Marjory Jean Mckenna (Marjean)

Marjean McKenna of Salt Lake City, a mover and a writer, died on March 19th at sunset in the comfort of her home, due to cancer. Born Marjory Jean McKenna on September 11, 1946 to Kay and Jim McKenna in Boulder, Colorado, she was educated in Boulder’s public school system, graduating from Boulder High in 1964. In 1968 she earned a B.A. from Colorado College.
She married twice (Peter Schory, 1971-73, and Eric Eliason, 1986-96) and maintained warm relationships with both ex-husbands. She never had children, but got to be a parent for eighteen months when her younger sister and her two children, a newborn and a 4-year old, shared her house in suburban/rural SLC.
After college in the late ‘60s, Marjean pursued graduate studies in embryology at CU and taught skiing at Breckenridge and Vail. In 1970 she committed to becoming a ski bum and moved to Alta, Utah, where she worked various jobs before becoming an instructor for Snowbird’s ski school. In 1973 she became Snowbird’s first woman ski patrol person, a very glamorous job, which she held for three years. (Until it began to take the joy out of her skiing. She says: “There’s a limit to which ‘doing what you love’ should be your vocation.”) She was NOT the inventor of the neckgaitor, just the person who brought it to market, with the blessings of the true inventor, Bruce Eschelbach, who designed it for its snorkel effect in Utah’s suffocatingly light powder snow.
In the mid-1970’s Marjean teamed up with Little Cottonwood Canyon friends, Jude Rubadue and Curtis (Codfish) Mays, to create Oquirrh Distributors, a pioneer in the distribution of natural foods in the Intermountain area. After the 1976 ski season she moved down-canyon to the Draper area to be near the enterprise/adventure that would run her life for the next twelve years. She got a business education in the process.
While preparing to move on from Little Cottonwood Canyon, Marjean had realized that movement would always be at the heart of who she was and what she did. In the summer of 1976 she embarked upon a quest and found the movement activities that would become the infrastructure of her life: the dance/artsport, contact improvisation, the martial arts, aikido and tai chi, and the Alexander Technique.
In the ensuing decade she took advantage of opportunities for Alexander lessons and workshops throughout the country before finally committing in 1987 to train in San Francisco to become a teacher. Graduating in 1990, Marjean built and maintained a small private practice in Salt Lake City. She taught Movement for Actors in the theater department at the University of Utah from 1995-1998 and later, master classes in both the dance and theater departments. In 2017 she published a book, Your Natural Up—Human Hardwiring and the Alexander Technique.
Marjean earned an aikido black belt in 2001 and a “second degree” (nidan) in 2007. In the early ‘00s she dabbled in aerial dance. She has skied Snowbird’s pipeline, the Baldy Chutes and Corbet’s Couloir. She has walked across England and around Mt. Blanc and enjoyed several multiple week backpack trips in the canyons of Southern Utah. In 2005 she began studying Argentine tango; by 2020 she had become a decent “lead” and had taken her ninth trip Buenos Aires. She loved to ski, hike, frolic, and play—she liked to ride the weightless moments. She also liked to watch sports on TV, especially gymnastics, ice dancing, pro football, tennis, and (fast forwarding through the ads) American Ninja Warrior, and Dancing with the Stars.
Marjean was a talented administrator, an organizer, and a closet archivist— a curator of words, ideas, and lists. She liked low-key positions behind the throne. From 1998 to 2001 she served as Treasurer for the American Society for the Alexander Technique, and continued to provide bookkeeping oversight to that organization for an additional ten years. She served as Secretary of the Wasatch Tango Club from 2010 to 2012.
In addition to her one book about the Alexander Technique, Marjean published a few other things including an article for Powder Magazine about being a woman on the ski patrol at Snowbird in the ‘70s. In the fall of 2008 an edited version of her 2007 aikido thesis, Evolution, Ki and the Aikidoka’s Axis, was published in the international dance magazine, Contact Quarterly, and was eventually translated into several other languages. She grew up with the card game, bridge, and is the author of The McKennas’ Official Cheat Sheet for Contract Bridge, which saw five editions between 1971 to 2014.
She loved languages, linguistics and accents. She was never fluent, but was almost conversant in Spanish, Italian, and French and could get by in German and Mandarin Chinese. She was interested in all things Chinese and was passionate about Art Nouveau. She collected tiles, dragons, and masks. She was a virgo with an aquarian rising and a pisces moon; a dog, in Chinese astrology.
Appreciated for her generosity and quiet wit, Marjean would like to be remembered as a mover, a movement educator, and a writer, a wordsmith. She prided herself on doing what she said she would do, living by one of her father’s favorite maxims: Horton’s “I meant what I said and I said what I meant.”
She is survived by two sisters, Kathleen & Carla, two brothers, Michael & Kenna, and lots of cousins, nieces and nephews. Tax-deductible contributions in her name may be sent to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) at 425 E. 100 S. in Salt Lake City, 84111 and/or The American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) at PO box 2307 Dayton, OH 45401.