ALTAMONT — A resilient woman whose life spanned two continents and embraced varied careers, Sonja Otterness was known for her courage and warmth.

She died on Thursday, March 9, 2017. She was 82.

“In all my travels, working around the world, I never met anyone as unique as Sonja,” said Michael Reynolds, a longtime friend. “She used courage to face fear,” he said. “She never had regret for the past. She never had fear of the future.”

Mrs. Otterness was born on Feb. 8, 1935 in her homeland of Norway, and immigrated to the United States in 1950. “She was just a kid. She came with her mother. They left because of the war,” said her friend, Marion Mudar. Sonja was a child of 6 when the Nazis took control of Norway.

“Even as a child, she was part of a struggle to confuse the Nazis; she stood up for people all her life,” said Mr. Reynolds.

“She was 15 when she left,” he said. Her mother, an upholsterer, worked to support them in the United States. “She had a strong work ethic,” Mr. Reynolds said. Sonja, at the age of 16, became a showroom model, working for the John Robert Powers agency, in New York City.

 Mr. Reynolds said of the top models, “They would send them around impeccably dressed, wearing white gloves.” The professional name she chose for herself was Sonia Kaye, he said.

Mr. Reynolds met Mrs. Otterness 47 years ago when he was 21 and taught movement and dance at her modeling agency in Albany. “She created and ran the John Scott School,” he said.

“She was such a survivor,” he continued. “When the trend went away from modeling agencies in the late ’70s, she started selling Avon.”

He went on, “She had two children. They were the most important thing to her...She had to take care of them, support them, which wasn’t easy for a woman. She had a Gremlin car. She’d park at a phone booth with a fistful of quarters — that was like her office, where she’d make her calls.”

“Her parenting was amazing,” said Mr. Reynolds. “She was resilient.”

Mrs. Otterness also worked as a nurse’s aid, brightening the days of elderly patients, he said.

“Sonja was a warm, gregarious person who loved helping people,” Ms. Mudar wrote in a tribute.

Toward the end of her life, Mrs. Otterness became a farmwife as she married Donald Otterness, a teacher who had a farm on the outskirts of Altamont. The couple met, Mrs. Otterness had told The Enterprise, when Mr. Otterness brought hay for her horses on Meadowdale Road. “We met in a hayloft,” she quipped. “We were two black sheep...I’m hard to harness but I’m worse to drive.

Throughout their marriage, the pair loved to dance. “He was a wonderful dancer,” Mrs. Otterness said of her husband. Recalling a vacation they took to Jamaica, she went on, “He was a reggae king in Jamaica.” And, she said, the couple won a dance contest doing the twist on a  boat on Lake George. “We usually had an audience,” she said.

The Otternesses were involved in a farm-exchange program with Russia in the 1990s. They visited Russia and hosted Russians in their farmhouse. At a time when the Soviet Union was an oppressive force, “it was about relationships between average citizens,” said Mr. Otterness.

The Otternesses had been married for 15 years when Mr. Otterness died on March 20, 2009 at the age of 77.

After he died, Mrs. Otterness continued to tend to the farm animals.

“She had a special fondness for animals and drew peace and positive energy from her farm animals whom she regarded as pets,” said Ms. Mudar. She had three sheep, three ducks, and 19 chickens, said Ms. Mudar.

Mr. Reynolds remembers that, a year ago, a ram — “her arch enemy,” he said — had knocked her to the ground, hurting her shoulder. He worries that the ram might have caused the recent fall that led to her death.

“The only blessing is she never regained consciousness. I hope, in that netherland, her thoughts were happy,” he said.

Mr. Reynolds had recently called Mrs. Otterness about an obstacle he faced. She left this message on his answering machine: “You just have to do what you can do as long as you can do it, and when you can’t, do something else.”

Mr. Reynolds saved the message and said, “She followed her own advice. She lived it.”

He also said that these words from the poet T. S. Eliot best described Mrs. Otterness: “Every moment is a fresh beginning.”

“That’s what she did,” Mr. Reynolds said. “She took moments and made them alive...She was always able to surprise people — make them awake and aware.”

“She led a varied and interesting life,” wrote Ms. Mudar, “and leaves behind many friends and relatives who include a daughter, Sonja; a grandson, Dave; and her dear friend Harold.”

Her son, Mark, died before her.

At her request there will be no funeral and interment will be private.
— Melissa Hale-Spencer