Amy Sue Wood Kline Gage

Amy Sue Wood Kline Gage died on May 19, 2025 surrounded by family and friends at her home in Fillmore, California. She was 81. Amy is survived by her beloved husband John, daughter Laura Kline Bartels and husband Bill; daughter Grace Kline; daughter Suzannah de Moll and husband Todd Hight; grandchildren Nico Kline Bartels; Hannah Kline Bartels; Matthew Kline Bartels; Luna Enriquez and her partner Adam Bristow; Evangeline Enriquez; stepdaughter Lisa Star; stepsons Chester and Ezra Anderson; Joe Beebe; stepchildren Judy, Jay, and Joe Kline; sister-in-law Martha Wood; cousins Gilbry McCoy; Stephanie Birchak; Karen Couch; many Caymanian cousins.

San Francisco, California: The El Greco. Born in Seattle, Amy moved to Burlingame, California when she was four. Her grandmother Amy Suzannah took her to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, where she fell in love with El Greco’s St. Francis Venerating the Crucifix. That painting became a foundation of her lifelong love of art and beauty. When she was 19, the St. Francis painting was loaned to the Seattle World’s Fair. Concerned that the curators of the World’s Fair might not appropriately honor her painting, she hitchhiked to Seattle to confirm it was properly presented, and fortunately was reassured when she saw it. That random sequence of experiences set off a whole cascade of events in her life, culminating in the birth of her first daughter, Laura, one year later.

Prison Advocacy: Portland, Oregon. After attending Willamette University and later receiving her degree from Portland State University, Amy became Anthropologist Margaret Mead’s graduate teaching assistant. As a graduate student, she taught meditation and cross-cultural spiritual trainings with inmates at Rocky Butte County jail in Portland and lectured for staff and psychiatrists at the State Forensic Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Salem. Amy succeeded in having the stress management and yoga programs accepted by the Oregon State Prison System. After she left her prison work, she maintained regular correspondence with prisoners and staff, especially the prison ministries personnel.

The Rainbow Gallery: Cannon Beach, Oregon. Two years after moving from Portland to Neahkahnie Mountain, Amy opened the Rainbow Gallery, a fine art gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon in 1971. The Rainbow Gallery supported and featured the work of her then husband, and professor of art, Fred Kline. Through Fred's work at the Haystack Summer Art program, Amy met some of the Pacific Northwest's most talented and prolific artists, many of whose work was displayed in her Rainbow Gallery. Featured artists included Portland sculptor Keith Jellum, Seattle jeweler Ron Ho, Brooklyn painter Ruben Tam, Reed College calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds, and Rhode Island School of Design ceramicist Norm Schulman.

Neahkahnie Mountain, Oregon. Amy’s daughters, Grace (Fred Kline) and Suzannah (Kip de Moll), were both born in a house built by hand by Fred, Amy, and their eldest daughter, Laura, on Neahkahnie Mountain, where she lived until 1986. Amy was introduced to yoga on the coast in 1968, by Dr. George Marshall, who was the Director of the Rhinehart Hospital in Wheeler, Oregon. Dr. Marshall learned about yoga in the 1950s, and when his wife Mary Ruth developed Parkinson’s disease, they used yoga to alleviate her symptoms. Amy was fascinated by the transformative impact of the yoga postures on neurological degenerative diseases. With Dr. Marshall’s support, Amy attended a conference at Baylor University to receive formal training in the practice. Yoga became a foundational practice in her life, as Amy became a devoted pupil of the Yogic tradition and went on to teach yoga into her late 70s.

During her decades on Neahkahnie Mountain,. Amy was a founder of Fire Mountain School at Falcon Cove, Oregon. Amy was also passionate about the natural process of birth and midwifery and assisted at more than 30 home births on the Oregon Coast. Amy’s interest in birth and death culminated in her starting the North Coast Hospice in 1979, the first hospice on the Oregon Coast and was the Director of the North Coast Council for Birth and Family Information.

Mill Valley, California. Amy was keenly interested in yoga philosophy. It was her presence at a yoga conference in San Francisco that led to her reunion with her Burlingame High School sweetheart, John Gage. The best friends were married at their home on August 8, 1988 at 8:08 PM. (She loved dates and numbers!) Amy, Zannah, and Grace joined John in Mill Valley, California; the couple remained in that house in Marin until John and Amy moved to Fillmore, California in 2018.

International Association of Yoga Therapists. The Baylor University Conference was a defining event in the field of yoga education and science in the United States. At Baylor, Amy recognized that Dr. Marshall was forging a path that would transform western medicine, bringing yoga to patients in physical and emotional pain. Consequently, Amy became heavily involved in the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).

Amy’s involvement with IAYT began with editing and producing its newsletter to members while her daughters Grace and Zannah collated and licked envelopes for the IAYT newsletters that were spread all over her dining room floor. Amy became a Certified Yoga Therapist and went on to serve as the Executive Director of IAYT and President of the board. Under her direction, IAYT developed a teacher training and certification program to ensure high standards and protect the credibility of the discipline as yoga's popularity in the western world blossomed.

International Conference on Science and Meditation: Rishikesh, India. John and Amy together became lifelong students of Swami Veda Bharati, a Sanskrit scholar and expert on all the historical traditions of philosophy and practices of meditation. Whenever Swami Veda traveled from India to the United States, John and Amy attended his workshops and retreats to study with him and refine their meditation practice. They also traveled repeatedly for intensive study at Swami Veda’s Ashram on the banks of the Ganges River in Rishikesh, India.

Because of Amy’s connections in both the American medical community and the yoga world, Swami Veda asked her to organize a Conference on Science and Meditation in India. During the three years of preparatory work, Amy identified resources for the logistics of the conference (venue, accommodation, transportation, etc.); she enlisted international experts from the medical, scientific, and yoga disciplines, all of whom were so taken with her commitment to the conference that they gave their time without compensation and traveled to the Gangetic Plain at their own expense. Finally, she spent enormous energy publicizing and promoting the conference, attracting participants from within India and around the globe. When the conference commenced in 2002, Amy was thrilled to walk into the Himalayan Institute Hospital to find every one of the hundreds of seats occupied. Amy herself was also a presenter, delivering her findings in a speech titled “The RPs on Meditation,” which detailed her work with heart patients at the Preventive Medical Research Institute in Sausalito, California.

LifeStyle Heart Trial. Beginning in 1989, Amy served as the Director of Stress Management at the Preventive Medical Research Institute, where she was instrumental in developing The LifeStyle Heart Trial with Research Participants (RP's). Her RP's were men and women who had severe coronary heart disease who decided to, in lieu of surgery, modify their lifestyles to maintain a low-fat vegetarian diet, do moderate physical exercise, and practice yoga asana and meditation. The program demonstrated that a person with coronary artery disease can reverse the course of the disease with modifications of their lifestyle. Today, the “Ornish Program” is covered by Medicare and exists in hospitals and classes all over the world. Amy was gratified and relieved that western science and medicine could be merged so successfully with yoga philosophy and lifestyle.

Amy, The Teacher. Amy’s personality was particularly sensitive to elderly people; she had a unique way of relating to people’s individual health issues and their corresponding abilities. For example, she taught yoga asana in a swimming pool because water buoyancy meant less pressure on the elders’ joints and ligaments. Amy taught yoga classes at Clatsop Community College and Tillamook Community

College. Amy taught yoga students at the Rhinehart Clinic and Hospital; set up the program and taught yoga for Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS (hospice) and orthopedic and cancer patients at the University of California, San Francisco Dental School. She taught Yoga for Percussionists, Yoga in Christian Prayer at Grace Cathedral, Yoga for Children, Yoga for People over 53, Yoga in Christian Worship, and Yoga for Incarcerated Women. Last, but certainly not least, Amy participated in a radio interview about Yoga for the Deaf with San Francisco's PBS station, KQED.

Amy’s father, Victor Thornton Wood, was born and raised in the Cayman Islands. In 1968, he asked her to open the first college in the Caymans. Banking and tourism on the islands were evolving, and he was adamant that the Caymanian people be educated to compete with the expat arrivals for the good jobs being created by the booming Caymanian economy. Alongside her friends and fellow Caymanians Doctors Elsa and Hugh Cummings, Amy founded the International College of the Cayman Islands (ICCI) in 1970. Her initiative permitted thousands of Caymanians to achieve degrees of higher education. She served on the board of trustees of ICCI for 55 years and created the ICCI Foundation, a charitable tax-deductible entity and served on its board. In 2021, a postage stamp was issued by the government of the Cayman Islands thanks to Amy’s tireless advocacy to celebrate ICCI’s 50th Anniversary.

Amy was a regular contributor to the Yoga Journal and the International Journal of Yoga Therapy; and she authored “Growing Old in a Circle of Friends,” published in Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation.

Amy and Spirituality. A lifelong Episcopalian, confirmed by Bishop Pike in 1958, she regularly attended services at St. Catherine’s By the Sea from her home in Oregon. She was thrilled that the parish eventually could build its own church after years of attending services in a little room behind the grocery store. Amy was on the vestry of The Episcopal Church of Our Saviour in Mill Valley, on search committees for new priests, and never missed an opportunity to attend a service at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral when she was in the city.

Amy was also drawn to Tibetan Buddhist teachings, including by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his capital in exile at Dharamsala. She attended the Buddhist monastic festivals at Tengboche Monastery in Nepal in 1985 and at the Hemis Gompa in Ladakh, India in 1987.

Amy joined her first Al-Alanon meeting at Church of Our Saviour in Mill Valley. When she moved to Fillmore, California in 2018, she helped to establish the Fillmore Al-Anon meeting at Trinity Episcopal Church.

Amy cared deeply about other people. Amy had the gift of befriending a stranger on a bus or train. She was never a reluctant traveler, and she embraced uncertainty with optimism. John and Amy's travels included a trek in Nepal to the Mt. Everest Base Camp, safaris in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania. There were many trips to the Cayman Islands for ICCI, to Italy and Switzerland in support of The American School in Switzerland, Sweden, France, Germany, and more. In January 2025, Amy was able to fulfill her lifelong dream of traveling through the Panama Canal - this dream was fueled by her father's stories of his many canal crossings throughout his career as a sea captain.

Amy’s favorite events in life were those involving her husband, children, grandchildren and extended family and friends. She was a great mom. She loved shared dinner table conversations, talks of upcoming events, or simple descriptions of your day. She always gave thoughtful, individualized gifts; she had such optimism about young people and their futures, and she had tongue-in-cheek nicknames for her towns on the Oregon Coast that always made her family laugh. She remembered personal details and could greet you after a lengthy absence and carry on as if the distance and time apart never existed. Amy had a way of making you feel that you were the most important person in her world; she had a gift for including you in any activity and she made you feel at ease and a part of her family. She was a mentor to many.

Across each and all of her professional and personal accomplishments, her legacy is one of generosity and love for her family, friends, and the world. May our memories of Amy inspire each and all of us to live with grace, curiosity, and adventure.

Amy Sue Wood Kline Gage 07-07-1943 to 05-19-2025

There will be a Celebration of Life for Amy in Manzanita, Oregon at Pine Grove Community House, 225 Laneda Avenue, Manzanita, Oregon from 5-7. The family is also planning a service in Mill Valley, California in January 2026, and also in the Cayman Islands, details to be determined .

If you want to share a longer story or communicate with John, Laura, Grace and Zannah, please send it to us at: AmyCelebrationofLifeStories@gmail.com.