Laura Kathleen McCready Hedgpeth

Laura Kathleen McCready Hedgpeth died after a half year of illness on Friday, May 16, at her Abingdon home.

Hedgpeth, who’d celebrated a 96th birthday this past Easter Sunday, was born on Saturday, April 20, 1929, in Abingdon’s Green Springs community. She was preceded in death by four sisters and one brother.

Through their mother’s family, the sextet of siblings were direct descendants of Col. James H. Snodgrass, an iconic American Revolution leader buried at Glade Spring. It was Snodgrass who once led southwestern Virginia Over Mountain Men into the Battle of Kings Mountain, a turning point of the American Revolution.

The six children came of age working on their maternal grandfather’s small farms while their mother, Lillian Powell McCready, rode horseback to teach at country schools.

All six were raised attending Mountain View (United) Methodist Church, on Highway 75. Their grandad, Robert L. Powell, donated the land for what’s literally “a little white church in the country.”

Kathleen was precocious, graduating as valedictorian in both high school and college. The latter was Madisonville, Tn.’s Hiwassie College (closed 2019), famous for educating first-generation rural Appalachia. She privately wished to study pre-med.

Hedgpeth was into the job market as a teen, selling tickets at Bristol’s Lee Movie Theater on West State, now gone; and working her way up to head cashier at Abingdon’s Kroger’s. Loyal to a fault, she shopped there the rest of her life.

During a first marriage, Hedgpeth owned and ran a select Bristol boutique, Jack & Jill’s, selling upscale children’s apparel. Yet she harbored further ambitions.

Intelligent, diligent, vivacious and lovely, Kathleen was recruited by an industrial titan: military defense contractor Raytheon. There she rose through the ranks to become Raytheon’s first woman executive. Her work with the company took her as far away as Boston, and she lived in several other east coast locations as well.

Homesick for Abingdon, Hedgpeth moved back and decided to dip her hand into local real estate. She sold initially for the Mahaffey Agency before going out on her own with Hedgpeth & Associates, subsequently becoming one of the region’s top relators. Still later, she sold properties through Century 21.

Hedgpeth liked thin carrots, green bananas, teriyaki, pork, cats, milk glass and Battenburg lace; disliked cottage cheese and cantaloupes; swore by Kroger’s Death by Chocolate ice cream. She survived breast cancer; and often proclaimed Abingdon was “about as good as you can do for a hometown.”

Amidst a stormy family of ScotsIrish ancestry, she was the diplomat, the caretaker, the peacemaker.

Hedgpeth was devout and read one Bible chapter, without fail, every night: “Then I start all over again.”

Kathleen Hedgpeth is survived by three nieces, Ann Grey, of Altavista, Va.; Mary L. Weisfeld, of Lake Wales, Fl.; and Linda D. Pike, of Portland, Or.; and three nephews, Michael J. DeBusk, of Sonoma, Ca.; Carl W. McCrady, Jr., of Midlothian, Va.; and C. Robert Weisfeld, of Abingdon.

Her family wishes to thank Elite Hospice, of Bristol, Va.; and the extraordinary, loving Christine Orr, Kathleen’s caretaker during the last chapter of her life.

A graveside service under the auspices of Frost Funeral Home will be held at Forest Hills Memory Gardens, on Wednesday, May 28, at 2:30 p.m., with music by Eugene Wolf, officiated by Rev. Christopher Duble, of Mountain View United Methodist Church.  Mrs. Hedgpeth will be interred alongside her mother.

Frost Funeral Home and Cremation Services is honored to serve the family of Laura Kathleen McCready Hedgpeth.