Alice Carneal Kinkead

1940 - 2022

Alice Carneal Kinkead
July 9, 1940 - April 2, 2022
Versailles, Kentucky - Alice Carneal Kinkead died on Saturday, April 2 at the age of 81. She lived in Woodford County. She was the daughter of the late Elizabeth Zimmer Kinkead and Shelby Carneal Kinkead of Lexington, Kentucky, and was baptized at Christ Church Cathedral.
Alice dedicated her life to creativity. She was an artist and artisan. She was a painter, basket maker, weaver, knitter, gardener, and cook. She expressed her faith through her passion for animals, gardening, land preservation, and beauty. Her farm is on the register of Bluegrass Land Conservancy.
She had a reverence for tradition and doing things the old-fashioned way. She spun her own wool and dyed it. She grew her vegetables, hunted birds and deer, raised tobacco, and cared for goats, horses, llama, dogs, and cats her whole life. She was fiercely independent, living on her own and working a 100-acre farm for the last 30 years of her life. Her family knew and loved her as "crazy Alice."
Politics was also in her blood. As the daughter of a former state senator and mayor of Lexington, Alice studied political science and economics at Randolph-Macon Woman's College for two years and received her BA in 1963 from the University of Kentucky. In 1970, she obtained a master's degree in government from Georgetown University in Washington, DC where she lived for 16 years, working at the Library of Congress and on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972. She also worked at UNESCO in Paris, France where she lived for four years. She later returned to UK to obtain a degree in law in 1985 and worked as an attorney for the Department of Natural Resources in Frankfort.
She is survived by her brothers Shelby Carneal Kinkead (m. Melodye Horwitz Kinkead)Charles Clay Kinkead (m. Cynthia Crowe Kinkead) and; nieces Elizabeth Kinkead Descarpentries (m. Pierre Christophe Descarpentries), Alexandra Kinkead Mason (m. Albert Lawrence Mason), Michelle Pierce Kinkead; and nephew Jonathan Shelby Kinkead (m. Nancy Keaton Kinkead); and cousins Ann Lawrence Zimmer, Eugene Shelby Zimmer (deceased), Charles Mobley Zimmer (m. Steffi Gom), and Elizabeth Shelby Zimmer; and dogs Glennis and Shelby.
The memorial service will be held at the Lexington Cemetery on Tuesday, April 12th, 11 am.
Memorial donations may be made to Central Kentucky Riding for Hope, 4185 Walt Robertson Road, Lexington, Kentucky 40511.