Alice K. Mackinnon died Feb. 26, 2024, while in hospice at Summa Akron City Hospital in Akron, Ohio.

She had just turned 100 years old the month before, celebrating with homemade lobster rolls, chocolate cake and sips of good champagne at the home of her son James in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where she had been living for just a little more than a year. She was a long-time resident of Barrington, Rhode Island, and before that, New Jersey.
Alice was born in a home on Orchard Street in Englewood, New Jersey, on Jan. 21, 1924, the daughter of the late Herman and Carrie (Tice) Klingelstein. She was named after her Aunt Alice, who saved her life in childbirth.

Alice graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood: a favorite story she’d tell was the time she and friends cut school to go see a young Frank Sinatra perform across the Hudson River in nearby New York City.

During World War II she worked for a while in her father’s neighborhood butcher shop, Hudson Meat Market on West Hudson Avenue, where her responsibilities included neatly raking the sawdust that covered the store’s floor.

She also was employed as a dental assistant before getting a job in shareholder relations at American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) in New York City. She said she sometimes had to run from her family home to make it on time to the nearby stop for the train that took her into the city, with the conductor holding the train if he saw her racing to get onboard.

She met her future husband, William Mackinnon, as part of a two-couple blind date, with all meeting outside the Hotel Taft in New York. Alice said she and a girlfriend rode the subway and got off just a block from the hotel, then took a taxi the rest of the way because they thought that getting out of a cab would impress the guys. It apparently worked.

She enjoyed traveling, including going on a cross-country driving trip early in her life and later traveling to Europe with her husband. She, her siblings and parents would vacation at her late Uncle Len’s home in St. James on Long Island, a place near the beach given the nickname “The Shack” and which didn’t get indoor plumbing for years.

As befitting the daughter of a butcher and her mother, who was a really good cook, Alice also excelled with food, although she once nervously asked her mother how to boil water in front of her future husband early in their dating life. That didn’t deter things, with the two getting married in 1957 in Englewood.

After recovering from the boil water faux pas, Alice turned to cooking and baking from scratch as she raised her family. Specialties included pot roast (a personal favorite of her’s), steaks, stews, pies, cakes, bread and more. She added seafood (she particularly enjoyed lobster) to her repertoire after the family moved in 1968 from their home in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, to Barrington, Rhode Island. She collected cookbooks and recipes. A special treat for family dinner, done just once or twice a year, was homemade waffles with ice cream, something her mother made during her childhood in Englewood. Among her favorite desserts was a scoop of butter pecan and chocolate ice cream.

She was devoted to her children and spent most of her life caring for her daughter, Jane. She greatly enjoyed spending time with her nieces and nephews and their children, and also visiting with her sisters and brother. She loved having dogs and cats in the family but not so much any reptiles her sons brought home. She also kept driving safely into her early 90s. After selling the family home in Barrington she lived for years with her son Bill and his family in Franklin, Mass., and then in early 2023 moved to live with her son James in Ohio.

Besides her parents, she was preceded in death by her husband, William; brother Herman “Bud” Klingelstein Jr.; and sisters Marie Barth, Doris Klingelstein, and Blanche Bruno. She is survived by sons James of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and Bill (Julie) of Franklin, Mass.; daughter Jane of Northbridge, Mass.; grandchildren Christopher and Isabella Danti of Franklin, Mass; and nieces and nephews.

Her family asks that people make donations to their local animal shelter and food pantry in lieu of flowers.

Initial arrangements and cremation were handled by Adams Mason Funeral Home in Akron, Ohio.

A Memorial Service and Celebration of Life will be held from 4-8 p.m. on Saturday, March 16, 2024 in the W. Raymond Watson Funeral Home, 350 Willett Avenue, Riverside, R.I. Her cremains will be placed in the family plot in Forest Chapel Cemetery, Nayatt Road, Barrington.

And when you get the chance, treat yourself and buy good quality butter pecan and chocolate ice cream and have a scoop of each. Alice was right … it’s a great combination and even better when over warm, homemade waffles for a special dinner.