Lucie C. McKinney, who fought the stigma of AIDS after her husband, Congressman Stewart B. McKinney, succumbed to the disease and watched her son run for governor, died Saturday.
She was 80 and resided in Westport.
Her death from complications of cancer was announced by family and friends on her Facebook page, which has been transformed into a makeshift memorial to the political matriarch and Standard Oil heir on Mother’s Day.
McKinney’s failing health had preoccupied her son, state Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, in recent months during his gubernatorial campaign, sources told Hearst Connecticut Media.
“I think John can appeal to everybody,” McKinney told Hearst last July. “I think he’s not a conservative Republican. I think he’s not a liberal Democrat. I think he’s mainstream.”
McKinney was the daughter of the late Lucie and Briggs Cunningham II, an America’s Cup winning skipper, race car driver and auto designer who graced the cover of Time magazine in 1954.
She went on to marry Stewart B. McKinney, a GOP moderate who represented Connecticut’s 4th District in Congress from 1971 until his death from AIDS in 1987 at age 56.
Following her husband’s death, Lucie McKinney presided over a memorial foundation bearing his name that operates a homeless shelter for AIDS patients in Fairfield. When the shelter was first conceived, the foundation had to sue the local zoning enforcement office to open the facility.