Katharine Downing Myers
Katharine (“Kathy”) Margaret Downing Myers died January 30, at home in the senior community of Kendal-Crosslands in Kennett Square. She was 93.
Kathy was raised by her mother, Katharine Jaeger Downing. Her father, Hugh Wagner Downing, an early aviator in the U.S. Army signal corps, died in a military airplane crash the year she was born. When she was a young child, she and her mother moved to Swarthmore, where she developed lifelong friends, including Trudy Enders Huntington, who lived close to her at Kendal and who Kathy saw almost daily. When Kathy was 12, she met Peter Myers and his parents, Isabel and Clarence (“Chief”) Myers. Peter became a dear friend and her second husband. His parents became second parents to her, and Isabel ignited in Kathy a lifelong interest in human development and how to enhance people’s understanding of themselves and others. She later directed that interest toward improving and assuring the scientific integrity of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [MBTI], first developed by Isabel.
An enthusiastic athlete and outdoorswoman, Kathy played lacrosse and field hockey through college. As a scholarship student at Vassar College, she played on the school’s All-American lacrosse team and graduated with a major in economics in 1946 at the age of 20. After graduation, she applied to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, only to be told by the dean of admissions that a business education would be wasted on a woman who would just get married and have babies. She nonetheless managed to complete organizational development graduate classes at Wharton, then went to work on personnel issues for the management consulting firm Edward N. Hay and Associates in Philadelphia. During her years raising four children, she directed her passion and energy to serving on the boards of the League of Women Voters and the Swarthmore School District, working on projects to achieve school integration for the American Friends Service Committee, completing a master’s degree in human development at Bryn Mawr College, working as a high school teacher, and serving as a high school and then community college guidance counselor. She had a tremendous gift for making each of her four children and her many friends and students feel unconditionally loved, as well as supported in their own distinct interests.
Kathy found her true professional calling when she dedicated herself to expanding the ethical use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). She worked closely with her then mother-in-law, Isabel Myers, in Isabel’s final years, to enhance the scientific integrity of the MBTI and to complete Isabel’s seminal book on the personality inventory, “Gifts Differing.” Upon Isabel’s death in 1980, Kathy and Peter Myers became co-owners of the MBTI’s copyright, and they took that responsibility seriously. Kathy became the first president of the Association for Psychological Type (APT) and provided consistent support for the Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT), a nonprofit organization. She helped develop the first rigorous qualifying programs for counselors administering the MBTI, to ensure they did so responsibly, and she led multiple workshops and training courses, including a longstanding course offered at the Quaker retreat center Pendle Hill. She wrote many articles and contributed to several books on the use of psychological type, including “Navigating Midlife: Using Typology as a Guide,” that built on a workshop she created and taught for many years at Pendle Hill. Under Peter and Kathy’s stewardship, and in close collaboration with publisher CPP, Inc. (now the Myers–Briggs Company), the MBTI became the most widely used personality assessment tool in the world, employed by individuals, religious and educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and companies for individual and team development. In their later years, Kathy and Peter created the Myers and Briggs Foundation that funds psychometric and outcomes research on applications of psychological type.
Kathy lived fully and passionately. She continued to be involved in social justice advocacy through her 80s and immersed herself in philanthropic work, especially with the Chester Children’s Chorus and the Chester Charter School for the Arts (now the Chester Charter Scholars Academy). She often quoted the closing lines of “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, a favorite book: “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life...” She herself lived such a life, of faith and generous contribution.
Kathy is deeply loved and remembered by her four children, Roland Heisler, Hugh Heisler, Katie Heisler, and Michele Heisler; grandchildren Simon Sadinsky, Sophie Sadinsky, Peter Tappenden, and Andie Tappenden; daughter-in-law Miriam Shoshana Sadinsky; son-in-law Jamie Tappenden; Simon’s wife Mairi McConnochie; great-grandchildren Neve and Finley Sadinsky; and many close friends and colleagues. Her two husbands, Charles C. Heisler (1921-1988) and Peter B. Myers (1926-2018) died before her. She will also be sorely missed by her longtime friend and assistant, Karen Burns.
A memorial will be held Saturday, March 28, at 1:00 p.m. at Kendal-Crosslands.
