Painting Pictures with Words

Author and alumna Karen Wamhoff Schutte shares about her historical research in recounting her family history. 

By Jeff Victor 

To put it mildly, Karen Wamhoff Schutte believes in trying new things and pushing herself into unfamiliar territory. “Because if you don’t keep challenging yourself and reinventing yourself, then you may simply stagnate, and you lose out on a whole other world,” she says.

Schutte has approached her own life with this philosophy. She attended the University of Wyoming twice 20 years apart, shifted decisively from motherhood to interior design to becoming the published historical author of six award-winning novels. She has won Best in Fiction from the Wyoming Historical Society twice.

Raised in Emblem, Wyo., Schutte attended a two-room schoolhouse for her first eight grades. She graduated from Greybull High School in 1960, where she earned a scholastic scholarship to UW, majoring in elementary education.

“Back then, women had three strong choices of study: education, nursing or secretarial. I chose elementary education but, unfortunately, at that young age, was more interested in boys and beer.”

She attended UW for two years, then married Michael Schutte. In the next 10 years, they had four sons. She committed herself to her new domestic life.

“After 20 years at the helm of motherhood, I began to feel a deep yearning to broaden my world,” Schutte says. “The creative aspect of interior design had always intrigued me. I enrolled in the New York School of Interior Design and earned my first higher-education degree.”

Schutte launched her own design company, Interiors by Karen, and began to gain real-world experience, designing everything from offices to fraternity interiors to optometrist surgical rooms. After three years, Schutte realized she needed a college degree to be accredited by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). She enrolled at UW as a junior in the field of design marketing.

“People thought I was crazy, but I knew what I wanted and what I had to do to get there. I wanted to make a difference, to contribute, to fulfill my dream,” she says. “I have always tended to dive in headfirst. When people tell me I can’t do something, my response is: Watch me.”

At first, Schutte was somewhat terrified of returning to the classroom, but that didn’t last. With mentors such as home economics Professor Judith Powell, Schutte found her confidence and excelled in the classroom.

“It’s funny, I didn’t feel out of place because of my age,” Schutte says. “Because I had experience in the field, other students looked up to me. I would meet my two oldest sons on campus, and everybody just accepted me. I thought that was amazing because, frankly, I had been ready to feel ostracized.”

Schutte earned her bachelor’s degree in 1987 as her UW trustee husband, Michael Schutte, handed her the diploma. She was accepted into ASID and enjoyed a two-year career as an interior designer practicing from Laramie to San Diego to Red Feather Lakes, Colo.

In 2007 she retired, but she wasn’t finished trying new things.

“As the oldest great-granddaughter and granddaughter on my mother’s side, I had files of information on my family stories,” she says. “I had also kept historical files, just because. Now it all came together. I began writing what I thought was a documentary for our son’s information. As I wrote, questions arose as to why they did this and that, and as I researched the historical side, I began to hear and feel the characters emerge.” After three years, the interior designer handed her manuscript to a longtime English teacher friend and asked her to read it.

“That was a very vulnerable feeling,” Schutte says. “After she read it, she declared that my story flowed and my characters were well-fleshed out and that I was a writer. I never set out to write a historical novel, and here I was, a writer. Going down the internet wormhole and conducting further research led to one fascinating discovery after another, and I was hooked.”

Schutte recalls searching for more information about her uncle’s service in World War II as a tank commander. All she had were his battalion number and the fact that he served in the Third Army. Google did the rest by handing her his entire daily log.

“When I write, I visualize the entire thing. I am in the story, experiencing, hearing, smelling it all,” she says. “I have learned so much about my family and the lives my predecessors lived in Germany, the Civil War, the world wars and homesteading. One little secret

I learned is to inject period slang into my narrative—it makes it come alive for the reader.”

Now that Schutte is thinking about writing her seventh and final book, she is already moving ahead mentally to what comes next. Perhaps oil painting or auditing a college class in geology?

Throughout her varied and ever-changing life, Schutte gives credit to UW and how it shaped and prepared her to move forward.

“My time at the university was an amazing experience,” she says. “It was a pivotal period for me, and I appreciate the opportunity and the doors my education opened. I can’t wait to see what is next.”