Jeannie McDermott

Jeannie McDermott was a painter and outdoorswoman with a love of canoeing, hiking, cross-country skiing, camping, bird-watching and picnics. She was zealous about reading and children's literature and spent most of her professional life as a children's librarian. She loved to travel, frequently on long, looping car trips, with a box of books in the back seat. Those trips often ended on the north shore of Lake Superior or in far-eastern coastal Maine. For the last 25 years, Jeannie spent part of every summer in a cottage in the easternmost county of Maine, painting, paddling, looking out over the bay, enjoying the quirky community, and slowly restoring the cottage from a wreck that should have been bulldozed into a cheerful and comfortable home. Even in her last year, as her chemotherapy lost effectiveness, she made the trip to that cottage.

Jeannie painted in watercolors, often working out of the Buena Vista studio with a very special group of like-minded friends. Jeannie would also drive out into the countryside -- in Kansas, Maine, New Mexico or anywhere else -- hunting for good locations from which to paint. These trips occasionally aroused the suspicions of the local residents and led to visits from deputy sheriffs, one of whom explained his suspicion by citing a rash of cattle thefts. Jeannie was driving her Toyota Corolla at the time, leading us to wonder how a 100-pound woman might be expected to steal a steer and hide it in a Corolla.

Jeannie was an avid reader. She read contemporary fiction -- and some just-for-fun mysteries -- and continued to take an interest in children's literature after she retired. Christmas was an opportunity to carefully choose books for the children of distant family members, and to read aloud, with Dave, from at least one of her favorite children's Christmas stories.

Jeannie loved to cook. On vacations, she traveled with a cutting board in the back seat of the car because rental cottages so often had inadequate kitchen equipment. She wrote about cooking for the Christian Science Monitor. Her shrimp artichoke and cilantro pizza won the National Public Radio best pizza contest.

Jeannie died on November 26, 2023, at the age of 78. Memorial services will be 10:00am, Saturday, December 2 at Prairie Baptist Church, 7416 Roe Avenue, Prairie Village, Kansas.

She is survived by her husband, Dave; her sisters, Chris and Dottie; her nieces, Heather, Kim and Deanna; and grand-nieces and nephews, Logan, Kylea, Gracie, Zach and Ana.

In lieu of flowers, should friends desire, memorial contributions may be made to Prairie Baptist Church, for the support of Taizé services such as Jeannie's memorial, or to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust.