Mary Catherine (Mrs. Richard) Brigham
Mrs. Richard Brigham (Mary Catherine Atkins)
Mary Catherine (Mrs. Richard) Brigham, 94, passed away in Columbia, Mo., January 27. Known to most of her close friends as “Pat,” the former resident of Kansas City, Mo. also continued to maintain a summer home in Harbor Springs, Mi., until her death. A member of a prominent business family with extensive interests in oil, lumber and paper manufacturing, she was the daughter of W.T. Atkins, a board member of the Skelly Oil Company, who built the Skelly Building on Kansas City’s nationally recognized shopping district, the Country Club Plaza, its first and tallest commercial building during its development by J.C. Nichols. Mrs. Brigham was also instrumental in creating the Muscatine (Ia.) Art Center that occupies the former home of her stepmother, Laura Musser Atkins. Before her marriage to Richard Brigham, a Kansas City advertising and banking executive, in 1988, she was the widow of Alfred C. McWhirter, chairman of the McWhirter Company, Printers, in Kansas City. Mr. Brigham predeceased her in 2007.
The McWhirters purchased their cottage on the Wequetonsing Bluff nearly a half-century ago and it has remained a family summer gathering place ever since. Although in declining health for the past several years, she always managed to find a way to make it back, last year even traveling by air ambulance with her caregivers and giving her family members a big thumbs up as she was carried off the plane at Harbor Springs Airport. When Dick Brigham was given his own critical diagnosis in a hospital conference with the couple, the attending physician asked if they had any questions. Mrs. Brigham’s answer caught the medical staff by surprise: “When can we travel up north?”
She was a graduate of the University of Missouri and a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. Her memberships included the Second Presbyterian and Village Presbyterian Churches in Kansas City as well as the First Presbyterian Church in Harbor Springs; in Kansas City, the Mission Hills Country Club, the River Club, the Carriage Club, and in Harbor Springs, the Little Harbor Club, Wequetonsing Golf Club, and Birchwood Farms and Country Club. Despite her many social and charitable interests, her life centered around her family and that is reflected in the number of her survivors, among them six grandchildren, four great grandchildren, 10 step-grandchildren and 11 step-great grandchildren. Almost all of them were present for a convivial dinner that celebrated her life at the Kansas City Country Club, filled with toasts, tributes and personal stories of her indomitable spirit, strong will, common sense independence, and family loyalty. In her McWhirter and Brigham families, she is survived by: William Atkins McWhirter of Harbor Springs, Mi., The Rev. Alfred Cooper McWhirter, Jr., Phoenix, Az., Laura McWhirter, Kansas City, and Mrs. Pete Clark (Marilyn), Columbia, Mo; The. Rev. Richard Daniel Brigham, Atlanta, Ga., Mrs. George Leonard (Vicky) and Mr. and Mrs. David Launder (Blythe), both of Kansas City. The Wequetonsing cottage will carry on the family tradition under the shared ownership of the Clark family and Bill McWhirter. The family also extends its gratitude to Mrs. Brigham’s primary caretakers, Mary Cherry, Ardella Crawford and Alberta Patterson. Mrs. Cherry and Crawford were welcomed to Harbor Springs last summer when they accompanied Mrs. Brigham, staffing the Weque cottage and taking up residence in a Harborside home on Bay Street.
Private family graveside services were held at the family plot in Kansas City’s Forest Hill Cemetery. The family requests no flowers or memorial gifts, but welcomes calls or visits from any of her friends.
This is part of the February 3, 2010 online edition of Harbor Light Newspaper.