Gloucester - Sailor, builder, gardener, friend. Lisa A. Kenyon, 68, died of lung cancer on June 22 at her home in Gloucester, MA. Born in Providence, RI, May 30, 1958, she spent her formative years in Greenwich, Connecticut. As a highly motivated teenager, Lisa discovered a love of restoring and sailing on wooden boats and she devoted her weekends and summers to this passion. Lisa's parents, Marilyn and Charlie, and her brother David, were proud, but slightly anxious during the ensuing years, as they watched Lisa travel far and wide developing and plying her trade as a highly skilled sailor and deeply knowledgeable rebuilder of wooden sailing yachts.

After just one year of study at URI, Lisa moved to Newport and began a twenty-year stint immersed in big boat sailing. Among other projects, Lisa worked alongside yachtswoman, Elizabeth Meyer, in the restoration and racing campaigns of the Concordia Yawl "Matinicus". In 1983, she became one of the first women to earn a 100-ton vessel captain's license. And in about 1984, Lisa joined a team that devoted nearly five years to the rebuilding of "Endeavour", a 130' J-Class yacht built for the s_Cup"{!W2GT}1934 America's Cup.

After years of crewing, racing, and making yacht deliveries to the islands, Lisa stepped off the docks of Newport and taught herself construction skills as she built "Little House", which she cobbled together with the help of a growing coterie of devoted friends. Catering gigs, bartending, and working at New England Boatworks helped pay for building supplies and allowed Lisa to host memorably creative dinner parties.

In the early 90's, Lisa turned her attention to the soil as she tilled and planted a borrowed field in Middletown, RI. There she grew organic vegetables that she sold at the Aquidneck Farmers Market, an organization she helped to establish and nurture. Recognizing the importance of nutrition and food knowledge, Lisa worked closely with local non-profits to teach young mothers how to prepare and cook vegetables so that bodies were nourished and nothing at the market went to waste.

Gloucester called in the early 2000's and in a move that surprised no one, Lisa bought a condemned, 140-year-old house and tore it down to the studs. Dear friends from Newport, along with friends she was newly discovering on Cape Ann, kept her company on weekends as they labored to create a comfortable, welcoming home. Lisa's expanding gardens included a raspberry patch that provided the fruit for her coveted jam, and zucchini that went into loaves of delicious bread. Not long after moving to Gloucester, Lisa discovered a love of deep-sea fishing. Over more than 20 years, the crew and fellow "regulars" on the Yankee Clipper became like family and they will miss her ready smile and the confident advice she offered any newbie struggling to bait a hook or to place it where a haddock might notice. When not fishing or tearing down walls, Lisa worked at Crocker's Boat Yard in Manchester-by-the-Sea where she thrilled at helping to maintain Concordias, a sailboat that she knew well from her time in Newport.

Lisa is predeceased by her father, Charles L. Kenyon, and by her ex-husband, Stephen Nippert. In addition to her mother and brother, Lisa is survived by her wife, Jane Lyman, whom she met at Stone's Pub on a rainy primary election night in the fall of 2014. Jane and Lisa were married and lived their 12 years together in a normal house down the road from the 1860 rehab. There, Lisa devoted her considerable love and energy to her marriage, her gardens, fishing, and her friends.

A memorial service will be held at the Annisquam Village Church at 11:00 AM on Tuesday, July 28. A reception will follow.