Carol Menzel Viertel, 79, passed away peacefully on October 25, 2024, in home hospice after two years of innumerable medical conditions. She was born the eldest of four children on January 13, 1945, in Mineola, NY, to Herbert Richard Menzel and Barbara Frances Crowley. Her family moved from Long Island to Dewitt, NY, a suburb of Syracuse, where she graduated from Jamesville-Dewitt High School. She studied Child Development and Family Relations (now Human Ecology) at Cornell University, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in 1966. She met her future husband, William Arthur Viertel, on a blind date to a surprise birthday party for one of his Nottingham High School friends in 1961. They were married in Webster, NY, on July 8, 1967, following Bill’s graduation from Cornell in Electrical Engineering. While Bill worked toward his MSEE at the University of Illinois, Carol worked in her field in a preschool and parent education program based on the philosophy of Rudolph Dreikurs. Following Bill’s graduation, they spent two months in Norfolk, VA, while Bill trained for the NOAA Commissioned Corps, whereupon they moved to Seattle for his first assignment. In Seattle, Carol chose to continue teaching preschool age children following her Cornell Lab School and Illinois preschool work with teaching at the Broadview Coop, North Seattle Community College preschool, and others, along with Sunday school at University Congregational United Church of Christ.

Wherever she taught, Carol believed strongly in respecting and encouraging the intelligence and uniqueness of each child. Decades later she could remember individual children with great fondness and warm stories, how she fostered the innate oratorical skills of one, allowing her to read aloud to the rest of her classmates for practice, or how she got another child to come out of his shell and talk when no one else could, delighting his mother because her son’s newfound speech syntax turned out to be like Carol’s. Because of her excellent education, Carol could have taught college courses or run entire multi teacher programs, but her joy was working with the children. Unable to have children of her own, Carol gave her love to the children of others. She also dearly loved her furry kitty children, Pumpkin, Precious, Periwinkle, and ringleader Pixy, who lived to just shy of 20.

Following many years of teaching preschool, deeply rewarding but, alas, not monetarily lucrative, Carol made a career change and became a bookkeeper/office manager. She worked at John Bangs’ boat building company and Sure Marine in Ballard, then at the high end KP Graphics Printing company, where at the end of her tenure she saved her manager Ed Whitehead from an embezzler with fake references Ed was hiring to replace her. After Carol and her assistant left, it took an entire staff to replace them.

Carol then reinvented herself again by starting a small business of building and supplying parent-child interaction assessment kits to the University of Washington Nursing Child Assessment Satellite Training Scale (NCAST) program.

Carol and Bill loved hiking/backpacking in the Cascades, Olympics, and on the wild Washington coast. They also loved Seattle’s cultural offerings, the ballet and opera, and sacred choral singing. And they built many fond travel memories together, including to Hawaii, the British Isles, Chile, and New Zealand.

When Seattle became just too busy, Carol & Bill moved from Ballard to just outside Coupeville on Whidbey in 1997, overlooking Admiralty Inlet and a view that stretched from Mt. Rainierin the SE to the north Olympics and on to Tatoosh from a blufftop virgin forest aerie amid the wild Nature they both so valued and loved, this after having responded spontaneously to a one day open house sign near Ebey’s Landing. Surrounded by the natural beauty of trees, water, and mountains and artwork that they loved (Elton Bennett silkscreens, Bill’s Nature photography, etc.), except for volunteering in some Whidbey public school classrooms, Carol led a very private life on Whidbey, gardening, taking walks alone and with friends, and reading her favorite genre, historical fiction, on her iPad.

In her last year when Carol became quite immobile, she got much enjoyment from watching episodes of the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie for their warm stories and good values, along with The Big Bang Theory and all incarnations of Star Trek and NCIS.

There are not words sufficient to express our thanks to our dear friends for their love and support and to Carol’s medical doctors, PAs, nurses, and aides for their skill, caring, and compassion at Polyclinic and Everett Clinic (now Optum), Swedish Hospital, Swedish Orthopedic, PacMed, and the ER, ICU, hospital floor, and superb MAC Infusion Center at WhidbeyHealth. All the medical professionals solved difficult problem after problem over a span of years until no more could be done. Special gratitude to Hank Kaplan (ret), Sigrid Guyton (ret), and Don Tesh (dee) who saved Carol’s life from an aggressive form of cancer and gave her three more decades of life, her PCPs Greg John (father dee, son ret) and Jacklyn Spiegelberg, her orthopedic surgeons Dan Flugstad and Daniel Schwartz, her cardiologist James Willems, her edema expert/PT Takako Shiratori, gastroenterologists Craig Pepin and Kyung Han, rheumatologist Anthony Krajcer, otolaryngologist DeWayne Bradley, and her anemia MD Andrew Yang.They each made a huge difference in Carol’s quality of life and sense of hope.Throughout a medical saga enough for five people, Carol maintained her courage and good humor. She was always more interested in the lives of her medical providers than in herself, endearing herself to them during every illness, treatment, and procedure.

Lastly, we are eternally grateful to WhidbeyHealth Hospice for the highly-skilled and compassionate care of their nurses and aides and to private Whidbey caregivers Debbie and Hidy, second to none in their kindness and care, who all made Carol’s final two months at home a true gift of love.

Carol would often express happiness that she and Bill were a true team, aligned and allied in home and financial decisions, spiritual beliefs, charitable giving, love of Nature, and progressive philosophy. Bill used to affectionately greet Carol with, “Hi Froggy.”, and Carol would respond, “Hi Toad.” But now Froggy is gone.

Carol is survived by her husband Bill of Coupeville, WA, sister Nancy Carr (Howard) of East Syracuse, NY, brother Richard Menzel (Betty Jo) of Rochester, NH, brother Paul Menzel (Laurie) of Fairport, NY, and many nieces, nephews, and cousins in the East.

No services at Carol’s request.