June R. McKie

June Reynard McKie was raised in Erie, Pennsylvania in the 1930’s and early 1940’s. She is the daughter of Harley Ames Reynard and Minnie (Fischer) Reynard. Her father was a factory foreman, and was a veteran of the Spanish American War, and a World War I veteran. June’s mother was a homemaker who enjoyed drawing, sewing and creating fashionable clothes for herself and her family. June was encouraged by her mother to pursue her artistic ambitions.

June attended Erie public schools until she was 14. After her father died, the family moved to Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and she graduated in 1949. In high school she participated in art, choral, and drama clubs, as well as being elected to the National Honor Society. After high school, she studied at the Vogue School of Design in Chicago, and then she moved to New York City to attend art school and paid for her education with jobs and a scholarship that was awarded her final year. She worked with Vogue Patterns for a year, and she was invited to teach art at that school for the next year.

The following summer June traveled to Europe and spent about two years traveling and working throughout Denmark, England, and France, doing some free-lance commercial art for magazines and newspapers. She returned to New York to work for Vogue Magazine. June also did free-lance artwork for Berkshire International, creating ideas and art for Christian Dior and stocking accounts, as well as fashion and story illustration for magazines and oil portraits on commission.

In 1962, June was the first woman to be accepted by the US Air Force to travel to bases to draw and paint the activities of the Air Force around the world. Two of June’s paintings from her two-month sojourn in Europe were exhibited at the Pentagon in 1964, and were later placed in the National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio.

June met Roy A. McKie, Jr. at the New York Society of Illustrators and married him in 1964. They shared a home and studio in Greenwich Village for over 20 years, and were both selected as mentors for students at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Throughout their life together, they traveled to Iceland, Europe, Turkey, Greece, and South America on freighters and throughout the USA and Canada by car. June enjoyed sketching the crews and passengers on the boats during their trips. In the 1980’s, they moved to a country home near Flemington, New Jersey, before spending their later years in a retirement community in New Holland, Pennsylvania.

June is pre-deceased by her husband, Roy A. McKine, Jr. in 2015 and her three siblings, Kenneth, Harley, and Betty Reynard. She is survived by some nieces, nephews, and a few cousins.

At the request of June, all services will be held privately.

In lieu of flowers, June is requesting that memorial contributions be made to the Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road/Route 183, Stockbridge, MA 01262.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Groff-High Funeral Home, New Holland.