Brenda Colleen Kelly

Having finally reached a satisfactory level of seniority, Brenda Colleen Kelly retired from living on December 26, 2025. She skipped the gold watch and farewell party, preferring to slip out the side door before anyone could start a slideshow. After mastering the bank, the barn, and everything in between, Brenda clocked out for the final time on a sunny Friday afternoon while holding the hand of her daughter, leaving day-to-day operations of the world to far less experienced personnel.

Born August 28, 1958 in New Jersey to the late Alma and Emmett Kelly, Brenda was a woman of formidable intellect and even more formidable standards. She earned a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Roanoke College and an MBA from George Washington University - credentials she put to use as a Senior Vice President at MBNA. Following its acquisition, she spent nearly twenty years at Bank of America, though she always looked back fondly on the Corn Boil era. 

Outside the office, Brenda applied her executive oversight to the rest of the world. A relentless traveler who touched foot on six continents (and who left behind 2026 travel plans for her seventh), she ziplined through Costa Rican forests, trekked the Great Wall of China, rode horses across Portugal, snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, and traversed the Antarctic terrain armed only with a pair of ski poles. Whether she was sailing the Danube or getting lost in the Irish countryside without a map, Brenda never met a destination she couldn’t navigate - though if you’d ask her, her favorite travel memories took place at hotels and restaurants up and down the East Coast. There, alongside a cabal of fellow ice skating parents, she specialized in the tactical rearrangement of furniture in any and every establishment that was not designed to seat a large, gregarious group of 30.

If you wanted to find Brenda, you looked for the dirt - she’d usually be found in her impeccably landscaped home garden, her weed-free garden plot at Bellevue Park, or in a muddy stall at Wellspring Farm. A competitive rider in her youth, Brenda returned to the barn 15 years ago and quickly became a fixture at the stables (though she spent as much time scrubbing as she did in the saddle). She had no patience for a job half-done, whether she was planting a garden or mucking a stall. She left every patch of earth she touched better than she found it.

For the past decade, Brenda applied the same grit to a long, private battle with Renal Cell Carcinoma. But she didn’t merely endure the illness: she lobbied against it, traveling to Washington, D.C. to advocate for cancer research funding. She passed away ten years - to the hour! - of her original cancer diagnosis, having blown past every early damning prognosis with her sheer force of will.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Alma and Emmett, her aunt, Katherine, and her beloved husband, John (“Jack”) Higgins. While Brenda was not one for saccharine displays of emotion, she loved Jack until the end. She left this life with the quiet, firm hope that they would see each other again. One would like to think she’s found him by now, and that the two are finally back to work, together.

Brenda is survived by countless friends who felt like family and one daughter, Caitlin Higgins of Los Angeles, CA, who is currently (and predictably) failing to follow her instructions to “not make a big deal out of it.” To that end, please join us for a Celebration of Life beginning promptly at 10 AM on Saturday, 1/10/2026 at Bellevue Hall in Wilmington, DE. (Detail-focused til her last breath, Brenda curated the playlist for the event.)

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to WellSpring Farm or to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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