Elisabeth A. McKinney Estrada

Elisabeth Ashley McKinney Estrada

October 21, 1986 – August 26, 2021

Our daughter was born 7:30am on October 21st 1986, and named around 9:30am the next day.  That’s correct.  A day to name her.  See, while it took the mother and child about 8 hours of strenuous convincing conversation to finally be born, and put that activity to end, Mom and I were in too much shock and mild confusion to actually pronounce a name right then and there. I actually had to double check to make sure that I had wondered back into the correct room and that I was with the right woman when this tiny, petite, little girl made her own announcement to the world that she had finally decided to arrive.  See, we had thought we were going to have a boy.

Oh, no.  We were Convinced we were going to have a boy. A girls name was just beyond our scope at the time. By the end of the naming convention we had set up with the grandmother Joyce Anne Spencer, I had given in on the notion of sticking with Nathan, and we had agreed to name our child Elisabeth Ashley McKinney.  Elisabeth always got a kick out of the story when it was told to her. It seems like Elisabeth came home to us, the parents, Treasa Annette Bailey and Glenn Travis McKinney, just the other day.

Out the door this independent young woman went, and joined the United States Air Force 4th October 2005.  With the guidance and assistance of her step-dad Chester H. Bailey Jr, she got her dream job and went through training schools to become an Operating Room Technician.  Little did we all know that her job skill would take her to the front lines of Operation Enduring Freedom; twice.  We often pick on her brother Ryan McKinney whom at the time was a United States Marine that the girl of the family went into the war zones more than he had. Stationed at Bagram, Afghanistan our daughter performed her services in the operating rooms working with surgical teams to provide life-saving operations and to serve our Nation and her fellow service members with the most passion and most compassionate care that any person could.  Honorably Discharged 24th September 2013. 

Elisabeth, practical, principled, (traits she inherited from her mom Treasa) and often times silly (I the father Travis McKinney claim that one), all these traits were all rolled up into this fiery spirit of a girl that become a strong woman with a mission to take the world by storm with the step-mother Janet McKinney being a constant beacon of strength.  Elisabeth in a nutshell- Understand: Right was right, wrong was wrong; good Lord help you when she believed you were wrong, because she demanded better.  She demanded better from her family, she demanded better from her friends, and most importantly she demanded better from her surviving sons.  She demanded them to be better and to live up to the names she had gave them; names of the men she respected most in life: her first born, Jareth Nathan-Cole McKinney, so named after a young man she had loved, Jared Crouch, a young 19 year old and among the first to fall in Afghanistan; therein also fulfilling the Nathan that I had wanted to name her 22 years prior.  She named her youngest son, Alfred Thomas Estrada, so named in honor of her grandfather, Alfred Francis Spencer.

After her separation from the United States Air Force, with a one-hundred percent medical disability, Elisabeth remained in San Antonio and as a single parent of her two boys, turned what little spare time she had into a new passion of service by rescuing and fostering animals.  A community service that even now more than ever is in need more foster volunteers.  A charity fund based in San Antonio is accepting donations in her name:  God’s Dogs Rescue.  Elisabeth would have wanted any funds raised in her name to go there. 

Her life adventure that had taken her far from home and handed far more life experiences than most people would imagine in life.  That life ended with her passing in San Antonio, Tx, August 26th, 2021.  And now at the end of this narrative she has come home again.  Elisabeth, Know you are loved.  

Services will be conducted on Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at Three o'clock n the afternoon in the Albert G Horton Jr Memorial Veterans Cemetery, 5310 Milners Road, Suffolk, Virginia 23434.   

Online condolences are encouraged and may be sent to the family at www.fulwoodfuneralservice.com

Michael J Fulwood Funeral Service Licensee, 910-471-5441

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Elisabeth A. McKinney Estrada, please visit our floral store.