Catherine Winslow Euster Priest, loved painting, drawing

Catherine Winslow Euster Priest,  a regular summer visitor to Rehoboth Beach since 1933, and permanent resident of Rehoboth Beach for the past 30 years, died Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022, at 89 years old, three months shy of her 90th birthday. She is survived by daughters Caren and Bryn, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Catherine, known locally and in the family as “Kitsy,” was born in Washington, D.C., Dec. 30, 1932, to Francis Winslow and Laura Bryn, daughter of an Ambassador to the U.S. from Norway. Kitsy’s paternal, Winslow side of the family are descendants of The Mayflower.

As a child, Kitsy showed artistic talent and joined her mother as a regular participant at Rehoboth Art League, where she remained an active member all her life. Painting and drawing were her lifelong passions.

Graduating from Sidwell class of 1950, she entered Connecticut College in New London because of its strength in teaching art. After two years, she married fellow Washingtonian Roger Euster in September 1952, and transferred to Bryn Mawr while her husband completed nearby Haverford. In July 1953, her first child, Caren, was born. From 1954 through about 1958, she and Roger lived mostly in Washington, engaged in real estate; in 1955 their second child, Wayne, was born.

In about 1958 the family moved to New York City, where Roger expanded his business ventures to include not only city real estate but international transactions. In 1962 daughter Bryn was born, followed by Kitsy’s last child, Benjamin Worthington, called Worth. Roger began to buy theaters, including, in 1967, The Village Theatre, which later would become the famous Fillmore East. Roger Euster pioneered the presentation of rock & roll bands such as The Doors, The Who, and Richie Havens, and events by the poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD advocate Timothy Leary. As Roger moved his properties through various corporations, Kitsy was for about six weeks the name owner of The Village Theatre, during which Kitsy presented Ginsburg and Leary in anti-Vietnam War events.

Kitsy and Roger’s marriage broke up in about 1972. Kitsy then spent about a year on her own, in an apartment in Greenwich Village, wearing “hippie” skirts, and joining the Art Students League, where she studied under traditionalist painter Frank Mason. Her drawings and pastels from this time show real talent, capturing the look and feel of the late 60s and early 70s. Kitsy also took up the Japanese martial art Aikido, and stayed in touch with the sensei (master) for the rest of her life.

Then Kitsy discovered that she had breast cancer. Dealing with this was one of the things that made her most proud of herself because she did not let it put her down.

With Caren and Wayne having gone off to college in about 1973, Kitsy established herself in a Riverside Drive, New York City apartment with Bryn and Worth, having a spectacular view over the Hudson River, on the artistic and intellectual Upper West Side. While attending Frank Mason’s instruction at the Art Students League, and taking Japanese Aikido lessons, she also became a peripheral member of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s circle, the “singing rabbi” of West 79th Street.

Around 1976 at a New York West Side reception for a singing group, she met film and TV actor Martin Priest (real name Emmanuel Nureck). He won her heart by shaking out a Lucky from his cigarette pack and lighting it with a match with one hand, thus never releasing her hand that he held in his other hand. On finding that they would like to become intimate, she faced the mastectomy issue head-on, pointing and saying “this one’s real, and this one’s fake.” Martin responded by pulling out his own false teeth and saying “I’ve got you beat.”

It was after this, in about 1978, that Kitsy married a second time, to Martin. Kitsy thus acquired two stepsons, Kimm and Gary Nureck, by Martin with his first wife.  Martin was the lead in the 1989 film “The Plot Against Harry.”

Services will be private.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Parsell Funeral Homes and Crematorium, Atkins-Lodge Chapel, Lewes.

Visit Kitsy’s Life Memorial webpage and sign her virtual guestbook at parsellfuneralhomes.com.