Kathleen D. Taves

Kathleen DeAnn Taves, 77, passed away peacefully at Cayuga Medical Center with her family by her side on August 5th. 

Kathy was born on November 9, 1948, in Fresno, California, the second of two beautiful daughters for Trini and Maria Briano. She lived in La Sierra, California as a small child, but the family moved back to Fresno when she was 9 and she completed her schooling there, followed by a degree in professional nursing from Pacific Union College in 1972.

Kathy was a formidable nurse with a wide ranging career spanning over forty years. She started out in the emergency room with a special assignment as a helicopter medivac trauma nurse at Sierra Hospical in Fresno. Then as she followed her husband Michael to graduate school in New York City, she worked in the burn trauma unit at the New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell University Hospital, and then at other hospitals in the NY metropolitan area over the next several years. After relocating to Ithaca, New York to follow her husband’s career, she spent the last 26 years of her working life as a home health care nurse for the Tompkins County Health Department, while also working part time for Ithaca Hospicare. With her confident expertise and loving hands, she tended to the health care needs of probably thousands of patients in the county, and she was loved and admired by her colleagues in the heath department. She retired in 2016.

Kathy was an incredibly upbeat, loving, positive person with a wonderful sense of humor and malice toward none. She loved her two children and adored her five grandchildren and had a wonderful relationship with each of them. They were all with her while she could still appreciate it and enjoy it before she died. She is survived by her husband Michael, son Matthew Taves, his wife Jessica, their sons Lucas and Jacob, daughter Keren Castro and her daughters Delia, Chiara and Gabriel. We were all blessed by her life.

The family will be present to receive friends from 5:00 to 7:00pm on Monday, August 17, 2026 at Ness-Sibley Funeral Home,  23 South Street, Trumansburg. A Funeral Service will be held at 10:00am on Tuesday, August 18, 2026 at the Ithaca Seventh-day Adventist Church, 1219 Trumansburg Road, Ithaca. Prayers of committal will follow at Grove Cemetery in Trumansburg.