‘He was a great liaison to all the communities’
Longtime city employee was also Stanton Center director
Kirby McKinney, a beloved friend, classmate, and longtime Annapolis city employee died Thursday. He was 73.
For eight years, McKinney served as a community liaison in the Mayor’s Office, working under three different administrations. He retired in 2014. Before that, from 2000 to 2006, he was the executive director of the Stanton Community Center, not far from his childhood home on West Washington Street.
McKinney was instrumental in advocating for the public housing community, former Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer recalled. He was especially keen on setting up community gardens on public housing properties. And despite resistance from the housing director at the time, McKinney persisted and was able to establish gardens in Robinwood and elsewhere.
“He just was a great liaison to all the communities in the city,” Moyer said. “He was always willing to tackle new things.”
The cause of McKinney’s death is unknown. It came one day after his mother, Sylvia McKinney died at age 96.
Tony Spencer, a 23-year veteran of the Annapolis Fire Department who later worked with McKinney in the Mayor’s Office, knew his co-worker as “a man with a lot of vision.” While the city was working on a new comprehensive plan, McKinney sought out feedback from public housing residents, especially young people, about what they would like to see in the document that helps guide the city’s development blueprint.
“He was working for me, but I was learning from him,” Spencer said. “You had to sit and talk with him. His thoughts were deep, unique and authentic.”
One of McKinney’s last ideas was to honor Billy Keys, an Annapolis resident and Black World War II veteran, with an art exhibit at the Stanton Center. Though he didn’t live to see it, Spencer said plans are still moving forward to make McKinney’s vision a reality.
Alderwoman Sheila Finlayson, D-Ward 4, couldn’t recall when she met McKinney because “I feel like I’ve always known him,”
she said.
Finlayson’s favorite memory of McKinney hand-dancing with him during community events. McKinney was particularly good at the form of swing dancing that dates back to the 1920s.
“I absolutely loved to dance with him,” Finlayson said. “It was always my greatest pleasure to be at an event where he was because I knew I was going to get a good hand dance.”
McKinney grew up on West Washington Street in the Old Fourth Ward, a stone’s throw from the elementary school that would become the Stanton Center. His father, Lacey McKinney, a school teacher and early civil rights activist, owned a beauty salon nearby. The elder McKinney was one of the “Annapolis Five,” a group of Black women and men who participated in a sit-in at an Annapolis restaurant in November 1960 as the civil rights movement began to grow over the ensuing decade. He passed away in 2008.
Among McKinney’s childhood friends was George Trotter, who became a longtime educator and administrator for Anne Arundel County Public Schools. The pair were part of a tight-knit group who would play baseball with makeshift equipment in a neighborhood cole yard.
The one word Trotter used to describe McKinney was “F-U-N,” he said.
“He had a very gregarious personality,” he said. “He got along with everyone.”
As a teenager, McKinney moved with his parents to the newly built Annapolis community of Best Gate Terrace in 1965.
McKinney attended the old Annapolis High School at what is now the Maryland Hall performing arts center. He graduated in 1968.
“He was a man about town on that campus. Folks would light up when Kirby came around ,” said Les Mobray, who was in McKinney’s class.
“He had the gift of gab, a smile on his face and a story to tell,” said Mobray, now a retired Anne Arundel County educator who lives in Bowie.
After serving in the military, McKinney earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Bowie State University and was a proud alum of the Epsilon Sigma chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. He moved away from home to attend college but returned to the split-level house on a corner lot with his bride, Beverly. There the couple raised their four children Kirby Jr., Tracy, Lacy and Janai McKinney.
That bubbly personality stayed with him for decades after he graduated, Mobray said. In 2018, the class held a 50th class reunion party at their old school building. Mobray recalled people coming up to him to ask, “Is Kirby coming?”
“When he showed up, the party was on,” Mobray said.
Even 50 years later, when McKinney and Mobray would cross paths, McKinney would say, “Hey classmate.”
“He was proud to be a part of your world, your circle,” Mobray said. “He made you feel like he wanted to be around you. I took it as a sign of respect for the relationship.”