Betty Mary Chenault McKinley Cline

Betty Mary Chenault McKinley Cline, 103, passed away peacefully at home in Winston-Salem North Carolina, early in the morning of Thursday, June 8, with several of her daughters and family. She had been in declining health, cared for chiefly by her family. She much enjoyed support and frequent visits by the ladies from her Circle, several dear neighbors and friends, her daughters, and daughter Dawna, who recently arrived to assist in care.

Betty Mary was born in El Paso, Texas, October 8, 1919, the rambunctious daughter of Vida Redic and Dwight Edwin Chenault. She lived a long and full life, filled with family, church, several generations of Girl Scouts, and 28 years working for the California Division of Highways as a draftsman/Senior Delineator and later in community outreach roles. Betty married Thomas Bragg McKinley, a fellow Engineering student she met at college in Arizona, in June of 1942.

Betty worked throughout the WWII at several drafting jobs, including lofting – drafting on metal – for planes for the Navy, while Tom worked for the Army as a civil engineer in Nicaragua and then served in the Army in Europe. They moved to Los Angeles, California after, built a house and home and raised five daughters together in Eagle Rock. After leading a Girl Scout Troop in Eagle Rock that grew to encompass scouts from all over Los Angeles, and included many camping and backpacking adventures in the early years, Betty was a Leader-Trainer, Troop Consultant, and Senior Board Advisor for many subsequent years. Thomas died suddenly in November of 1965, and Betty sustained her multiple endeavors nonetheless.

Betty remarried in 1970, running a household with six more children for nine years. She had served as an elder and a Deacon for the Eagle Rock Presbyterian Church, then, beginning in 1979, fulfilled three years on a volunteer mission in the hills of Kentucky. Later, she relished working at a Crisis Control Ministeries and enjoying the fellowship of friends or leading study groups at her newly adopted church after she moved to live closer to some of her daughters in N.C.

In her later years, she loved to travel, visiting her five daughters and their families, as well as England, Wales, Ireland, Croatia, Thailand, and Hong Kong. She continued being curious, active, and involved throughout her life, and will be sorely missed by many. She is survived by four daughters: Nancy McCarter (Jim), Judy McKinley Brewer (Eric), Janet McKinley Williams (Steve) and Dawna Grace (David), many nieces and nephews including Rosemary Sterner, and Patricia Bauer and their families with whom she kept in frequent contact, as well as ten grandchildren, including the four children of her youngest daughter, Tami Gray, who died in 2018, and considerable extended family including some of her stepchildren. Their will be no formal services per the request of Mrs. Cline.