Karen Elizabeth Knudson Nossiter ’79

Karen Elizabeth Knudson Nossiter ’79 died on August 18, 2016, in Oakland, California, after a long illness. Karen was born on May 15, 1957, and attended Scarsdale (New York) High School. At Dartmouth Karen majored in government. She was a member of the Daniel Webster Legal Society as a first-year student, the Upper Valley Tutoring Program as a sophomore and the ’79 council and the government steering and senior week committees as a senior. Karen is survived by her children, Jason and Madeline; former husband Josh ’79; and siblings Charlie and Lolly. Karen worked as a paralegal at several big corporate firms in San Francisco and New York City and became a blue sky laws expert who was consulted by law firms around the country. Josh, whom Karen married after college, writes: “Karen’s favorite Dartmouth professor was Vincent Starzinger—the ‘Zinger’—because he dealt ruthlessly in caustic comments with his students. But Karen gave as good as she got, had the finest nose for BS, challenged the Zinger at every opportunity and became one of his favorites in turn. Karen was funny as hell and the most irreverent person in the world and the spark that lit the talk.” Alysa Ward ’79 adds, “She was Karen—no one else quite like her! She was so wonderfully outrageous that I had space to assert myself more fully in her shadow.”