Ida Kendrick died in her home at Cedar Lane Apartments in Leonardtown, Maryland on March 10, 2011. She was born Ida Etheridge on Sept. 4, 1915, the fifth of six children, into a working farm family in Back Bay, Virginia.

From the beginning, she loved nature and embraced the excitement and surprises of a life lived outdoors. When she was eighteen, she married Daniel McKenney, and together they raised four boys, whom she mothered with devotion and enthusiasm. At the end of a school day, she was a great person to come home to.

When the last of her children were in high school, she prepared for the next phase of her life by going to college at what is now Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia and earning her degree in Education so she could teach high school, which she did with considerable success for twenty five years thereafter. It was during this time that she became an inveterate world traveler, eventually visiting every inhabited continent - not a bad resume' for a geography teacher.

In 1980 she married Lawson Kendrick, and together they traveled, danced and laughed through 14 extraordinarily happy years until Lawson's death at the age of 94. For the next ten years, she didn't miss a beat, always traveling, tending her beautiful flowers, playing a wicked bridge game, enjoying the widest circle of friends and forever present for her descendant's births, graduations, and weddings, however distant. Even at the end, living in an assisted living facility, and with limited mobility, she made life look like a holiday.

Long before the rise of Women's Lib, she showed that there were no limits to what a woman can do, or how much she can contribute to others. She modeled a life that was an inspiration to everyone whose lives she touched, and they were legion. She was an Episcopalian and a member of Alpha Delta Kappa Sorority of Virginia. In 2006 she moved to St. Mary's County, Maryland to be close to her family and immediately became an active resident member of the Wildewood Retirement Community. She is survived by three sons, Daniel W. McKenney, M. Robert McKenney, and Shepard McKenney; five grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren.

A Memorial Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, March 26th at 3:00 pm at West Saint Mary's Manor in Drayden, Maryland. Her family wishes to express their gratitude to Hospice of St. Mary's and all of Ida's "Earth Angels" at Cedar Lane.

Arrangements provided by the Brinsfield Funeral Home, P.A., Leonardtown, MD.

Memorial donations may be sent to: Friends of Cedar Lane, 22680 Cedar Lane Court, Leonardtown, Maryland 20650.

Her last request to her mourners was, "Don't send flowers, plant some!"