Dr. Glenna McKnight
1980 1989
September 26, 1928 - April 12, 2009
Glenna Marie Bovee McKnight, born September 26, 1928 in Turton, South Dakota, daughter of Lloyd and Marie Lawrence Bovee, passed away at age 80 on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009, after a long illness. Her husband, James T. McKnight and son, Glenn McKnight, of Belle Valley, Pennsylania, were with her when she was called to be with God.
She graduated from Conde (South Dakota) High School in 1946, as part of a war-time graduating class of twelve students. She studied history at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, graduating with honors in 1950. Shortly after graduation, she married Swarthmore classmate, James T. McKnight, in the Conde Methodist Church. They embarked on married life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Jim earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at M.I. T. They subsequently lived in Texas, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, following Jim's career as an industrial research scientist.
Along the way, she enjoyed a forty-year career in early childhood education. Starting out as a teacher in the North Branch Reformed Church nursery school, she went on to earn a master's degree in early childhood at Keene State University and a doctorate in family and community education at Columbia University Teacher's College. She served as an advisor to churches seeking to start or improve their nursery school programs, founded and taught at an innovative public pre-school at Paramus High School in Paramus, New Jersey, and helped to launch the department of early education at Somerset County College. In Massachusetts, she had fifteen years of being her own boss when she founded and served as director of the Church Street Family Center, a pre-school program in Foxborough.
She always believed that her greatest achievement was neither her education nor her career, but her family. Her six children, Diane, Kim, Lee, Glenn, Carolyn and Steven, carried on either her husband's facility for science and her own fascination with education or both, and are scattered from New York to California, with careers in science and education. Her sons-in-law, Larry Esposito and Rajeev Talwani, daughters-in-law Beth Rose (deceased), Elaine Mendes McKnight, Vicki Kazmerski, and Linda Amstrong, and thirteen grandchildren, ages 9 months to 27 years, were also a source of great joy for her. Rhea, Ariel, Laura, Aidan, Phillip, William, Christina, Milo, Lucy, Jasper, Reilly, Benjamin and Keira will all miss their grandmother, who loved to send them books and hear about their adventures.
When Glenna and Jim chose to retire at 75 to Manlius, New York, to be near their son, Professor Lee McKnight of Syracuse University, and his family, Glenna found Manlius and Fayetteville to be warm and welcoming communities. Manlius Senior Center, with its book groups, exercise and memoir-writing classes, and the Fayetteville United Methodist Church, both provided her with many hours of fun and fellowship.
Burial in the Conde,South Dakota, Cemetery.
