Pennington, Donna Lee September 11, 1945 - October 19, 2020

Donna Lee Pennington, age 75 of  Hendersonville, NC, and Smithville, GA died Monday afternoon, October 19, 2020, in Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, NC. Donna was born in Miami, Florida.  Her father was Carl E. Pennington of Duluth, GA, and her mother was Mary Alice Kirton of Miami.  Her father was a pilot with Pan American and because of his assignment, the family moved to Rio de Janeiro.  In 1955 when she 10 was the family moved to Wilton, CT, where she was an excellent student and enjoyed riding horses.  Donna first attended Western College for Women (now part of Miami –Ohio, Univ.).  In 1965 she transferred to Barnard College of Columbia Univ. where she graduated with a B.A. in 1967 Latin American area studies.  She did some additional graduate work at Columbia in that field.  She worked her way through law school at American Univ. as a flight attendant with Pan Am.  She graduated and passed the Virginia Bar in 1975 while 8 months pregnant with her first child, Erica.  She began her legal career clerking with Judge William Winston of the Arlington, VA Circuit Court before she passed the Bar and continued clerking for several more months thereafter.  She then took a position with Thomas Maines in Washington, D.C.  in their personal injury practice.  She returned to Virginia to practice law in partnership with William Hassan and Michael Rieger in Falls Church, VA for several years before starting her own practice in Arlington.  One of her cases was successfully adjudicated before the Virginia Supreme Court.  In 1978 her second child, William (“Penn”) was born.  In 1984 she married Robert Beard of Milford, CT and in 1987 the family moved to Princeton Jct., NJ.  She initially practiced with the law firm of Pelleteri, Rabstein & Altman in West Windsor, NJ.  After two years with that firm, she again began a solo practice specializing in Real Estate and in Wills, Trusts, and Estates.  In 2010 she retired and with her husband moved to the family farm in Smithville, GA, a farm jointly owned with her sister, Patricia Van Scoyoc of Great Falls, VA, and her children.  From 2010 until 2019 they lived on the farm.  In addition to leasing the cropland, harvesting timber, and making substantial improvements to the farm’s buildings and irrigation system, Donna raised organic vegetables, goats, and eggs.  In 2019 they moved to Hendersonville,  NC, and became permanent residents of North Carolina.  Besides being a wonderful mother to two children, and grandmother to her two grandchildren, she enjoyed knitting, reading, gardening, animals and practicing her strong Christian faith.

Donna is survived by her husband, Robert T. Beard of Hendersonville, NC, a daughter, Erica Lee Weickardt, and her husband, Anthony J. Enright of Charlotte, and her son William Pennington Weickhardt and his wife, Jill-Ann Frances Medlow Weickhardt of Tucson, and her two grandchildren, Josephine Elise Enright and Charles Davis Enright of Charlotte.

Interment will be in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY for the immediate family.  Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the Susan G. Korman Fight Against Beast Cancer at Komen.org or Heifer International at fundraise.heifer.org09/11/1945