Abbott Brooks Pinney III

LOUISVILLE - Abbott Brooks Pinney III (September 8, 1940 – April 24, 2024).

Abbott Brooks Pinney, III (‘Brooks”) passed away peacefully at his home on April 24, 2024. Brooks was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 8, 1940. He quickly remedied this error by making his way to Anchorage, Kentucky, where his parents, Dorothy Moremen Pinney and Abbott Brooks Pinney, Jr. happily raised him in a home built by his grandmother. Brooks graduated from Anchorage Public School, Eastern High School, and finally from Centre College in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree majoring in History and minoring in Chemistry (his access to the chemistry stock lab kept the Sigma Chis well supplied with grain alcohol). Brooks’ life was marked by service to his country and community. He served honorably in the National Guard; as president of the Anchorage Civic Club; as chairman and two-term board member on the Anchorage Independent School Board; and on the Vestry and Finance Committee of his childhood church, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Anchorage.

Brooks began working in computer programming with the Cabinet of Health and Family Services before moving to First National Bank of Louisville, where he worked on the programming team that developed the systems eventually used by Mastercard in its world-wide network. First National became National City, from which he retired in 1999.

While at Centre, Brooks met the love of his life, his surviving wife Calvin Riley Rogers (yes, she is named Calvin despite being a woman), and they were married on December 26, 1964. Their marriage brought forth the finest son and writer of obituaries the world has ever known—John Edward Brooks (“J.E.B.”) Pinney (Elizabeth).

In life and particularly in retirement, Brooks delighted in his family, especially his grandchildren and his greatest joys, Abbott Catesby, Woodford Brooks, and Ada Dorothy; their summer trips to Sea Island, Georgia; horse racing at Churchill Downs and Keeneland; UK sports; and walking around Anchorage in his baseball cap while smoking his signature pipe.

Brooks’ friends and family will miss his humor, generosity, and steadfast kindness.