It was a somber day when we heard that our old friend Anne Hennessy Corbett McKee had passed on in May. But we rejoiced in knowing that she had fully lived each day of her 100 years with uncommon vision and curiosity.
“I never wasted any time,” she told us when we visited her at Poinciana Gardens on the cusp of her centenary. Surrounded by her beloved books and paintings, she held court with characteristic energy. She reminisced about her years in Key West, where she touched down more than half a century ago.
Through her early days into Democratic island politics, then widowed Anne Corbett met columnist Ross McKee, whom she married in 1976. “It was love at first sight — for him,” she said with a wink. The dynamic duo would go on to become a force in the cultural landscape of the island.
To Key West at large, Anne was known, of course, for the eponymous Artists Fund that she founded in 1992 — that is, after having distinguished herself as Chair of the Monroe County Arts Council, Trustee of the Florida Arts Alliance, and a charter member of the Key West Cultural Commission. But to the Friends of the Key West, she will always be fondly remembered as our first president.
“I grew up with a brilliant, strict Irish father, and education was a big thing, even for girls,” explained Anne, who was born in Avondale, Newfoundland, to a family of builders. “If a kid reads, he or she succeeds,” she said, her own lilting accent betraying her antecedents.
To provide her own three children with wider educational opportunities, Anne moved to Montreal. There she worked as an accountant at Aviation Electric, rising to become their first female supervisor. After vacationing in Key West at the bidding of a niece, she decided to pull up her stakes and retire on the island in 1971. But Key West had other plans.
“I didn’t even have a car in those days,” said Anne, “and I walked everywhere.” She spent time at Key West Library where she checked out “dozens of books at a time.” At the Library, Anne met May Hill Russell, then its director, who soon had her persuaded to join the Friends, a loose organization of volunteers at the time.
“She was one of the smartest people I ever knew,” said Anne, who remembered that May soon had her reviewing books for the collection — among them Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, which was a behemoth at, “more than a 1000 pages.” Under Anne’s leadership, the book sales began, raising much needed funds.
“Everything the library needed,” said Anne, “we got for them.”
Co-board member David Kaufelt started the Key West Literary Seminar under the auspices of the Friends. “We had wonderful speakers,” she said, “many of them, like David Halberstam, were right here in Key West. In those days this was a town with more writers than resident artists.”
A voracious reader to the end, Anne continued to dip into poetry every night and took a keen interest in world events, “reading and listening to everything.” How did it feel to be almost 100 years old?
“Every day, I thank the Lord for my mind,” Anne concluded, before sending us on our way. She had books yet to finish and a BBC recap to tackle later on.
Ellen T. White & Marsha Williams