Dorothea E.S. Kilner, artist and longtime educator in Baltimore County, dies

Dorothea E.S. Kilner, an artist and educator who enjoyed horseback riding and collecting owl figurines, died Feb. 17 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at Commonwealth Senior Living in Cockeysville. The former Monkton resident was 89.

“I first met her in 1966, when I was being interviewed by the family when I was going to marry her nephew, Tommy Swiss, who became my husband. I loved her from the first moment I met her. She was always there and love always showed in her eyes,” said Debbie Swiss.

“She always welcomed you with a smile and was so genuine and she was the teacher you wanted in your life,” said Ms. Swiss, an educator. “She was the perfect mom and the perfect teacher.”

Dorothea Edwina Swiss, who was born in Baltimore and raised in Essex, was the daughter of Edward P. Swiss a judge at the old Baltimore County People’s Court for the 15th District in Essex, and Margaret A. Banz Swiss, a tax preparer.

She was a 1952 graduate of Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956 in liberal arts from the University of Maryland, College Park.

She met and fell in love with a fellow Maryland student and Korean War veteran, Edward A. Kilner, whom she married in 1957.

From 1964 to 1969, she taught kindergarten at St. James Academy in Monkton where she and her husband resided, and in 1970, she joined Pot Springs Elementary School in Baltimore County where she taught until retiring in 1995.

In 1971, Ms. Kilner obtained a master’s degree in early childhood education from what is now Towson University.

“She studied [Swiss] psychologist Jean Piaget’s early childhood theories, embraced experiential learning, and used the Socratic method with her young students helping them build curiosity, confidence, and a love of reading and learning,” according to a family profile.

She was also an artist, graphic designer and calligraphist.

“She became a noted freelance artist creating hand painted buttons and jewelry, china sets, watercolors of nature and foxhunting, and children’s mixed media art combining painting, calligraphy and poetry,” according to the profile.

“She was a master calligrapher and the old Monkton blue bloods wanted her to do invitations and family crests which required her working through a lens and using brushes with three hairs,” said her son, Kevin M. Kilner, of Easton, Connecticut.

Ms. Kilner was seldom without a book and pen.

“She could do pen and ink drawings very quickly,” her son said. “When she and my father went to Europe with members of St. James Episcopal Church, she created a travel book with prose pen and ink drawings of castles, houses and places they had been.”

“I never recycled her beautiful hand-painted birthday and Christmas cards,” Ms. Swiss said.

Ms. Kilner was a collector of art and sold her own works across the street from the Baltimore Museum of Art.

“I was a kid and was curled up on the base of Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ and there she was buying other artists’ work as much as she was selling her own,” her son said. “She was very supportive of local artists.”

Ms. Kilner was still producing artwork until her late 80s.

A nature and animal lover, she enjoyed swimming, ice skating, horseback riding and timber racing.

“She loved the Maryland Hunt Cup and always attended the race,” Ms. Swiss said. “She was also quite a character and loved all kinds of family celebrations and gatherings.”

She amassed a collection of more than 100 owl figurines.

She volunteered in her community and had been a communicant for 42 years of St. James Episcopal Church, where she was a member of the Altar Guild and vestry.

Her husband of 62 years, Edward A. Kilner, a salesman, died in 2019.

Ms. Kilner left her body to the Maryland Anatomy Board. A celebration of life gathering will be held at 11 a.m. April 27 at her church at 3100 Monkton Road.

In addition to her son, she is survived by a daughter, Mary-Stuart Kilner, of Monkton; two sisters, Kathleen Swiss Bazzare, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Christine Swiss Bryant, of Sebring, Florida; and four grandchildren.