Apr 26, 2020

Clara “Becky” McKinstry Gittins passed away peacefully at home in Woodstock, Ga., Friday, March 27, 2020, at the age of 89. Family and her dog, Missy, were by her side.

Becky was born July 31, 1930, a daughter of Guy Hale McKinstry, a doctor, and Clara Bechman McKinstry, a nurse, in Pittsburgh. She was raised, along with her older brother Guy, in Washington in their family home, which was across the street from the Hillsview Sanitarium, which was established in 1913 by Clara’s paternal grandmother, also a physician.

Becky graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore, Md., with a teaching degree in 1953. She taught at a school for the deaf in Pittsburgh for several years. In Pittsburgh, she met Arthur Gittins and they were married in 1955. Art worked in the steel industry as an engineer and they moved about every five years with his job, living in Buffalo, N.Y., Steubenville, Ohio, Birmingham, Ala., and Hudson, Ohio, before their final move to Hudson, Quebec, in 1977, where Art retired.

Daughters Amy and Ann were born in Buffalo, and sons Bill and Tim were born while the family was living in Steubenville. “Four kids in six years” as Becky liked to say.

In Hudson, with her children grown, Becky was busy. She loved to swim at the yacht club and cross-country ski on the trails right from her back yard. Over the years, she had been very involved with Saint Mary’s Church, the Saint Mary’s Sewing Circle, Greenwood Centre for Living History and the Como Library. She was a lifelong bridge player.

Becky was a beautiful woman and gracious and kind to everyone she met all her life.

Becky was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 64 years, Art; her parents; her brother, Guy McKinstry; and her grandson, Ian Blair.

She is survived by daughters Amy Blair of Sitka, Alaska, and Ann Krull of Woodstock, Ga.; sons Arthur W Gittins III of Port Townsend, Wash., and Timothy Gittins of Toronto, Ontario; 10 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.