AUBURN – Katherine Jewell Fiori, 57, left this life quietly on Dec. 16, surrounded with love and affirmation. She had gracefully and courageously lived with Acute Myelitic Leukemia for the last several months.

The daughter of Malcolm and Lucille Jewell, she was born on June 20, 1951, and was raised at Keewaydin, the family farm in Bowdoinham. Her favorite memories of that time involved sledding before breakfast in the winter and walks in summer up the Booker Road to the top of the falls at the Feldspar Mill. She attended the Coombs School and the Community School in Bowdoinham, and she graduated from Brunswick High School in 1969.

She married Dennis Fiori in 1969, and together they had two sons, Nicholas and Andrew. Dennis and Katherine divorced in 1979. During her children’s school years, she made a home with them in Brunswick. In these years, she worked for several local businesses as she began her studies at the University of Southern Maine. She graduated from USM summa cum laude with a degree in social work in 1987.

She met Jim Tierney, her partner of the last 19 years, when she finished college. They have lived in Auburn together for several years. Theirs is a committed and very loving connection. Jim was at her side when she died.

After her graduation from USM, she worked for two years at the Battered Women’s Shelter in Portland. She went from there to the YWCA in Portland, where she worked for 10 years, doing social work with teen parents. Following this, she helped to run the Training Resource Center at the Youth Employment Program in Portland until 2000.

For the last eight years, she has been working at Casey Family Services in Portland. Her work has been as a social worker in the Family Unification Program, helping parents at risk to improve their child-rearing skills. Her heart always drew her to work with young people who were struggling to make their way in the world. She was held in the highest regard by her co-workers and associates for her caring and dedicated service to others.

She had a passion for knitting and for artwork. She seemed to always be knitting something bright and beautiful, often for the people she loved. Each new baby she knew of received a sweater or a hat of delicious color and expert craftsmanship.

In addition to knitting, in the 1990s she began to explore her sense of color and design in working with watercolor and pastels. Although she was shy and modest about her work, she grew in personal joy and acceptance of the designs and shapes and colors that seemed to come magically through her onto the page. Her artwork, which mirrored her work with yarn, demonstrated her love of rich color, and her imagery was poignant and accomplished. Some of her work was selected for a winter show at the Lewiston-Auburn College Art Gallery. Her work was also exhibited at the Portland Public Library.

She enthusiastically continued the family tradition of crackerjack cribbage playing.

She was a loving and devoted grandmother to her dear grandchildren Cassidy Howard, Aiden Fiori and Sebastian Fiori of Bowdoinham, and Jack, Frank and Greta Tierney of South Portland. One of her deep pleasures was spending time playing and reading with them.

In addition to her partner, Jim, she leaves behind her mother, Lucille Jewell of Bowdoinham; her son, Nick and his wife, Amanda, of Jamaica Plain, Mass.; her son, Andrew and his wife, Melissa, of Bowdoinham; her sister, Nina Mendall and her husband, Peter, of Bowdoinham; her brother, Stephen Jewell and his wife, Pat, of Barre, Mass.; several nieces and nephews and their children; her six beloved grandchildren; she also leaves behind a large number of faithful and dear friends who have loved her deeply through the years.

She was predeceased by her father, Malcolm, in the spring of this year; and two brothers, Jeffrey Jewell and Jeremy Jewell.