Jane V. McKenna

Jane Lee Vannerson McKenna of Greenville, DE passed away peacefully at home on February 27, 2017. Jane was born in Wilmington to Walter Leroy Vannerson and Margery Robinson Vannerson McKinstry on June 4, 1930. She graduated from P.S. duPont High School in 1948 and from the University of Delaware in 1952. Jane taught 1st and 2nd grades at Silverside and Greenville Elementary Schools and then married Thomas Atcheson McKenna, whom she met in the sandbox as a child. Jane and Tom went on to have 3 children: Tom Jr. and twins, Carol and Doug.

Tom’s job with DuPont moved the family to Ridgewood, NJ in 1968, where Jane was active with the Junior League, conducting school tours of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another move took the family to Lakewood, WA, where Jane’s fear of heights exhibited itself on a trip to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Peninsula – Jane had to put a paper bag over her head to make it down the hairpin turns of the mountain road (fortunately, she was not driving). In 1973, the family returned to Wilmington, where Jane became a guide at Winterthur Museum for more than twenty years, specializing in Chippendale furniture. Jane loved nothing more than being surrounded by her family and friends, hosting parties – including her annual Derby Day party, crab feasts, playing tennis, bridge, beach vacations in Stone Harbor, NJ and Pawley’s Island, SC, her dear dachshunds, Freds I-IV, and her newest adopted dachshund, Chief Fred V.

Jane is survived by her husband of 62 years; her children: Thomas A. McKenna, Jr. and his wife Tile, of Chadds Ford, PA; Carol Lee McKenna Mongan and her husband John, of Greenville, DE; Douglas Bradford McKenna of Avondale, PA; her grandchildren: Thomas William McKenna; Merrill Ann McKenna; John Terrence Mongan, Jr. and his wife Kristen; Elizabeth Jansen Mongan; Bradford Gage McKenna; Kathleen Curtis (Kate) McKenna; her brother, Robert Aylmer Vannerson and his wife Alice of Concord. MA; her step-sister-in-law, Jane Edwards McKinstry of Wilmington; and a host of beloved lifelong friends.