Kim Corcoran was born on Oct. 18, 1955 in Albion, NY and grew up in Kendall, a small town approximately 35 miles from Rochester, NY. She attended Kendall public schools for both elementary and high school. Her parents worked at Kendall Elementary School: her mother, Geraldine Corcoran, worked as an administrator, and Rudolph, her father, taught sixth grade. As a teenager, Kim played piano, bassoon, saxophone, and clarinet, and also performed as a drum major in her high-school marching band. She was a fan of the Beatles and other rock bands—to her father’s chagrin.
After graduating high school in 1973, Kim attended the State University of New York at Oswego, where she majored in music education. She performed regularly on piano and gave private lessons while at college. She graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1977. After briefly attending a graduate program in Illinois, she moved to New York City at some point in 1978.
Kim initially lived in Uptown Manhattan. She took dance classes near Times Square and occasionally tried out for parts at theatrical auditions. She worked various jobs, mostly in business administration. Always a fitness buff, Kim worked out regularly at various New York gyms. She entered several body-building competitions in the mid 1980s and won at least one first-place trophy. She jogged regularly and ran the New York City Marathon in 1982 and 1983.
In 1983 she also became romantically involved with Donald Mathe, an artist and antique restorer she met while they were both working at Banner Press, a New York publishing house. They enjoyed traveling together; in August 1984 they performed a private marriage ceremony on a glacier in Switzerland, near the town of Mürren. Although they were never legally married, Kim and Donald lived together in NYC’s East Village from 1984 to 2011. Their first child, Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe, was born in 1988, and their second, Bellisant Corcoran-Mathe, in 1993.
In the late ’80s Kim began tutoring high-school students in math at the Brooklyn Learning Center in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn. She switched to freelance tutoring in the early ’90s and gradually built up an extensive clientele. She bought a bicycle in the mid ’90s and began cycling to her appointments. Kim adapted quickly to the intimidating streets of 1990s New York City, becoming an accomplished city cyclist.
Geraldine Corcoran died of cancer in 1995. The loss was hard for Kim, who had always been close to her mother.
Kim was extremely busy in the late ’90s and 2000s. She supported her family with her tutoring business after her partner Donald’s antique restoration work dried up. She also taught at home: beginning in 1996, she and Donald home-schooled both of their children. In her limited free time, Kim studied flamenco, tap dance, and (briefly) bagpipes and accordion. She enjoyed dining out, and occasionally went to the Red Blazer, a 1940s-themed nightclub in Manhattan’s Midtown district, to dance to Frank Sinatra songs.
In 2009 Kim’s father, Rudy, died of a stroke. Shortly afterward she and Donald divorced (extra-legally) and, in 2011, Kim moved back to her childhood home in Kendall. She repaired and redecorated her parents’ house extensively, making it her own.
At first, Kim struggled to adjust to life in a rural area after years in NYC. She took up knitting and sewing and started a business selling her craft work online and at local fairs. She worked briefly at Wegmans, Kohl’s, and at a local real estate office. On some weekends she would fly to NYC and give a closely-packed series of tutoring sessions.
Kim soon found things to do in the Kendall area. She founded the Kendall Lawn Chair Ladies, a comic color guard that performed at parades in Kendall and nearby towns. In 2013 she began hosting a Broadway radio show, “Two on the Aisle”, on Rochester’s Jazz 90.1 FM radio station. Initially a one-hour program on Sunday afternoons, it was extended to two hours in the late 2010s. She played songs from her favorite musicals and provided hammy but knowledgeable commentary. She eventually broadcast over 300 episodes, and wrote over 1,400 posts on the show’s companion blog.
In the mid 2010s Kim took up cycling again, and began to undertake long yearly trips. Cycling with a friend, she traveled the entire Erie Canal Trailway in 2015, then circumnavigated Lake Ontario in 2016, Lake Huron in 2017, Lake Erie in 2019, and Lake Michigan in 2020. During her last major bike trip, in summer 2023, she traveled from Kendall to Montreal, Canada, and back.
While cycling near Albion, NY in the early morning of June 15th, 2024, Kim apparently fell off her bike and suffered a severe head injury. She was taken to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY and treated, but died on July 26th, 2024. She was 68. She is survived by her children, Wolfgang and Bellisant. Her ex-partner, Donald Mathe, died from complications with Parkinson’s Disease in 2021.
Edit 2024-08-01: Add the 2015 Erie Canal trip to the list of Kim’s excursions. Thanks to Carol Peterson for noticing the omission.
Edit 2024-08-02: Kim worked at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Learning Center. The Park Slope branch may not have existed in those days.
Obituary written by Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe 2024-07 and dedicated to the public domain. See the CC0 deed for details. Please feel free to share and repost this obituary.