HEREABOUTS sandra baer
Rick and Kathleen Larimer, of Washington Twp., are involved in the lives of children on many levels.
In addition to having four children of their own, the couple also donates gifts to children at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital every Christmas.
“I want to give back to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by giving Christmas gifts to the children,” said Kathleen Larimer, who collects children’s gifts at an annual English tea party she hosts at her home for friends and family.
“A lot of my friends have young children and it’s good for them to learn to shop for other children. It’s what Christmas is about,” she said.
Kathleen Larimer, 38, grew up in Beavercreek. Her father, Eugene Wilson, was a Wright-Patterson Air Force Base civil servant who worked in the intelligence field. The family moved to Virginia and later Washington, D.C., before moving overseas to Panama when Kathleen was in the second grade. She only lived there two years before tragedy struck the family.
“My younger brother was diagnosed with cancer, so my parents took him to St. Jude’s Hospital in Tennessee,” said Kathleen, who remained in Panama with her sister Marie. “We lived on Fort Kobe and a family friend stayed with us. My family was supposed to have moved to other countries, but after my brother became sick and died my mother wanted to return to Beavercreek.”
Kathleen returned to school in Beavercreek, where she was the president of Students Against Drunk Driving, now called Students Against Destructive Decisions, and played flute, piccolo and later percussion in the marching band. After graduating from Beavercreek High School in 1989, she attended Miami University where she earned a degree in business in 1993. She began working as a marketing assistant for Miami Business Interiors in Dayton and later worked with Steelcase dealerships.
In 1994, she met Rick Larimer through mutual friends at a skating rink. They married in September 1995.
Rick Larimer, 43, shared a similar background to Kathleen with overseas moves due to his father’s career. Larimer was born in Waco, Texas, where his father, Tom Larimer, was stationed as a United States Air Force navigator. After a year, Larimer moved to Austin, Texas, and then back to Cincinnati with his mother, Jan, while his father served in Vietnam.
“My mother’s family was from Indian Hill,” said Larimer, who lived at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina for four years after his father returned from Vietnam. “We moved to Fairborn in 1975 and my dad took a desk job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base because his father, who lived in Cincinnati, was ill.”
In 1980, Larimer’s father retired from the USAF and the family moved to the same neighborhood in Fairborn where they had previously lived. Larimer attended Fairborn High School, where he excelled in math and science, worked as an athletic trainer for the school sports teams and was a member of Explorer Post 72. After graduating in 1985, he attended Wright State University, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1990. He worked for Advanced Assembly Automation in Dayton and later became a Computer Science Corporation contractor working at WPAFB. In 2000, he worked as a contractor for ASIC, which later became ACS, working as a network engineer in the 88th Communications Group.
“It was interesting, because I worked in the same area my Dad did,” said Larimer, who currently works at Lexis Nexis-Reed Elsiver as a senior Telecom engineer in the Global Network support group.
The Larimers live in Washington Twp. with their four children, Nicholas, 7, a second-grade student at John Hole involved in the Cub Scout troop where his father serves as assistant, Conner, 4, Luke, 2, and Julianne, nine months. All four children also attend Kimberly’s Kindermusik with their parents and are active at St. Albert Catholic Church, where Kathleen is secretary of the parish council.
Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.
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