Kathleen Mabon

Kathleen (Weiss) Mabon, 99, of Home, passed away Sept. 7, 2025, at Communities at Indian Haven in Indiana.

A daughter of the late Don E. and Dorothy (Buchanan) Weiss, she was born Dec. 18, 1925, in her grandmother’s farmhouse in Rayne Township. She remembered a time when she was less than ten years old, during the Great Depression, that her family pursued a reputed opportunity for better employment in the farmlands of Missouri, which led them to load their essential belongings and the young family into an open touring car and a flatbed truck and make the long, hard drive over mud roads into the midwest. The stories of a better life in Missouri were not entirely accurate, as the farmlands became more of a dust bowl, surrounded by acres of roaring wildfires that lit the nighttime skies and frightened young Kathleen and her siblings. As winter approached, her father received an urgent message that his mother needed Don back in Pennsylvania to again run her rocky old farm. In a cold winter, they again packed the family, and a goat, into the touring car and returned to Rayne Township, with oil lamps burning beneath blankets and quilts to keep the family from freezing.

Kathleen was a 1944 graduate of Marion Center High School. She married her high school sweetheart, Richard Eugene Mabon on March 30, 1945, at her parents home in the Chevy Chase community in Indiana. She was a homemaker until Feb. 1958, when she and her husband launched an automobile service station business, Mabon’s Sterling Service, which they operated on Water Street in Indiana for more than 25 years. Kathleen handled all of the bookkeeping and accounts management side of the business. Long hours and hard work made it one of the most successful customer-centered businesses of its type in the region.

Kathleen and Dick were longtime members of the Presbyterian Church of Marion in Marion Center. They were charter members of the Indiana Pinees chapter of the National Campers and Hikers Association (NCHA), and (mostly) enjoyed towing a

13-foot Scotty travel trailer with their children in the backseat to explore many of the U.S. states and Canada. Kathleen had a great deal of artistic talent, and over many years created and painted a large number of ceramic and porcelain items, with her painting skills reaching a highly professional level.

She is survived by a son, Ronald Lynn Mabon and wife Kristen Hess Mabon, of Home; a daughter-in-law, Suzanne Smith Mabon, also of Home; and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren who brought her great joy and pleasure over many years.

In addition to her parents and all of her siblings, she was preceded in death by her husband, Richard Eugene Mabon; a daughter, Judith Ann (Mabon) Parsley and son-in-law, Stuart Andrew Parsley; and a son, Dennis Richard Mabon.

At her request, services at present will be private. There may be a public life celebration in the future. Interment will be in the Oakland Cemetery in Indiana. Robinson-Lytle-Shoemaker Funeral Home, 36 N. 7th Street, Indiana, has been entrusted with the arrangements.

The family expresses its gratitude to the nurses, aides and staff at Rose Haven Personal Care Home, and more recently at Communities at Indian Haven, for their excellent and supportive care during Kathleen’s stay.