Doyne McKinney - 1963
BIO & Picture
Update 2009-12-08
Doyne McKinney McKenzie -
I was born at Noyes Hospital in Columbia on August 18, 1945.
I have spent a great deal of my
life in Columbia. My father was a professor of psychology at MU.
He also established the Student Mental Health Clinic on the request of
Dr. Daniel Stein who had noticed a dip in attempted suicides at MU.
When asking around, he found that the students were talking to Daddy.
As a result we spent most summers either at another University and at a summer house we had at Pass Christian, Mississippi. This was because Daddy was always writing a book and was often interrupted by people needing counseling. There were very few pscyhologists in Columbia in the 40's and 50's.
I also spent my eighth grade year in Turkey attending an air force dependents' school in Ankara. This is because Daddy had a Fulbright to teach at Ankara University. I was very fortunate to travel abroad a good bit with my parents, because I was the youngest in my family and their interest and ability to travel abroad became greater as I was a teen.
I went to the University Lab School through 9th grade. There was always the big decision at that school of whether to continue or transfer to Hickman. I felt cramped at the Lab School but was terrified of Hickman! I couldn't eat for the first week or so of school each year, I was so scared.
After Hickman, I attended MU where I joined a sorority. With the sorority's encouragement, I became active in Student Union Activities serving as a committee chair, department chair, and then Secretary of the board. I was not a great student, but did enjoy my years. I majored in European History.
I met my husband, Bill McKenzie my senior year. Bill was a graduate of Southwest High School in KC. He attended Westminster College his freshman year. His class had been bigger than the whole stduent body at West U. He chafed at it and transferred to MU the next year. He was challenged with concentrating on academics at MU and left after that year for a 4+ year stint in the Navy as a radioman. He was stationed in Inchon, Korea, and on the Oklahoma City out of Japan. When he returned to MU, he says he always got letters each semester congratulating him on good grades and another telling him he was still on scholastic probation.
I went to KC after my graduation to work as a legal secretary in a small law firm. Bill and I married after he graduated from MU and before he started law school at UMKC. I stayed at the law firm for three years and then got a job as a correspondent at DataSystance, a computerized mutual funds transfer agency. I really loved this job as it entailed customer assistance was fairly cutting edge at the time.
Bill and I moved to Champagne-Urbana for 4 months to establish Illinois residency and for him to study for the Illinois Bar. We had a line on a job as county prosecutor in Winchester, Illinois, where Diane Dugan Fugit's father was raiseed.
After taking the bar, we traveled in Europe for 4 monhts. We had three good friends that we either sponged off of or lived around during this trip.
Bill passed the bar and we moved to Winchester where Bill ran for office. I worked in a law firm in Jacksonville, the next county seat, for three years, until I had to quit to deliver our daughter, Judith, in August, 1975. I was not very happy in Winchester. It had a population of 1700. The biggest intersection was a 3-way stop! I really dreaded the thought of being an old widow there. I thought if Bill died early I could go on, but if I were old, I'd be stuck. We decided to move back to KC.
Kansas City was a struggle. Prospects that Bill had tended to fade. He did work as an assistant prosecutor for Jackson County until he backed the wrong candidate and his job was not renewed. I worked a lot of the time as a legal secretary, first for a small firm in Johnson County, Kansas, and then for a big firm in downtown KC.
One good event was the birth of our son Colin in 1978.
At the time of my parents' deaths in 1981, things were falling apart. I think this was very good in the long haul. My oldest sister and brother wanted us to move back to Columbia to occupy our parents house. We would not have considered this if things were ducky in KC. We took our time to consider this offer, and did move back in June, 1983. This was the best move we ever made.
In 1985, Bill became City Prosecutor of Columbia. He saw the position grow from barely a full-time position until now where they are considering instituting a second and court at night to handle all the cases (this will be phased in over several years, I am told). Bill retired in 2002 and occupies himself with a bagpipe band, guitar and fiddle, traveling, etc.
When we moved to Columbia, I got a job with the holding company that owns First National Bank as a secretary. When Bill finally got his prosecutorial job, I took an interest test at MU to see what I wanted to do for an occupation. It steered me to library school. My life really opened up with this discovery.
I took two years to complete the 36 hours so that I could be a TA at Ellis Library. I then was fortunate enough to be hired by Daniel Boone Regional Library (the two-county system that runs Columbia Public Library). After serving as a reference librarian four years, I applied to be the Collection Development Manager, because I had become very interested in the collections and managing them.
I have been in this position 18 years and still love it. It is project oriented so there is always something new. Right now, I am preparing to give up selection of adult fiction material in order to work more on managing and moving the collection. Two of my projects have been moving the collection from the old building to the temporary quarters and then back and moving the Fulton collection to temporary quarters and back. I have just completed a study of space usage and am in the midst of another.
In 2002 I because one of the co-chairs of the One Read program at the library. This has been alot of fun and also a lot of work. We help a community reading panel to select 10 books from all the books proposed by the public to be the book for the year. They narrow the 10 to 2-3 for the public to vote on. Then we brainstorm about program ideas to build around the book in September.
Our daughter Judith Del Porto is
married with two boys (Mack [Heriberto, IV] 6 and William, 3) and lives
in Liberty, Missouri. We get to see them about once every two months.
Hery's (pronounced Eddy - his parents are Cuban emigres) parents
live here in Columbia, so we join families for holiday celebrations.
It has been a real addition for us. Our son Colin is unmarried and
manages Billiards On Broadway.
