Karen Ruth Sweet

Karen Ruth Klemesrud Sweet, of Twin Falls, passed away peacefully after a short but courageous battle with cancer on January 6, surrounded by her family. She was born in Tokyo, Japan, on January 12, 1955, to Stanley and Selma Klemesrud. She was greeted by her older brother Paul, and two years later joined by her younger brother Tim. She spent the first four and a half years of her life in Japan, where her dad was a Lutheran Missionary.

At the age of 3, Karen attended kindergarten in Japan, which was the age children began school. She had the only blond head in the school. When she was 4 1/2, the Klemesrud family returned to the USA. They moved to Northfield, Minnesota, home of Saint Olaf College, which became Karen’s Alma Mater. The family moved to Lyle, MN when she was 5 and her dad was a pastor at two country churches. She attended school in Lyle through the eighth grade making many life long friends. When Karen was a freshman, the family moved to Highland, Minnesota, where she finished her high school education at Lanesborough High School. Her dad pastored two Lutheran churches. She would often accompany her dad on Sunday mornings to be the church organist.

Karen graduated from Lanesborough high school in 1973, where she was active in band, choir, and honor society. She went on to Saint Olaf College where she majored in Music Education, K-12, and sang in the prestigious St. Olaf Choir. After graduation from college in 1977, she took a year off and traveled to Japan, where she sang with a Lutheran music team, KIBO, at Christian churches and universities. Climbing Mount Fuji was one of the highlights of that experience. The following year, she moved to San Pedro, California, to teach Music K-12 in a Christian School where she was also the church organist.

In 1979, Karen accepted a teaching position in American Falls, Idaho, teaching Music to grades K-4. It was while teaching in American Falls that she met Bill Sweet, the love of her life, who was the Middle School music teacher. She attended St John’s Lutheran church where she sang in the choir and was a church organist. She also sang in the “AF Sharps”, a community women's chorus. Karen and Bill were married in American Falls on December 27, 1980.

She and Bill moved to Twin Falls during the summer of 1981, where two music teaching positions became available in the Twin Falls School District. Karen taught at Robert Stuart Jr.High, where she was able to develop a strong choral program in just two years. Her afternoons were spent traveling to several elementary schools. She continued teaching through May 1983. Their first child, Jacqueline Karene, was born on July 14, 1983. Karen became a stay-at-home mom and taught piano lessons part-time. Jeffrey William was born on August 11, 1986, and Jonathan David was born on February 11, 1990, on his dad’s 34th birthday.

During the kids’ elementary years, Karen taught private piano and voice lessons plus building a strong elementary music program at Agape Christian School. This was showcased by her many Christmas and end of year programs. She became an adjunct faculty member, teaching voice and piano at CSI.

Karen and Bill traveled as often as possible with their young family. They traveled to Osage, Iowa nearly each summer to visit Karen’s mom, Grandma K, where they made many wonderful memories, visiting such sites as Yellowstone Park and Mount Rushmore as they traveled. Besides Iowa, one of their favorite places to visit was Disneyland. In later years, they also loved McCall, Red Fish Lake and Sun Valley, ID, where they would attend the summer concert series.

In 2003, Karen returned to full-time teaching at Sawtooth Elementary in Twin Falls. With the help of a generous donor, she was able to purchase a classroom set of guitars so that each of her fifth graders would have the opportunity to learn to play an instrument that they could choose to continue for a lifetime. Her love for rhythm and drumming sent her and Bill scouring junkyards for car brake drums, and the school janitor's closet for buckets and garbage cans. Using whatever natural instruments she could find, she developed her own version of River Dance. This morphed into a love for ethnic drumming while taking a workshop at a music conference in Portland,Or. She immediately began writing grants to purchase a classroom set of African drums. Through a generous donation from the Twin Falls Education Foundation, her dream became a reality. What she was able to teach her students through drumming was phenomenal. In August of 2017, she and the school PE teacher and good friend, Darla Peterson, wrote and developed a program combining music and PE where they used inflatable exercise balls, milk crates for the base, and dowels for drumsticks to perform routines set to music. In September 2017, through a “Fuel Up to PLAY 60” grant, they were able to purchase matching balls. The following year, they acquired a copyright for their new program that they called “Drummersize”. They shared Drummersize with other educators by teaching workshops, and giving several programs a year for parents and throughout the community, often incorporating her African Drums into the program. She continued using Drummersize every year until her retirement in 2022. No dream or goal was ever beyond reach for Karen when it came to her music classroom, which made her such an outstanding teacher. She will be remembered by both her colleagues and students as being one of the finest music educators that her students could have ever experienced. They left her classroom loving her and music. She mentored many music teachers over the years, one with whom she was mentoring within a few weeks before her death.

After retirement, she and Bill took their first retirement trip to southern Utah and

attended Mary Poppins in the outdoor Tuacahn amphitheater near St. George and hiked in Zion National Park. Their most treasured trip, to Cancun Mexico at an all-inclusive resort, was provided as a retirement gift from their children. Bill and Karen spent their honeymoon in Cancun so the retirement trip brought back many delightful memories.

In the fall of 2023, they traveled to Karen’s 50th class reunion in Lanesboro, Minnesota. This trip was more than a reunion; it provided an opportunity to visit friends in multiple towns where she had lived and attended school, including Lyle, Minnesota, and her college Alma Mater, Saint Olaf, where she was able to visit with her college roommate, Leslie Moore.

In January 2024, Bill and Karen traveled to Maui and Oahu. Karen loved the island life and touring Maui with friends – whale watching as well as tasting the tropical drinks and visiting Haleakala crater. Other memorable travels included flying to Las Vegas to see shows with friends, along with trips to Palm Springs, McCall, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Cascade and Sun Valley.

Karen’s big surprise at Christmas last year was a trip for her 70th birthday in January 2025, a Caribbean cruise for her and 9 other family members. The family celebrated Karen’s birthday on the ship. One of her favorite memories was playing dodgeball with her adult children, on her actual 70th birthday. After the cruise, Karen and Bill spent two days at Disney World with their daughter Jacqueline and family.

Karen was a devoted wife and mother who loved her Lord Jesus with all her heart and raised her family in a Godly home, which was always decorated for every season, as well as her stunning flowers in the summer.

Karen is survived by her husband Bill of 45 years, children Jacqueline Jensen (Josh), Meridian, Jeff (Dee) Sweet, Twin Falls, and Jon (Garrett) Brewer-Sweet, Costa Mesa, Ca. Her exceptional grandchildren were the true light of her life: Ashlyn and Ethan Sweet, and Julianna and Justus Jensen, and her brothers Paul Klemesrud, Kansas City, MO; and Tim Klemesrud, Spring Grove, Mn. She has been an active member of Amazing Grace Fellowship for nearly 30 years as well as PEO, Delta Kappa Gamma, and Twin Falls Music Club. Her portrayal of Marmee, with Magic Valley Little Theatre’s production of “Little Women” will always be remembered as being her finest stage performance.

The family would like to give a special thank you to the caring staff at St. Lukes Cancer Center, the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and the special staff at Hospice Visions. In lieu of flowers, the family would like to suggest that a memorial be sent to either the Twin Falls Public Library Foundation,Inc., Twin Falls Education Foundation, or PEO chapter BP, making checks payable to: PEO Program for Continuing Education (In memory of Karen Sweet),

Beth Smith, PO Box 1882, Twin Falls, ID 83303.

A celebration of Karen’s life will be held at 3:00 pm on Monday, January 12, at Amazing Grace Fellowship, 1061 Eastland Dr. N., Twin Falls, ID. Funeral arrangements are under the direction of Rosendau Funeral Home and Crematory, Twin Falls.