Meet Your Neighbor: Katherine Redwine passionate about encouraging people to vote

This profile was originally published in Midland Daily News.

Katherine Redwine, 63, lives outside of Coleman with her husband, David. They’ve been married for 40 years. They met at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

David is a retired chemist from Dow. They have two sons, James and John. James is married to Nicole. They have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Noelle. John is married to Jordan. James is a chemist working in Kalamazoo, while John is an engineer working in the Detroit area.

Katherine is a graduate of the Huguenot Academy in Powhatan, Virginia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Spanish, a double major, from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She went on to her get master’s in librarianship from the graduate library school at the University of Chicago. 

How long have you lived in Coleman and what brought you here? We moved out to Coleman in 1988, lived in Midland for a year before that. David came here to take a job at Dow Chemical.

What is your profession and why? I was with the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library for almost 30 years, reference librarian. I retired in 2015.

I really didn’t have a career goal after I got my bachelor’s. David went to Chicago to work on his Ph.D. He suggested the graduate library school to me. I enjoyed the work with the books and the information aspect of it. It worked out. I thought I wanted to be in the back office, but I got more comfortable and enjoyed working with people.

What are some of your interests and hobbies? I work with the League of Women Voters (of the Midland Area). I work on the web page and the newsletter, and I’m on the board. I just felt like supporting everybody’s right to vote, help people to learn about what they’re voting on and the importance of voting in local government elections. I work at the poll in Warren Township. Poll workers are always needed.

We bought a house in the spring of 2021 in Houghton Lake on a canal, with a boat. Our family can come up. My mom and dad came up to the meet the baby. We’re back and forth between Coleman and Houghton Lake. I like to fish, gardening, vegetables. I read a lot.  

What do you enjoy about living in the area?  Outdoors, it's so nice, pretty. You get the seasons. There’s always been hunting. David hunts, James does, John is giving it up. I hunted a little, on and off, over the years. I hunted with my dad when I was a teenager.

What is a message you’d like to give the community? I do want to emphasize that people should plan to vote, either on Election Day or absentee. We have a published voters’ guide, or you can go to Vote411.org. They should be aware of whether their districts and precincts have changed. Voters should double-check before Election Day about where they go to vote.