Dorothy Higdon, secretary

Dorothy Beksinski Higdon, a homemaker and former secretary once active in scouting, died of heart disease Friday at her Mays Chapel home. She was 89.

Born Dorothy Beksinski in Baltimore and raised in Fells Point, she was the daughter of Walter and Katherine Beksinski. She was a 1941 Eastern High School graduate.

As a young woman, she was a legal secretary for Dickman, Wright & Pugh and was an early T. Rowe Price employee. She was also a Loyola Blakefield and Johns Hopkins University secretary.

Mrs. Higdon was a volunteer with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts beginning in 1960. She was a den mother in Cub Scouts Pack 750 at Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church.

She enjoyed to travel throughout the United States, Asia and Europe in conjunction with the State Department’s People-toPeople program. She had also had a summer home on Rock Creek in Pasadena and boated and crabbed.

Family members said she enjoyed visiting art museums in the area. She was a member of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. She and her husband hosted family events at the Johns Hopkins Club.

A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 11:30 a.m. today at St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, 100 Church Lane in Cockeysville, where she was a member.

Survivors include five sons, Charles R. Higdon III of Allentown, Pa., Jeffrey F. Higdon and Mark W. Higdon, both of Lutherville, John L. Higdon of Champaign, Ill., and R. Emmett Higdon of Charlotte, N.C.; a daughter, Kimberly A. Henry of Glendale; a sister, Eleanor Florence of Baltimore; 10 grandchildren; and a greatgrandson. Her husband of 59 years, Charles R. Higdon Jr., a Hampden machinery and equipment business owner, died in 2010.

— Jacques Kelly