Brenda Winston Skeen

Brenda Winston Skeen, of McMurray, formerly of Clarksburg, W.Va., and Fairmont, W.Va., passed Thursday, July 23, 2020, at the age of 74.

She was born in Clarksburg, a daughter of the late Francis "Red" Winston and Genevieve Harper. She graduated from Washington Irving High School, where she served as homecoming queen, and Fairmont State College, where she earned a Bachelor's degree (cum laude) in Education. It was there she met and married Samuel, her husband of 52 years, after she asked him to take a walk around campus.... it was love at first sight. Their first real date almost did not happen when Sam found that someone had let the air out of each of the tires on his car. He then used a friend's car and the date was saved. They were engaged three months later.

Brenda was a teacher at Monongah High School, Wilsonburg Junior High and and Wyatt Elementary School in Marion and Harrison counties.

She was an extremely artistic and creative person and an accomplished seamstress who designed and made a line of clothing for private clients in the Clarksburg area and also gave sewing lesson for the former W.T. Grant Department Store in Fairmont. However, her fist love was decorating and design and upon relocating to the Pittsburgh area, she joined with a good friend to form One-Day Decorating, later Habitat Interior Design, a residential and commercial design and decorating firm whose success was featured on KDKA TV's Morning Show and in local newspapers.

She loved bringing beauty and happiness to the surroundings of her family, friends and clients. She later merged her sewing and design skills to create a line of artistic Quilted Wall Hangings, which she called "Puffins," that were marketed through Kaufmann's Department Store at South Hills Village Mall. She was also a self-taught artist who sold many of her paintings through galleries and art auctions in Western Pennsylvania. Brenda was fascinated by the history of art and decided to make Floor Cloths, reproductions of painted canvas rugs as used in colonial times. They were so well received by the art community that she was asked to show her works at the well known Yankee Peddler Colonial Festival in Ohio.

Brenda enjoyed spending time with children Judd and Whitney, family holiday dinners and vacations, flower gardening, visiting friends, Steeler and West Virginia University football, spending time at Rock Lake and Sunday dinners at the home of her grandparents, Grace and Robert Harper of Clarksburg. She especially loved time with her granddaughters and doing anything creative with them.

She was the loving mother of son Robert Judd; daughter Whitney (JP) Sanders; and loving grandmother of Alyssa Sanders, Gwen Sanders and Emma Skeen. She is also survived by her husband, Sam; brother Randall Winston of North Carolina; and a very special aunt, Eileen (George) Stehura of Clarksburg.

Interment was at Forest Lawn Gardens Cemetery in McMurray.