Leneta Anne Harold Kitchel

Leneta Anne Harold Kitchel, 83, passed away September 9, 2024. She was born on December 28, 1940, in front of a fireplace near the town of Chloe, West Virginia, the second child of Orvia Conley Harold and Harry Harold. Her brother, Lowell, had been born in 1935, and her sister, Reberta Kay, would be born in 1946.  

In 1943, her family migrated to the Akron, Ohio, area for a better future, and work in the munitions industry during the war. Leneta graduated from Tallmadge High School in 1958, and, after working for a year, followed a close friend in attending Manchester College, a Church of the Brethren school in North Manchester, Indiana. She formed many lifelong friendships there, none more important than her future husband, Larry E. Kitchel, from Logansport. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English in 1963, planning to teach high school. Leneta and Larry married on July 6 of that year, and Larry finished his Business degree at the end of the fall semester. 

The couple moved to Elkhart, then Lafayette, where Leneta earned her Master’s degree in English at Purdue University. In 1966, Leneta gave birth to their son, Phil, and in 1969, to their daughter, Laura. In early 1970, the family moved to Richmond, Indiana, where Larry took a job with the IRS, and, settled in the Glen Hills neighborhood adjacent to the woods of the city park, they began to put down roots.  

Richmond is home to Earlham College, a Quaker school, and the Quaker community is active there. The family began attending West Richmond Friends Meeting, a church near the campus, and the family felt at home there. When the kids were both in school, Leneta took the position of the church’s secretary. She did not teach English again, but this began an important new role. When the pastor retired, the church replaced him with a Ministry Team of leaders in the meeting, which included Leneta. The team rotated in leading meeting for worship on the facing bench, and they occasionally gave the message, which Leneta also did. The community at West Richmond and the courses Leneta took and the fellowship she shared at Earlham School of Religion were foundational for the rest of her life. 

The family lived in Richmond through the ’70s, forming relationships at church and in the community. Larry and Leneta were active in the PTA and on the board of the small neighborhood swimming pool. They hosted and visited family and friends, celebrated holidays at home and with their parents in Akron and Logansport, and took several long driving vacations to the national parks both east and west. Together the Kitchels saw the country and celebrated personal milestones like hiking in the Grand Canyon and climbing Longs Peak in the Rocky Mountains.  

In 1979, the family made the difficult decision to move north of Indianapolis for Larry to become the business manager of Conner Prairie Pioneer Settlement, a living museum operated by Earlham College. The couple would live in the same home for the next 40 years. Phil and Laura attended Hamilton Southeastern Schools and then went to Manchester College. Larry went on to work for the Farmer’s Home Administration in the federal government, and Leneta spent many years as the executive secretary for a vice president of IBM in downtown Indianapolis. As their financial responsibilities shrank, Larry and Leneta took smaller and more flexible jobs to have more time for family and travel. Phil married Cindy Morrow Kitchel, and their sons are Max, now 22; Tom, now 19; and Sylvester, now 16. Laura married Dennis Bordenkecher, and they have a son, Alex, now 18, and a daughter, Erin, who did not survive to her birth. 

When Larry and Leneta retired, travel became their life. They bought a tiny Scamp trailer big enough to sleep, cook, and if necessary eat in. They drove all over the U.S. and Canada. They put 94,000 miles on the trailer alone, and countless more on their car when the trailer was parked. Leneta navigated with an atlas in her lap; Larry drove. Leneta often spotted unplanned stops that became highlights. They were campground hosts for a summer in the Black Hills, and they flew to Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand, and drove and hiked all over those landscapes. They agreed that they had more fun than any two people are entitled to. 

They cared for aging parents and mourned them when they passed. They celebrated new grandchildren and enjoyed great times and good meals with their children and their families. This summer they celebrated their 61st anniversary, and for their 60th, they took a riverboat cruise from Memphis up the Mississippi to the Ohio, east to the Cumberland, and up to Nashville. 

Leneta and Larry were life partners in every possible way. Their lives, careers, and family were always a shared enterprise, and they did almost everything together. But they worked so well as a unit because they were distinct as individuals. Leneta was thoughtful, calm, reflective, deliberate, patient. She was curious, intellectual, committed, passionate, and articulate. She was smart, sharp, and fiercely proud, but also modest and self-effacing. She stood out by not trying to. She had strong opinions and a stern, cold temper, and she did not tolerate foolishness, ignorance, carelessness, or unkindness. Real feelings mattered to her, but she was practical and unsentimental. She was always political, as an educated woman of her generation had to be, and she could be unashamedly partisan, as most of her times demanded. But she was also willing to change her mind when given a convincing argument. She was open, patient, a listener, and a learner. She was a kind, loving, fun, disciplined mother who showed her children how to grow up and live. She would have said she was an adequate cook. 

She was also warm, caring, kind, loving, generous, adventurous, courageous, tough, and funny. She was sensitive and vulnerable. She loved real country music, early rock and roll, history, politics, and the most absurd comedy. She loved to laugh. She was an avid and lifelong reader of books and maps and news and letters. She eagerly shared all of her enthusiasms: She loved long conversations with people she loved. 

Leneta Kitchel was, first and finally, a great and true friend, and people could see and feel that upon meeting her and after knowing her for many years. She will be missed so much and remembered so well by her friends, her family, and her husband. In all the most meaningful ways, she will be with them always.