Venciedora H. ‘Vence’ Kane, Baltimore City Schools teacher for more than 50 years, dies
Venciedora H. “Vence” Kane, a retired Baltimore City Schools teacher active in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, died of respiratory failure June 4 at Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care Northwest Inpatient Center in Randallstown. She was 91 and lived in Northwest Baltimore.
Born in Baltimore and raised on Lincoln Avenue in Catonsville, she was the daughter of Theresa V. Fenwick, a hospital laundry supervisor, and Stanislaus Fenwick, a Social Security mail driver.
She attended the old Benjamin Banneker School in Catonsville before her family moved to Baltimore City and settled on Myrtle Avenue. She was a 1950 Frederick Douglass High School graduate and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at what is now Morgan State University.
Friends called her “Vence” and she taught in Baltimore City elementary schools for 52 years. Much of her teaching career was spent in Forest Park neighborhood schools.
In 1953, she married Louis W. “Fuzzy” Kane, a former Gwynns Falls Parkway School principal and jazz musician. They initially met in Catonsville as teenagers.
“He would come to visit her on Myrtle Avenue and brought her small gifts while they were courting,” her brother, George M. Fenwick, said.
She occasionally attended his performances in the Fuzzy Kane Trio at the old Lenny Moore’s Lounge in Northwest Baltimore.
“She was a sweet and kind lady and a devoted and serious educator,” said a family friend, Milton A. Dugger Jr. “They say that opposites attract. She was quiet and reserved and her husband was an entertainer and full of music.”
Mrs. Kane was a member of Morningstar Baptist Church in Woodlawn. She was an usher for decades and helped train others.
“My sister had an outgoing personality and liked to socialize,” said her brother. “She was an in-charge person. She was a director.”
An enthusiastic cook and baker of pound cakes, “She once made a cake and the icing was so hard you couldn’t cut it. That was not normal for her. She was a great cook, but the incident became a family story,” her brother said.
She hosted family celebrations and entertained the Morgan graduates who belonged to her Epsilon Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Her niece Melanie D. Fenwick Thompson recalled how Mrs. Kane helped her join the sorority.
“Bucknell University has never had a chapter,” she said. “[I] was able to become a member while still in undergrad.”
Her daughter, Robin Kane Prater, died in 2014. Her husband, Louis W. Kane, died in 2011.
Survivors include her brother, George M. Fenwick, of Baltimore; two nieces, Marni Fenwick, of China, and Melanie D. Fenwick Thompson, of Snellville, Georgia; and great-nieces and great-nephews.
Services were held Tuesday at the Morningstar Baptist Church.