on Grand Street in Altamont on Thursday, March 13, at 10 a.m. Family and friends are invited and may call at the Fredendall Funeral Home at 199 Main Street in Altamont on Wednesday, March 12, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Interment will be in Knox Cemetery in Knox in the spring. 

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    She died peacefully in her Furbeck Road home on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2024 of congestive heart failure. She was 94.

  • SCHENECTADY — Julie Lynn Pierce, a devoted homemaker who shared a passion for motorcycles with her husband, “entered into eternal peace on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, at her home, surrounded by the love and care of her family after a long battle with ALS,” her family wrote in a tribute. She was 66.

  • Burton Ellis Mintline “passed into eternal rest on the evening of April 7, 2025, exactly 18 years after his mother, Helen, died,” his family wrote in a tribute, “finally pain-free after years of struggling with several medical issues.” He was 72.

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