The Colony Days Committee has picked one of their recent own as the 2024 Grand Marshal by choosing Karen McNamara to fill the role. 

“It just is an honor,” Karen said of getting selected to preside over the event. “Typically at Colony Days, I was somewhere, running the whole day between things, moving things, making sure everything was put into place.”

Last year, Karen stepped down from being co-chair and president of the Colony Days Committee after being involved in many different roles with the nonprofit since 2010. She officially stepped aside from working with Colony Days this year because her role as president at her other passion project, The Atascadero Printery, has started to move forward with larger parts of its construction and revitalization.

“Colony Days is so much fun, and it’s such a neat event, and it’s such a great thing to hold the community together. It was just an honor to be a part of it and all the great people that I worked with and helped put it on,” added Karen. “It’s nice to still be a part of it this year and promote the community awareness and the community spirit of Atascadero.”

So what brought Karen, a Nebraska native, to Atascadero? It was when she met her late husband, Mike, at college in Missouri.  

“We got married in 1979, and he was an Atascadero native. Almost born here, came here when he was less than a year old, but he grew up here. So we moved here to California. I remember him asking me, ‘Would you like to marry me and move to California?'” added Karen with a laugh.

When they moved back here, Karen worked at McNamara Electric, which Mike’s dad owned. There, she met so many people from the community and realized what a special place it was, on top of the great weather. Though they loved California, the family moved to Colorado for a little while but moved back to Atascadero in around 2009. It was then that Karen dived into finding ways to get involved with the community.

“When I came back, I decided to get involved,” she said. “The parade was very, very small, and we had lived in a very small town in Colorado. They had an amazing couple of parades every year. They had a Christmas parade and then another parade celebrating the community during the middle of the year. They had great parades, and my sons were like, ‘This is such a small parade but such a bigger town.’ So I said, well, I’m not going to complain about it. I will justget on [the Colony Days Committee] and help.”

Karen and Mike had four amazing children, Jaime, April, Bryan, and Kody, before his unexpected death in 2015. Her sons are still local, while her daughters have moved to Alaska and Idaho. 

“My kids are amazing. They are just fabulous, and I can’t say enough about them. I want to be here for another 30 years for them,” Karen said.

It was at the request of her kids that she took over what is now The Atascadero Printery Foundation after Mike’s passing. Colony Days actually had a big hand in getting the second non-profit off the ground.

“The Printery was initially my husband, who was doing that. I wasn’t super involved. We talked about it some, but it was kind of like, ‘Oh, that’s Mike’s thing,'” Karen said. “I didn’t go to those first few meetings that he had. We talked about it, and I helped him gather information about it and things like that. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested at all, but it was kind of his project. He got it going, and he was meeting with people, and then, of course, he passed away. So thenin 2015 at Colony Days, as one of my duties for the day, the night before, I made a banner.”

That banner said, “Save the Printery.” Karen told Kent Kenny of Colony Days that she was going to be making the banner, and he offered to make a photo book with info on the history of the building. The photos featured everything about the Printery that people would want to know. They also made a signup sheet for anyone interested in helping. That day, she said, close to 26 people signed up. That’s when meetings started up again. Those people who originallyshowed up formed the board, and The Printery Foundation officially became a non-profit with Karen at the helm.

Karen’s love of music and singing, which is what she studied as a vocal music major when she and Mike met in college, is one of the other driving forces behind wanting to get The Printery up and running. She knows that the North County deserves a performance space, and she is hoping that it’s sooner rather than later that The Printery can open and become a thriving space for arts and culture in the area.

On top of all her work with local non-profits, Karen is also a real estate broker and owner of Classic Coast Realty and the proud owner of Hope Chest Emporium.

“I’m honored to be a part of the community providing everyday home and garden supplies that people need and a lot of fun stuff,” said Karen of her store.

Karen also enjoys spending time with her boyfriend, Greg, and pets, Moonshine and Bailey, her poodle terrier mix who never leaves her side.

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