By Ron Hayes
BOCA RATON — Her family called her “Mary Detail,” and during the final years of her life, the Boca Raton Historical Society benefited from Mary McKenzie’s love of detailed work.
A resident for 30 years, Mrs. McKenzie died April 10 after a short illness.“If we couldn’t remember somebody’s birthday, or something that had happened, we’d call her up,” remembers her sister, Pat Gilmour of Margate. “Her memory was phenomenal, right up until her last few days.”
In 2009, Mrs. McKenzie began volunteering as a greeter at the historical society.
“She was a lovely lady,” recalled Susan Gillis, the museum’s curator. “When you greet, you have some dead time, so Mary would sit at the front desk with old interviews from the 1970s and ’80s and transcribe them from paper into a computer. She typed several books for me, and liked doing it. I told her she knew as much about our history as I did. We got a two-for-one volunteer with Mary.”
Mary Lilian Campbell was born near London, Ontario, on a date and year few knew.
“Any woman who would tell her age will tell anything,” she insisted.
Mrs. McKenzie was an executive secretary to the president of Kellogg’s Canada in Toronto, where she met her future husband, Stanley McKenzie. She left Kellogg’s in the 1970s when her husband, an employee of Advance Machinery, was transferred to Frankfurt, West Germany. The couple traveled extensively in Europe and Asia. Mr. McKenzie died in 1997.
After moving to Boca Raton, she worked as a receptionist for the law firm of Osborne & Osborne.
The couple had no children, so Mrs. McKenzie considered her numerous nieces and nephews her grandchildren.
“Hallmark is going to miss her,” her sister said. “She sent cards to family, friends, acquaintances for birthdays, anniversaries, whatever. She’d purchase 50 cards in advance and have them ready to go.”
In the days before her death, Mrs. McKenzie worried that a birthday card she had written to a nephew, John Campbell, might not arrive in time for his birthday, April 8.
The card arrived on April 8, her sister said, and Mrs. McKenzie died two days later.
In addition to Pat Gilmour, she is survived by a second sister, Margaret Bowra; her nephews and nieces, John Campbell, Robert Campbell, James Campbell, Roger Campbell, Jeffrey Bowra, Jason Bowra, Dean Gilmour, Jo-Ann McLinchey and Kimberly Gilmour.
Mrs. McKenzie was an active member of the First United Methodist Church of Boca Raton, where a memorial service was held on April 18.
Her family asks that donations be made to the church’s music department, or Hospice-by-the-Sea of Palm Beach County.
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