Karen "Kay" Taylor

Karen “Kay” Elizabeth (Dill) Taylor , 88, passed away peacefully at her Peaks Island, Maine home on September 1, 2025, following a year-long battle with metastatic breast cancer. Known to all as Kay, she insisted on returning to the island from excellent skilled care at Seaside Rehab in Portland, to spend her final days enjoying the island view and Atlantic sunrises she loved so much. Born on October 9th, 1936 in Ferndale, Michigan to Jay Edwin and Elizabeth Almira (Foster) Dill, the Dill family (dad Jay, mom “Wizzie” and younger brother Rob) moved east to western Upstate New York, living first in Buffalo, then Rochester, where her love of horses really took hold, and finally settling in rural Ontario, New York where Kay attended high school in Webster, NY schools. There, her decision to study Spanish instead of French or Latin determined the course of the rest of her life, and also influenced the lives of many others along the way. Another important turning point in Kay’s life at that time was her family’s decision to host an exchange student, Ulf, from Denmark. His addition to their family life sparked in Kay a lifelong interest in sharing her home with foreign students as a way to learn more about the world. Kay graduated high school in 1954, and went on to study Spanish at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. In 1957, the summer before graduation, she traveled with Quakers (Los Amigos) to San Simón Atzinzintla in Mexico, where she and other young people helped with health training and opened a library. This eye-opening trip so changed her life goals that she broke off her 2-year engagement to college beau Gene Taylor, and upon graduation from Bates with a degree in Spanish in 1958, Kay decided to further her studies in Spanish by enrolling in Middlebury College Language school’s Masters program. Following her dreams, Kay traveled to Madrid, Spain to work as an English teacher and immerse herself in Spanish culture while earning her masters degree. Here she met, was courted by, and in 1960 married madrileño Carlos Peñalver, starting her new life as wife and teacher. The young couple relocated to teaching jobs at the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California where twins Elizabeth Maria and Juan Rafael were born in 1961. Another daughter, Marina Ilene, joined the family in 1965 following a move to work at the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts. In 1969 Karen and Carlos took their family to Madrid, Spain for a year, to make sure their children all became fluent in Spanish. In 1970, the family returned to live with Kay’s widowed father on the Ontario farm, where Kay taught in the Webster school district while Carlos pursued a career at Eastman Kodak. Here she was able to indulge her lifelong passion for animals, with horses, dogs, cats, chickens and goats a part of daily life. In 1983, when the marriage ultimately did not work out, Kay relocated to Maine to start the next chapter of her life that would last over forty years. Kay and Gene Taylor, Batesies forever, got together again. In 1983 they moved into the Taylor family cottage on Peaks Island, where in addition to being very much in love with Gene, Kay fell in love with Peaks. She quickly became an active and fully engaged member of the island community, performing in a Neil Simon play at the Lions Club theater her first summer there. Her activities included but were not limited to: Tap dancing with Star of the Sea studio, host of a Spanish club “El Grupo,” protesting the Contras, and serving on the Peaks Island Neighborhood Association for many years, tackling the island’s many issues both mundane and contentious - moths, deer, and 2 secession movements, anyone? Kay was integral to the creation of the Peaks Island Health Center, working diligently to form connections as medical establishments came and went and came and went. Kay was a member of book clubs, helped assemble the Peaks Island STAR, worked a table during elections, played with the Peaks Island Ukes, painted with friends, and sang in the choir at the New Brackett Church. The Spain connection was kept strong when she hosted Spanish students and worked locally as an interpreter for friends and for the courts, and wowed family and friends alike with her paella. And of course she continued to keep her beloved horses, and was a familiar sight riding on the island roads. When she could no longer ride, Kay still drove to the barn early every morning to meet her “barn gang” for morning chores, and afterwards enjoyed games & treats at the cafe with those same friends. “Eau de Corral” was her aromatherapy. Kay was predeceased by Gene Taylor, who passed in June 2022. She is survived by her brother Robert P Dill of NewCastle Delaware, her three children: Lisa Peñalver, Marina Peñalver and her husband Doug Wilber, and son Juan and Meryl Peñalver, as well as Brad and Sharon Taylor and Carol Taylor, grandchildren Gabrielle Dumas, David and Kaitlin (Cotugno) Peñalver, Eric and Ali (Fournier) Peñalver, and Laura (Peñalver) Rico and Arturo Rico. Kay was particularly pleased to be able to meet great-grandchildren Isaac and Oren Peñalver and Santiago Rico in the last year. A memorial service at the New Brackett Church will be held on Saturday September 27, 11:00 am at the New Brackett Church. Kay asked that donations in her name be made to the Peaks Island Fund (www.peaksislandfund.org) which supports many worthy causes on the island that was so dear to her heart.

Karen "Kay" Taylor

October 9, 1936 - September 1, 2025

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