Hearts all over Great Falls dropped with thuds Monday with the news that Colleen Karmol, the colorful and fiercely loyal Republican whose eclectic fashion sense enlivened any room she entered, had died unexpectedly at home.
At press time, the cause of death had not been determined. Visitation was scheduled at Money and King in Vienna from 2-4 and 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 31. The funeral will be at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 1, at Fourth Presbyterian church in Bethesda, where Karmol and her parents, Retired Naval Adm. John Johnson and his wife, Marion, also of Great Falls, were members. The Rev. Glenn Knecht will officiate, said a member of the Karmol family.
Last week, Karmol had conducted a reorganizational meeting of the Great Falls Republican Women. She had recently been elected president.
Her intense loyalty and fierce allegiance to Republican candidates is legendary in and beyond Dranesville District, and Karmol’s home on River Bend Road has been the staging area for many of their campaign kickoffs.
Her husband, Dave, a lawyer, once ran for Commonwealth Attorney in Fairfax County, but lost to Democrat Bob Horan.
Colleen Karmol, 47, was a native of Texas who had also lived in California before she came to Great Falls.
She had a bold, colorful, and sometimes outrageous fashion sense. She combined colors in unusual ways and shopped thrift shops as often as fashion malls to find clothing she could combine to make her whimsical fashion statements.
No one else in Great Falls could walk fashionably into their favorite restaurant barefoot, as Karmol did recently. “I’ll bet her toenail polish matched her eye shadow,” said one close friend who admired Karmol’s impeccable attention to her appearance. It was not unusual for her hair to match her outfit, either.
Unafraid to approach any combination of colors in fashion, Karmol also applied that concept to her art. She designed and fashioned unusual, objects into works of art such as wreaths and centerpieces that she sold through word of mouth, at fund-raising auctions, and through local designers.
Many of them featured “found” natural objects, such as deer antlers, and raccoon tails, and fruits such as pomegranates, artichokes, and dried lemons that Karmol found and admired.
She kept outdated campaign posters in her garage, and used their wooden pegs to brace the swags and centerpieces she constructed at her home studio. The posters themselves became backdrops where she spray-painted dried leaves and flowers.
Karmol was well-read and broadly educated, and could hold her own in conversations with any of the politicos, or their moneyed supporters, whom she met and invited to Republican Party functions.
Her adulation of Republican candidates was matched in equal intensity by her appreciation for the environment, her love for animals, and her lion-like devotion to her friends.
Karmol’s fashion sense and irrepressible humor coexisted, sometimes paradoxically, with her deeply traditional values and flatfooted honesty.
At times, that contradiction engendered controversy. Last year, after one of her artsy wreaths was hung in a Great Falls restaurant, someone called to complain about the tanned raccoon tail at its center. Management removed it, but now, another of Karmol’s elegant wreaths hangs at the fireplace at The Tavern.
“She loved everybody, and she couldn’t understand why they didn’t always love her back,” said her friend, Great Falls Art Centre Director Marcia Fouquet.
“A light went out in Great Falls” when Karmol died on Jan. 27, said Fouquet. “She had her imperfections, but she was the life of the party. She was unique. There will never be another Colleen.”
Karmol worked as a staff member for former Dranesville District Supervisor Ernest Berger, a Republican who held the office from 1992-1994. More recently, she worked as an interior designer.
She is survived by her husband of 17 years, Dave; her daughter, Aslan, and her parents, Marion and Adm. John Johnson (Ret.), all of Great Falls; and two sisters: Kerry McElroy, of Ashburn, and Patty Johnson of California.