Kennedy, Eleanor (Mrs. Earl C.) 1909-1989

KENNEDY, GREGG, SANGER

Posted By: Paul Van Dyke-Volunteer
Date: 2/26/2015 at 06:27:35

Source: Sioux County Capital (12-7-1989)

Born: March 15, 1909
Died: November 29, 1989

Eleanor Gregg Kennedy, 80, died of respiratory failure after a brief illness early Wednesday morning, November 29 in the Orange City Municipal Hospital. The funeral took place at 11:30 A.M. Saturday, December 2, in the chapel of the First Reformed Church in Orange City, with the Reverends Raymond Weiss and Steven Vander Molen officiating. Interment was in the West Lawn Cemetery. The Van Etten-Oolman-Van Gelder Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.

Eleanor Harris Gregg was born March 15, 1909 in Norwood (a suburb of Cincinnati) Ohio, the daughter of William Henry Gregg, Jr., and his wife Eleanor Mary Sanger. The father, who was of 17th century Virginia as well as Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, managed wholesale furniture businesses until settling in the area of Hollywood, California, where he was successively a grocer and an accountant. The mother, a poetess by avocation, was a descendant of New England Puritans and 19th century Irish immigrants.

Eleanor was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. She attended public schools in Norwood, Ardmore, Oklahoma, Dallas, Texas, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Hollywood, California, graduating from high school in the last named place in 1927. She attended business school briefly and for a time was secretary at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Hollywood. On November 17, 1931 she married Earl Carleton Kennedy, a member of the nearby Hollywood Presbyterian Church, to which some of her family belonged. She soon joined that congregation of which she remained a member for many years. She lived in Hollywood and vicinity from 1924-72 when she and her husband settled in Orange City to be with their son’s family.

Financial need led her to take various secretarial positions in the 1930s and 1940s, although her real desire was to be a full-time homemaker. Twice hospitalized for long periods with tuberculosis, her serious illness resulted in a deeper Christian faith. All her life she strove to be a peacemaker, subordinating her own interests to those of others.

Eleanor Kennedy was predeceased by her husband on November 19, 1988.

She is survived by her son, Earl William (Bill) Kennedy; her daughter-in-law, Cornelia Breugem (Nella) Kennedy; two grandsons, James Carleton Kennedy and David Harris Kennedy; two sisters, Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Gregg Thomas of Stanton, California, and Virginia Katherine Gregg Tinker (the wife of Laurance Frank Tinker) of El Toro, California; her husband’s sister-in-law, Dorothy Rose Goodner Kennedy of Glendale, California, four cousins in California, six elsewhere and seven nieces and nephews.