Janelle Kilmer, a deeply loved daughter, mother, wife, and friend, departed this earth unexpectedly in her sleep, early the morning of Sept. 10, 2020 at the age of 42.
Born in Santa Rosa, raised in Geyserville, she graduated from Ursuline High School in 1996, received her bachelor’s degree from UCSC in 2003, and a Deep-Water Ocean Dive Certificate in 1994. After college, Janelle moved to Michigan, where she married her husband and celebrated the birth of their daughter. Two years later the family moved to New York, a place Janelle had dreamt of living since a child. Here they resided in Brooklyn until shortly before her death.
Even as a child, Janelle was curious and adventurous, filled with wanderlust. She always threw caution to the wind. At a young age, she took road trips through Northern, Central and Eastern cities, sometimes with her parents, other times with her Grandma Rosalie. She traveled through Europe with high school classmates. Immediately after high school, she traveled the US coast to coast in a VW bus with two dear friends. She documented this trip and recently started a book as it paralleled to one her Great Grandma took in the late twenties. She later went on to visit Germany and Russia.
Janelle’s love of literature and the arts brought her to a community activist bookstore, Bluestockings, in New York City. She started volunteering here in 2007, then staffing, and in 2010 becoming a collective member/co-owner until leaving in 2020. Bluestockings was Janelle’s major life work, alongside being an amazing mom to her daughter. Due to the recession, when the bookstore was beginning to fail, she poured herself into making it survive and then have it thrive. She was very passionate about mentoring youths in the store’s high school intern program, she worked alongside thousands of volunteers over the years, kept the bookshelves stocked with the best and latest titles, schemed and dreamed many projects into fruition, and she was always a consistent friendly face for the social justice community passing though the store. In addition to her commitment to the community, Janelle was also a talented visual artist and a lover of radical literature. Her love of dogs was deep, she worked with Animal Rescue serving as a foster parent. Above all she was a great friend to many; her step dad always said, “Janelle never met a stranger.”
Janelle is survived by her mother and stepfather, Mary and Terry Kilmer; her husband of 17 years, Chris Calfin; and her daughter, Cassidy. She also leaves behind her uncles Mike Mahoney, Terry Mahoney and Stan Kilmer; aunts Christine Helton and Linda Mahoney; and numerous cousins. Janelle was preceded in death by her grandparents Bob and Rosalie Mahoney, Al and Eleanor Wharton, Earl and Edith Kilmer; and this year by her cherished aunts Trish (Mary) Mahoney and Erlene Kilmer. Due to Covid-19 a Celebration of Life is delayed until 2021.
