Obituaries

Everyone needs an Anna Marie in their life. A best friend, confidant and life coach. A cook and storyteller. A Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother and Great-Great-Grandmother.

Anna Marie Kendig passed away on March 31, 2026, after a fall in the home she shared with her daughter and son-in-law. She almost certainly met thousands of people over the course of her 95 years in New York, Florida and Illinois, and probably befriended nearly every one of them. For her, every interaction offered a chance to get to know someone better, to ask about spouses and partners and children. Always, the children. You could be the cousin or classmate she’d grown up with in the small, close-knit town of Clyde, NY; or the dialysis staff who interacted with her three times a week in Illinois; or the close-knit group of pals across the country she checked in with weekly, if not daily. Her curiosity about you, and concern for you, never wavered.

Her genuine zeal for talking with people made her a natural fit for the work she did the longest outside the home. In the 1970s, living in Oak Brook, Illinois, she took a job patrolling the hallways of nearby malls, introducing herself to shoppers and convincing them to participate in a market research focus group. She was very good at it: People didn’t so much say no to Anna Marie as she wouldn’t let them. And in a development that would become a tradition, her boss became her new best friend.

It wasn’t her first job and wouldn’t be her last, and it was done as a single mother with two teenage boys at home. Her eldest son, Ron, and her daughter, Susan, were in college during those years, and her sons John and Christopher were still at home. When the nest finally emptied, she moved back to Clyde, NY, to care for her father, Angelo, shortly after the death of her mother, Frances or “Fanny.” She found work, and more friends, there in an aviation parts factory. According to her supervisor, who also became a dear friend, Anna Marie was asked, often, to stop telling stories and making her colleagues laugh.

After her father’s death, she moved to south Florida, following her son, John, and his wife, Ilene. Her son Christopher and his wife, Debbie, were instrumental in helping her craft the next chapter of her life in Delray Beach, and it was there in a sun-kissed condo filled with fellow retirees (and soon-to-be retirees) that she further enlarged and nurtured her circle of friends. She went back to work, too, in a vintage consignment shop, and of course one of her co-workers and two owners of a similar neighboring shop became best friends, too.

It was in Delray that her cooking skills gained a larger audience. She’d happily fed even happier family and friends for years at this point, and had refined the recipes first learned from her Italian grandmother and Italian-American mother. Indeed, one of her prized possessions was a first-edition Antoinette Pope cookbook. Word of the meals she served got around, and Boca Raton Magazine featured her in its “Best of 1999” roundup with the story, “For the Love of the Meatball.”

She would move to a different bungalow in a different part of Delray, then into senior living, and then in 2021 moved back to Illinois, first in Geneva Place and then in Silver Glen Senior Living in South Elgin. In her one-bedroom apartment there she convened weekly dinners,

getting as many as nine other people around a table built for five, tops. (“Who am I not supposed to invite?” she would ask.)

In 2024, needing more care, she moved in with her daughter, Susan, and her husband in St. Charles. She would try to visit her pals at Silver Glen weekly, or would invite them over for brunches and dinners, where Italian (or Italian-adjacent) dishes featured prominently. (“It’s what they’re expecting,” she would explain.) Her housemates became her sous chefs, and her daughter’s baked desserts a featured attraction. She even convinced Susan to make “the things with honey”; fellow Italian-Americans, you know what she’s talking about, right?

The “things with honey,” as well as an Easter calzone, were to be on her Easter menu this year, but her accident precludes that. She was looking forward to Easter and to Spring itself, too: she marveled at stands of deep green trees and rows of brightly colored tulips. She looked ahead as well to sitting on the porch when it finally warmed up, and to the neighbor’s dog who would inevitably trot over and sit next to her as she read, or watched the world go by, or more likely chatted on the phone.

All those earthly things are not hers to enjoy anymore. Just as we, her friends and family, now are left without her. From children to grandchildren to extended family and friends, we may not always have heeded her advice, but we knew it always came from a place of fierce, protective love.

Anna Marie is preceded in death by her father, Angelo, and her mother, Frances; and by her ex-husband Ronald. She is survived by her children: Ronald, Susan (Jeff) Forsell, John (Ilene) and Christopher (Deborah); her grandchildren Robert and Amy Kendig, Andy and Christian Forsell, Samantha Kendig Hopkins, Noelle Kendig Martin, and Emily Kendig Vinson, and Jonathan (Shayne) Kendig; her great-grandchildren Gia (Marland) Howard, Niko and Saoirse Kendig, Rhett Vinson, and Theo Forsell; and her great-great-grandchildren Wynter and Oaklynn Howard.

Visitation is at Yurs Funeral Home, 1771 W. State Street in Geneva, Illinois, from 4pm to 7pm on April 8. A funeral mass will be said at St. Patrick’s Church at 6N491 Crane Road in St. Charles, Illinois, at 10am on April 9. A private burial follows at Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Hillside.

Donations may be made in Anna Marie’s name to Northwestern Memorial Foundation, PO Box 734985, Chicago, Illinois 60673-4985. Please make checks payable to “Northwestern Memorial Foundation” and include Anna Marie Kendig in the memo line. Donations can also be made online at foundation.nm.org or over the phone at (833) 443-8663. Your gift will support the Cancer Center at Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois.

• Send Flowers
• Guest Book
• Share
• Email
• Print