By Rebecca Goodman
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Mrs. McKinney

MOUNT LOOKOUT - Elizabeth McLane McKinney made deep and lasting commitments to causes she believed in - in her own city and abroad.

In Cincinnati, she was active with the opera and the nonprofit group Impact Over-the-Rhine.

And while living in Brussels, Belgium, she helped create Community Help Service - an organization that provided professional counseling services to the English-speaking community there.

"She led by doing," said her friend Gibson Carey IV of Newtown. "While she brought remarkable managerial skill and quiet competence to every cause, she was also a hands-on worker for whom no task was too menial."

In 1995 she was named Enquirer Woman of the Year and was awarded the Jefferson Medal for Outstanding Public Service by the American Institute for Public Service.

Mrs. McKinney, known as "Betsy" to her friends and family, died Friday of leukemia at Christ Hospital. The Mount Lookout resident was 73.

She grew up in New Canaan, Conn., where she attended a one-room school, Carey said. In 1952 she graduated from Connecticut College. She later served as a college trustee.

She married Richardson McKinney in 1953, and they moved to Cincinnati the following year.

They lived in Brussels - where her husband worked for Procter & Gamble - from 1966 to 1972.

Mrs. McKinney was a volunteer, employee, trustee and vice president of the Cincinnati Opera. She conceived and managed ECCO, an outreach program that took opera into the schools and arranged for students to travel to Music Hall for special performances.

She was also a volunteer and president of Impact Over-the-Rhine, a children's program.

She had a gift of conveying warmth and caring to everyone in her life. As her son Christopher McKinney of Appleton, Wis., said: "She was always with the person she was with."

Other survivors include: her husband, Richardson; a daughter, Cricket Brien of Philadelphia; two other sons, Rick McKinney, also of Appleton, Wis., and Jono McKinney of Bozeman, Mont.; two brothers, Thomas McLane of New Canaan, Conn., and James McLane; a sister, Greer Hopkins of California, and 12 grandchildren.

A memorial service is 11 a.m. Saturday at Christ Church Cathedral, 318 E. Fourth Street downtown. Burial was at Indian Hill Church.

Memorials: Cincinnati Opera Association, 1241 Elm St. Cincinnati 45210; or Impact Over-the-Rhine, P.O. Box 10003, Cincinnati 45202.

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com