1930 – 2019

TOPSHAM – Jeanette Kinney Cakouros, 89, died Tuesday, May 14, 2019, at The Highlands.  She was born in Dover-Foxcroft on May 9, 1930, the fourth of five children to Raymond A. and Lila (Gallup) Kinney.  She attended Dover-Foxcroft schools and was a 1948 honors graduate of Foxcroft Academy.  Following high school, she worked in Boston for a year at New England Mutual Insurance while attending college classes at night.  She moved to Kansas to attend the College of Emporia where she was a dean’s list student who graduated in three years.  She also earned graduate hours at both the University of Kansas and the University of Maine.

On her way home from college, she stopped to visit her brother Glen in Lancaster, Pa. She became a waitress at the Stockyard Inn where she met the ‘love of her life’, John Cakouros, the bartender, who was from Brooklyn, N.Y. They were married at the United Baptist Church in Dover-Foxcroft on April 25, 1954.

The couple lived in Washington, D.C., while he attended George Washington University. Jeanette worked as a research assistant in the library of U.S. News & World Report, and later as assistant editor of the National Education Association magazines, the Research Quarterly, and the Journal of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.

They moved to Bath in 1958 where John would teach at the junior high school for 25 years. They raised two nieces and a nephew before adopting two baby boys. She was a stay-at-home mother but worked part-time jobs including census taker, substitute teacher and editorial assistant at the Coastal Journal. In 1963 they bought a house on the Kennebec River in north Woolwich where they lived for over 42 years. In 2004, they sold the property to The Nature Conservancy.

In 1976 she became a freelance, non-fiction writer, publishing news and feature articles, essays, book reviews and poetry in newspapers and magazines from Maine to Oregon.  She wrote a food/interview column for the Times Record titled ‘Good Cooks Among Us’, worked for Maine Public Radio voicing personal essays over the air, and prepared feature reports.  Her column, Maine Reflections, ran in five Maine newspapers.

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She and her sister Ruth Flowers formed a small publishing company in 1995 called MaineRhode Publishers.  They published two books, one of essays and poetry by their mother, Lila Gallup Kinney, called ‘Lilac Scented Memories’, and ‘Cats’ Meow, an Anthology of Cat Tales’ from authors across the country and Canada.

Jeanette won many writing awards from Maine Media Women, National Association of Press Women, Byline Magazine and others.  She also served two terms as president of Maine Media Women and the Woolwich Historical Society.  She was active in the Maine Poets Society, a Literacy Volunteer tutor for 11 years and a volunteer in the Parent Teachers Association as well as the United Church of Christ Congregational in Bath.

In addition to writing, she loved to read and enjoyed doing genealogy.  She liked to cook large meals for family and neighborhood gatherings.  She was active in the Kinney Family Reunion Association and served two terms as president. In later years she switched to fiction writing and was working on a historical novel at the time of her death.   She was published in several poetry anthologies and in a prose anthology of her writers’ group Words On Wednesday Night and another by Media Women called Jump Lines.

She was predeceased by her husband of 60-plus years, John Cakouros, three older brothers, Richard R. Kinney and his wife, Ruth Merrill Kinney of Atkinson, Glendon Kinney of Westboro, Mass., and Donald Kinney of Brunswick and a special nephew, Andrew Kinney of Windham.

She is survived by her sons, Craig Cakouros and his son Garen of Limerick; Jason Cakouros and  wife Eileen and two children Anna and Drew Cakouros of Milton, Mass.;  sister, Ruth (Kinney) Flowers of Lincoln, R.I.; two special nieces, Dawn Kinney Garrott and husband Riley of Marysville, Ohio; Leslie Kinney Jandreau and her companion Andre Despres of Toronto, Canada; nephew, Douglas Kinney and wife, Lyliane,  of Belgium;  niece-in-law, Cheryl Kinney of Windham; grandnephews, Michael Kinney of Bath, and Adam Kinney of Brighton, Mass.

Visiting hours will be held from 6-8 p.m., on Tuesday, May 21, 2019, at Daigle Funeral Home, 819 High St., Bath. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m., on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at the funeral home. Interment will follow at Riverside Cemetery, Days Ferry, Woolwich. Following burial a reception will be held at the Senior Citizen Center, 145 Floral St. in Bath. Condolences may be made online at www.daiglefuneralhome.com.

In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory may be sent to:

CHANS
60 Baribeau Drive
Brunswick, ME 04011,

or to the Phippsburg Congregational Church
P.O. Box 301
Phippsburg, ME 04562

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