Winifred M. Kilday

Waltham – Mrs. Winifred M. (Mulcahy) Kilday, of Waltham, died Friday, November 8, 2013 at Meadow Green Nursing Home, Waltham. She was 85.

Winifred was born in Boston on August 4, 1928, a daughter of the late Nicholas and Winifred (Fitzgerald) Mulcahy. She was raised in Jamaica Plain and graduated from Saint Thomas Aquinas High School. After that she attended the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance in Boston's Back Bay, the forerunner to today's Bentley University in Waltham. Winifred was always happy to share that one of her accounting instructors was none other than the school's founder, Mr. Harry C. Bentley.

After her Bentley education she went to work for the Boston Public Schools where she worked for forty-two years as an administrative assistant in the food services program. On April 18, 1954 she married her sweetheart, Boston Firefighter Thomas F. Kilday. The couple lived in Jamaica Plain before moving to Waltham in 1968. Sadly Winifred was widowed at a young age when Tom died six years later, on September 12, 1974.

Never one to let adversity take over she continued to work hard and be involved with the things that gave her an outlet. A staunch Republican she belonged to the Waltham Republican City Committee and to the Waltham Women's Club. In later years she joined the city's senior citizens organizations and enjoyed weekly zumba classes in the Stanley Center on Fridays.

Winifred was a longtime member of Sacred Heart Parish in Waltham. Described as fun-loving, smart, patriotic and generous, Winifred loved the company of her family and her friends and the simplest things in life. She loved birthday parties, especially her own; Brighams' Coffee Ice Cream; County Kitchen Donuts; Twinings Earl Grey Tea . . . all the while never getting tired of listening to her beloved Irish music in the background.

She leaves her daughter and son-in-law, Joyce W. Kidd and her husband, James, of Waltham; her granddaughter, Maria M. Kidd of Waltham; her sister, Mary V. Brophy of Falmouth; her brother and sisters-in-law, John and Mary Kilday of Dedham and Jean Mulcahy of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and many nieces and nephews.

Winifred was also the sister of the late Paul Mulcahy.

Family and friends will honor and remember Winifred's life by gathering for calling hours in The Joyce Funeral Home, 245 Main Street (Rte. 20), Waltham on Thursday, November 14th, from 4 to 8 p.m. and again at 9 a.m. on Friday morning before leaving in procession to Sacred Heart Church, 311 River Street, Waltham where her Funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Burial will follow in Mount Feake Cemetery, Waltham.

Memorial donations may be made to the Wounded Warrior Project, P.O. Box 758517, Topeka, Kansas 66675 or to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 220 North Main Street, Suite 104, Natick, MA 01760.