Eileen Kentera

Eileen Kentera, 92, passed away on October 6, 2016 at Galloway Ridge Retirement Community in Pittsboro, NC. Born Eileen Ruth Kohler in Hamilton Ohio in 1924, she was one of four children of William and Alice Lykens Kohler. Soon after graduating from Hamilton High School in 1942, she was recruited during World War II to the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in Washington, DC. She worked as a secretary in Arlington Hall, the scene of US intelligence efforts to exploit enemy communications by deciphering Japanese crytosystems. Following the war, on December 18, 1945, she married fighter pilot George Kentera who had been previously missing in action and a prisoner of war. The two made their home in New Jersey, and later in Virginia where they raised two daughters. A homemaker during her children's younger years, Mrs. Kentera also worked for Arlington County (Va) Public Schools as well as for a school for Autistic Children in New Jersey. The Kenteras retired to Pinehurst, NC in 1987 and, after her husband's death in 1997, she moved to Chapel Hill NC where she has lived since, the last ten years at Galloway Ridge Retirement Community. She loved music (Frank Sinatra and the BeeGees), musical theatre (My Fair Lady and West Side Story), dance (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), and she was an avid reader, needlepointer and cook. She is survived by her daughters, Gale Waldron of Leesburg, Va and Jean Hendrickson of Chapel Hill, her sons-in-law Gerald Waldron and Dennis Hendrickson, her granddaughter, Sarah Waldron of Belfast, Maine, and her cherished granddogs, Sadie and Lily. No services are planned at this time. The family asks that donations be made to Community Home Care and Hospice in Siler City in lieu of flowers.