Laura Lyons Karrh, 60

Laura Lyons Karrh, 60, passed away peacefully on Thursday, October 31, 2024, at Hilton Head Hospital after a seven-month battle with brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme stage 4). A Memorial Celebration of Life will be held Monday, November 11, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at Sauls Funeral Home. The funeral mass will be held Tuesday, November 12, at 10:30 a.m. at St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church in Bluffton, SC.

Laura Anne was born on New Year’s Eve, 1963, in Red Bank, New Jersey, to Joseph and Eleanor Lyons, and grew up with three siblings in Matawan and then Holmdel, NJ. She attended high school in Holmdel, NJ for two years, then with the support of her parents, she moved to New York City to study ballet and completed her junior and senior years of high school at Dominican Academy, where her mother had attended, on East 68th Street, in Manhattan.

Laura was a student at the School of American Ballet near Lincoln Center, where she often saw George Balanchine assessing new talent during her classes. She also studied on a scholarship at the Harkness Dance Center in Manhattan, where Martha Graham once taught. Though Laura did not end up pursuing a career in dance, the intense discipline and love of the performing arts she cultivated during this time never left her.

Having two Fordham University graduates for parents, she attended Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, graduating in 1986 with a B.A. in History. During Laura’s time at Fordham, she was a founding member of a philanthropic organization Young New Yorkers for Charity, starting in 1984, which held events off-campus to raise money for worthy causes. After graduating, she remained in NYC to embark on a successful career in account management at several major ad agencies, including McCann-Erickson and Grey Advertising.

In 2004, Laura moved to the Bluffton, South Carolina area to be nearer to her parents who had retired to the Sun City Hilton Head community. She soon began a second career in real estate sales, focused on selling newly built homes in the Bluffton area, most recently as the Neighborhood Sales Manager for Oldfield at Stanley Martin Homes.

It was in Bluffton that Laura met the love of her life, Gregory Karrh, of Swainsboro. They were married in a joyous ceremony on May 4, 2007, and she was welcomed into the Karrh family who immediately made her an honorary Georgia Bulldawg. Laura and Greg were blessed with two children, Aiden and Emma, and this is when Laura’s life truly became complete. She found the deepest happiness and contentment in being a wife and mother. Laura and Greg have long been devout congregants at St. Gregory the Great Parish, sending their children to the parochial schools there, and forming many lasting relationships.

This career-driven Big Apple girl found herself loving the laid-back Low Country lifestyle, as well as being part of a family deeply rooted in the civic life of the region in a strong Catholic faith community. If it sounds like the plot of a Hollywood rom com, it was that magical, and often comedic, with plenty of drama and always a lot of love and laughter.

Laura poured herself into her work and home life and enjoyed using her artistic eye for interior design to create a warm and beautiful home and learning to garden. She especially took pride in the Confederate Rose bush she planted and nurtured and loved giving away rootings. When you drive through her neighborhood and see a flowering pink or white bush blooming in a yard, it was likely gifted by her to one of the many neighbors to whom she sold a house or otherwise befriended. This color changing flower is fittingly a symbol of grace, ephemeral beauty and adaptability.

Laura took great pride in her Irish heritage, and likely inherited her dance aptitude from her maternal grandfather who once taught Irish step dance. She stayed connected with the extended family, both cousins in Ireland and those fellow descendants of immigrants in the U.S.

Along with her family, Laura will be missed by the many friends she gathered to herself throughout a life she always conducted at full throttle as if she knew it might be short. There was a ferocity to her love. Those who felt it will never stop missing it.

Laura was born on New Year’s Eve, departed this earth on Halloween, and she sure did love a party. Please remember her with joy and be sure to treasure the people in your life every day. Mrs. Karrh is predeceased by her father, Joseph Lyons (d. 2016).

Mrs. Karrh is survived and deeply mourned by her husband, Greg; mother, Eleanor Lyons; children, Aiden and Emma Karrh; three siblings, Chris Lyons, Lenore Lyons Kostopoulos and John Lyons; and nieces, Julia and Sophia Lyons; Greg’s siblings, Randolph C. Karrh and son Coleman Karrh and Tobe Christopher Karrh and wife Melisa; and his sisters, Gina Karrh and Heather Karrh; and their mother, Paula Karrh of Swainsboro.

Should friends desire, memorial contributions may be made to one of these charities: St. Gregory’s School, 38 St. Gregory Dr., Bluffton, SC 29909 or John Paul 11 Catholic High School, 4211 N. Okatie Hwy., Ridgeland, SC 29936

Sauls Funeral Homes is in charge of arrangements.