Katherine Clark Drake, 51

Katherine Clark Drake, 51, died on March 4, 2024. She leaves behind a husband, three daughters, a mother, three brothers, a sister, and a wide circle of family and friends who loved her and were, in one way or another, taken care of by her.

Katherine was born on August 18, 1972, in Tallahassee and made her home in Northeast Florida for about twenty years. She was a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a sister—and to a great many people outside her own family, someone they could call when things fell apart.

She was married to Thomas Drake and was the mother of three daughters: Michaela, Audrey, and Amanda. They were the center of her life, plainly and without competition from anything else. She showed up for them—in the small daily ways and the harder ones—and she was more interested in teaching them how to be kind and strong than in making sure they knew she had done it.

That same instinct to help carried well beyond her own front door. Katherine was a certified life coach and divorce coach, as well as a domestic abuse counselor and advocate. Through this work, she sat with people during some of the most difficult seasons of their lives, and she was good at it—not in a way that called attention to itself, but in the way that made people feel as though someone was finally listening.

She laughed easily and often, and she had a way of making people feel as though they mattered to her—because they did.

Katherine is survived by her husband, Thomas Drake; her daughters, Michaela, Audrey, and Amanda; her mother, Debby Bonebrake; her brothers, Michael Clark, Brandon Holley, and Matthew Clark; and her sister, Melissa Hansen, along with extended family and friends who will miss her. Her father, Charles Clark, was living when she died and has since passed away.

She is gone far too soon, and the people who loved her will carry that loss for a long time. But they will also carry what she gave them. Her daughters carry the strength and kindness she spent years building into them, and the people she counseled carry the hope, courage, and sense of being heard that she helped them find again.

That is not a small thing to leave behind.