Theresa Grace McKenna

Theresa McKenna died at her home in Falls Church, Va., on Jan. 2, 2014. She was born in 1926 and raised in her beloved Newark, NJ., and after high school moved to New York. She came to Falls Church in 1960. She was active in labor, civil rights and anti-war movements from an early age and practiced her activist ways until her last days. She became a leader of the fight against cutting Medicare, Social Security and other social insurance programs during the mid-1990s, through regular appearances on national news programs and a much-publicized arrest for being civilly disobedient at a 1995 Congressional hearing on Medicare. Edward McKenna, her husband, died in 1979. She is survived by three children: Geoffrey McKenna of Alexandria, Va.; Anne McKenna of Austin, Texas; and Dave McKenna of Washington, D.C.; one sister, Margaret Fich of Copenhagen, Denmark; and six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. A gathering of friends and family is scheduled for January 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Murphy’s Funeral Home's Falls Church location. In lieu of flowers, Theresa requested donations to Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders.