On October 8, 2022, our grandma gave us a list of instructions for her obituary to ensure we appropriately memorialized her life and memory. In a manner totally in keeping with the lightness and humor she approached life with, she asked us to make a large fuss—she requested something long, flowery, and studied. She also gave us license to embellish, just to make sure no one thought her boring. We lost her on December 21, 2025 at the age of 85, and although we’re committed to honoring her requests, no embellishments are needed to tell the wonderful story of her life.
Brenda Joyce Burnette was born at home in Castalia, N.C., on September 29, 1940 to Nathaniel and Sarah (Hayes) Burnette. Her mother noted that it was the hottest day of the entire year, an unmistakable entrance into the world befitting Brenda’s irrepressible warmth and charm later on in life. She was the oldest of two, growing up alongside her younger sister, Iris.
At Rocky Mt. High School, Brenda met the love of her life, Jackie Skinner, in a splash of romance fit for a movie. She was a cheerleader, he was the captain of the football team and president of the National Honor Society, and she thought he was the smartest and most handsome man in the world. Brenda herself was quite the catch, even landing a spot in the local paper due to her position on the 1957 Beauty Court, under a headline calling her one of the most beautiful girls at the school. It was a match that could have been made in a writer’s room, and Brenda and Jackie fell into a deep love that lasted throughout their lives.
Love carried Brenda across state lines. While she briefly worked as a bank teller in North Carolina, Jackie was at the apprentice school for the Newport News Shipyard. When he finished, they married and moved to Newport News, Virginia to build a life together. There they started a family that would eventually grow larger than they could have imagined. They first had a son, Steve, in 1961, followed by a daughter, Susie, a number of years later.
Between the mid ’70s and mid ’80s, Jackie and Brenda owned a Stretch and Sew Fabric Store. Brenda loved everything about fabric and sewing, from the satisfaction of creating something tangible, to the personal fulfilment of helping strangers weave memories into their own creations. She hosted sewing classes, becoming such an invaluable light and resource in her community that the classes ran on local television. She treated her customers like more than customers, often giving out her personal phone number so they could always reach her in case of a sewing emergency. Her children fondly remember a weekend when a perfect stranger needed immediate help with a mother-of-the-bride dress for a wedding the following day—Brenda jumped into action and spent hours reworking the dress into a fully custom fashion moment. She made personal connections so meaningful at the store that she kept in touch with many of her customers for years after closing the shop.
After closing, she again worked as a bank teller, this time until retirement. She absolutely loved it, taking great pride and pleasure in the opportunity to meet and chat with new people every day. Brenda wasn’t just social, she was magnetic—able (and some might even say determined) to strike up a conversation with everyone she met. She was so friendly that she was robbed at gunpoint four times (once, they later found out, with a vacuum hose attachment), each time because she had invited the undercover thief into her own bank line rather than let them wait for their turn to be seen in another. She was the most robbed teller at the bank (a fact which she promptly made into a t-shirt), but left each robbery unscathed, no doubt due to the way no thief could harm the most charming woman they had each ever met.
After retirement, Brenda seamlessly stepped into the role of Perfect Grandmother. Jackie spent six years building her dream home in White Marsh, Va., someplace large enough to accommodate the growing family. By this time, Steve and Susie had each married and started having children of their own, and Grandma and Grandpa’s house became the heartbeat of the family. Birthdays, holidays, and Sunday afternoons meant a full house, but that wasn’t the only source of love in the home. Brenda and Jackie continued to cherish and adore one another, never speaking out of anger to one another, and never saying one single negative word to each other in the presence of others. Jackie meant everything to Brenda, and she meant everything to him.
Brenda was involved in White Marsh Baptist Church and the Colonial Beekeepers Association alongside Jackie. Honeybees became a motif for the family, due to their shared passion of beekeeping. Their grandchildren have many memories of sweltering Virginian summer days spent eating fresh honeycomb and watching the amber rivers of honey flow into jars for sharing amongst the family and community. Brenda had a discerning eye, and luckily, most things were to her taste. She collected anything and everything to do with fabrics, amassing the equivalent of another Stretch and Sew store on the top floor of her house. It didn’t matter what you needed, she had it. If you asked for a green and orange printed fabric with a tropical design and a minimum of three different animals on it, she had just the thing. If you needed something to make a dog collar for your yearly Christmas card, but with a beachy vibe, she could lead you through the maze of fabric bolts stacked so deep you were sure you’d never find your way out, right to the exact swath of cloth that you needed. And half the time, she would volunteer to sew the project for you too. She kept sewing and quilting as long as she could, a fact which we as her family are endlessly grateful for, as we get to cherish her creations forever.
In her later years, Brenda spent even more time with family, cementing herself as a beloved matriarch. And not just to blood relatives, either—she was everyone’s Grandma, always ready to accept someone new into her home with a tight hug, an excited smile, and a command to “go fetch yourself a little treat” from one of the many drawers and refrigerators kept stocked with refreshments for guests. Nobody left Grandma’s house hungry or in low spirits. She was endlessly funny, either witty or silly depending on the moment, and always full of pride over her family.
She lived at Heron Cove in Gloucester, Va., for the last year of her life, an arrangement she thoroughly enjoyed seeing as it provided endless opportunities to chat with different people every day. The staff and residents there meant a great deal to her, and she praised them often.
Brenda peacefully passed in her sleep, and is with her parents, grandson Sean, and husband Jackie now. She will be forever celebrated and remembered by her sister, Iris; niece, Kim; nephew, Jesse; children, Steve (Terry) Skinner and Susie (Sean) McNulty; grandchildren, Kristen (Adam), Sarah, Jeremiah (Hope), Isaiah, Asa, Mary (Matthew), and Hannah (Silas); great-grandchildren, Sean, Mae, Lily, Ella, Jackie, Ada, Oliver, Annabelle, and Valerie; as well as the countless other lives her warmth and effervescence touched. She was, is, and will always be deeply loved.
Services were held at Hogg Funeral Home on Friday, December 26, 2025, at 10 a.m. The inurnment is private.
Services under the direction of Hogg Funeral Home.