CEDAR FALLS - Esther Kennedy was a quiet woman, but she had a passion for issues of civil rights and education.

The 78-year-old United Methodist pastor's wife and one-time Waterloo school board member died Monday at University Hospitals in Iowa City of a brain aneurysm. Her funeral was Thursday at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Waterloo. She was a resident of the Western Home.

She and her husband, the Rev. Stanley Kennedy, first arrived in Waterloo in 1970, when he became the United Methodist urban minister. In that role, he worked on race and poverty issues, and Esther was right there with her husband.

She was a member of the Black Hawk County chapter of the NAACP and got involved with civil rights causes. Esther worked with Jimmie Porter's Community Enabler-Developer Office and KBBG-FM, the black radio station he founded.

"She was always so supportive, supportive of the station," said Lou Porter, KBBG's president and Jimmie's wife.

"She was a class act. She was a true friend," Porter added. "Probably the most honest and real and sensitive person that you would ever want to meet."

Esther "just had an appreciation for people as human beings," she said. "We can talk a lot, but it's what we do that matters."

KBBG honored Esther with its Founders Award a decade ago, and she received the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights Community Citizen Award in 2003.

Friends trace Esther's strong social conscious back to her upbringing. Her father, George Rice, was a long-time professor at Mississippi's historically black Tougaloo College, where he and his white family lived on campus.

She graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College and married Stanley Kennedy in 1950. He died in 2003. She was a teacher and was a substitute in Waterloo Community Schools and for its extended education program.

"She really has been a remarkable woman. She is a very reserved person," said the Rev. Don Carver, a retired United Methodist pastor who also served as urban minister in Waterloo. "But if you get her talking, she's sharp and very perceptive."

"One of the things that I thought was so wonderful about her was that she felt very comfortable around all different kinds of people," said B.J. Furgerson, including racial minorities and poor people. "We served on the school board together at one time and it was always good to have her there with you, at least where I'm concerned."

Esther was elected to the Waterloo Board of Education in 1977 following two unsuccessful bids for a seat. She served three years and was defeated after running for a second term.

"She took that seriously and tried to advocate as best she could for concerns in the system and the community," said Carver. "She wasn't a rabble rouser but when she spoke up she spoke with forceful conviction."

He recalled taking Jimmie Porter to the Western Homes in recent years to visit Esther. Although the two were "very good friends," they sat together for quite some time but didn't talk.

"That kind of socializing was not a strong point for her," said Carver, "but get her into an issue or trying to get a job done and she's a tiger."

Contact Andrew Wind at (319) 291-1507 or andrew.wind@wcfcourier.com.