Kathleen Lundin (nee Rogers), co-author of several business books with her late husband, Dr. William H. Lundin, passed away on March 19, 2023, after a multi-year battle with a series of debilitating physical problems and illnesses. Her family serenaded her with a live rendition of “I’ll take you home again Kathleen,” by her bedside as she was passing. The Sanibel Island resident was 87 years old.
Known as Kathy, she was the daughter of Chicago residents Stanley and Rosemary Rogers, who both worked multiple jobs to raise their family of two daughters through the depression. Kathleen attended St. Alphonse’s High School in Chicago, then enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She met her husband Bill, a psychoanalyst with a budding practice, and worked as his secretary before marrying him in 1958. Bill was a decorated WWII combat medic and former POW, which sparked Kathy’s lifelong interest in survival instincts.
Bill and Kathy raised their children in the Streeterville area in downtown Chicago, before buying an unfinished school of Frank Lloyd Wright home in Kettle Moraine, Wisconsin and relocating. They embraced the beauty of the area, with Kathy researching and writing the first official history of the nature district in which they resided. She taught her children the varied arts of self-resilience in a remote area, focusing on mastering nature and being self-directed and goal driven. These values kept her alive throughout her long and debilitating final days.
As their children left home, Kathy focused on real estate development, at one point managing several properties in Chicago, Madison, WI and Sanibel Island. Bill and Kathy had purchased a five-acre parcel from the Starling family in the late 1960’s and developed them with the aid of island naturalist George Campbell, author of “The Nature of Things on Sanibel.” Bill and Kathy migrated to the island permanently in the 1980’s, which became their base for international travel and art collecting. Bill applied his many years of consulting experience to their first book, “The Healing Manager.” Over the course of the next decade and a half they penned several more business books, their most famous being “When Smart People Work for Dumb Bosses.”
When Bill passed away in 2000, Kathy immersed herself in the community of the island, working at CROW, and planning for a book based on interviews with POW’s. She is survived by four children, Steven (Candace), Carey (Mark), Leslie (Grant), and Lauren (Dan) and seven grandchildren.
Kathleen will be interred with Bill at Arlington National Cemetery, where a memorial service will be held this summer.
