Karen Ferrara

February 21, 1960 - May 3, 2020

Karen Denise Ferrara 02/21/60 – 05/03/2020 Karen Denise Ferrara (Fowler) passed away peacefully on May, 3, 2020 in Tucson, Arizona with her best friend and loving husband/partner of 22 years, Bruce Springer by her side. She is also survived by her son, Nicholas Emerson Ferrara ( Haley Heim Ferrara), brother David Lance Fowler (Kelly Patton Fowler), nieces Kenzie Fowler-Quinn (Kyle Quinn), and Mattie Fowler-Burkhardt (Nick Burkhardt). She is preceded in death by her father, David Lane Fowler, and mother, Marilyn Parish Fowler. Karen was born in Lubbock, Texas on February 21, 1960. In 1964 the family moved from west Texas to farm in the Kansas Settlement area near Willcox, Arizona. 1974 brought about a move to Dos Cabezas where they lived until Karen’s senior year, at which time they moved to the city of Willcox. Karen and her younger brother, Lance, attended Willcox schools for the entire length of their primary and secondary education, with Karen graduating from Willcox High School in 1978. She went on to attend Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, graduating in 1984. Karen worked multiple jobs while attending college and had a variety of experiences which included the service industry, farm to table programs and community food bank services. She had a vow of poverty and volunteerism in those early days. She started her service to others by cooking at Pine Canyon United Methodist Church Camp in the Chiricahua Mountains. As a young adult she joined the Domestic Peace Corps and helped establish the first community food bank in the Tucson area. Her son, Nick, relays that Karen always emphasized to him that everyone should experience working in the hospitality industry at some point in life to use as a building block in developing empathy. She also loved being part of political activism and participated in many political campaigns in her younger days. She worked for eight years at the Pima County Superior Court, first in the Pretrial Services Division and, later in Court Administration where she designed and developed that court’s first training and education department. Karen was selected to be Cochise County’s first court administrator in 1991. Working directly with the presiding judge they embarked upon an era of professionalizing the county’s court system, always on the side of protecting the public and striving to maintain the neutrality of the justice system. She held point in implementing a judicial branch personnel system, court security, court automation, alternative dispute resolution program, domestic relations education training, court interpreter program, built and modernized court facilities, to include the juvenile detention facility, and reengineered case processing standards to reduce court delay and expense. Many of these programs were the first to be created outside the urban areas of Maricopa and Pima counties. She was co-founder of Cochise County’s annual Law Day event in which the county’s school children became integral participants of the commemoration of law in our everyday lives. The Court Appointed Special Advocate Program (CASA) was of high importance to her in providing dependent children a neutral and unbiased voice. Karen’s contribution to judicial administration was not limited to Cochise County. She served in many leadership positions within the state’s court administrators association. The Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court appointed her to serve on many state committees, commissions, and the Arizona Judicial Council. She was the recipient of many awards and honors, to include the prestigious 2012 State Judicial Branch Distinguished Service Award. Once, after attending a conference in Ohio, Karen and Bruce were scheduled to fly out of Pittsburgh to return home. Extra time allowed them to attend a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game. The sights, sounds and smells were overwhelming to both. And thus began a new passion – the love of sports, especially baseball. Karen retired in the spring of 2012 to enjoy life with Bruce. They had a passion for their beautiful yard, animals, and wildlife. Traveling to baseball parks around the country was something they carefully planned out and were able to enjoy over a period of years. Road trips to the west coast to visit her son Nick, her pride and joy, became another favorite destination. A true reflection of her character was the loving care she and Bruce provided for her parents in their final years. Her brother Lance compared Karen to a “salsa bar” – spicy, with an abundance of tapas, always beautifully laid out with plenty of color and zest. Karen went “all out” in everything she undertook, never doing anything halfway. A perfect example was cooking for others, a passion of hers that touched countless people. One shared memory was Karen’s extraordinary ability to leave her imprint on so many with the special care she took in gift giving. It was an art and it delighted her that each carried significance. She was a lover of words, a quick wit and easily one of the most intelligent persons many of us will ever meet. She also had high expectations of others and very little tolerance for anyone who was not kind. “Because nice Matters”. Most importantly Karen should be remembered as a fierce “champion of the people”. Perhaps she was meant to be here to make people feel better and be better. Her compassion for humanity was unmatched. A quote from Nick speaks for many of us. “Mom saw love everywhere in the world. Things that the rest of us would overlook, she would always stop and show me those signs of love with a smile on her face. I didn’t realize it then, but she was teaching me how to appreciate life. And life has now taught all of us how much we appreciated her”. A Celebration of Life for Karen will be held at a future date. Note: For those who wish to make a donation in Karen’s memory, please consider her two favorite charities: Just Kids, Inc. (Sierra Vista) and World Central Kitchen.