Diane Cecily

Diane Cecily, 83 of Pittsburgh. Passed peacefully on Thursday, February 26, 2026. Preceded in death by her loving husband of 44 years, writer Chuck Kinder, parents Frank and Maxine (née Morse) Blackmer, brother Joe Blackmer, brothers-in-law David Kinder and John Kemper, nephew Ian Bateen, and cats Lu-Lu, Mr. Jones, and Miss Tammy.

Survived by, her sister Andrea Bateen (Robert), sisters-in-law Rosaura Kinder and Beth Kemper, nieces Amber Bateen, Alexis Bateen Adiarte (Eric), Morgan Kemper Trent (Michael), Amy Kinder, Laura Blackmer, and Tracy Blackmer, nephews Jon-Clay Kemper (Dana), Tobin Bateen (Melissa), and Michael Blackmer, 5 great nephews, 4 great nieces, and cat Colonel Angus.

Diane (née Blackmer) Cecily (b. March 9, 1942) grew up in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, a western girl, who would travel east to Vassar for a degree in sociology, back to University of Montana for a degree in education, and then to the rust belt for an MSW with a certificate in gerontology from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work. She worked in social services for over 20 years at Riverview Center for Jewish Seniors, Wightman Health Center, and UPMC Montefiore.

Her father Frank Blackmer was a graduate of the Yale School of Forestry, her mother Maxine an internationally known potter and professor, trained at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena. Frank’s forestry jobs relocated the family to a number of small towns until Missoula became home. Diane’s closest family relationship was with her paternal Grandmother Eda Blackmer. “While I doubt I was as headstrong, we had a tendency to speak our minds, even when silence would have been the better course. We both sought out adventure, drawn by the excitement of discovery, of exploration and new thinking. We enjoyed the arts, theater, music, and literature. And we both liked to deviate from convention when it served our purpose.”

A feminist, lover, intellectual, reader, devotee of the natural world, obsessive news follower, lifetime flute player, connoisseur of the delicious in every sense, wife, daughter, sister, and friend, Diane was a child of the sixties, yet had “no wish to burn a perfectly good bra, which had nothing to do with equality and everything to do with physique,” but she did vehemently fail to see “why men had rights women did not…”

By the 1970s she was installed in San Francisco, famously dating the writer Raymond Carver and then wooed away by the love of her life, the writer Chuck Kinder, a Stegner Fellow and West Virginian good ‘ol boy by birth. Chuck and Diane married in Missoula on March 22, 1975 in a raucous ceremony that Diane was relieved finished with no one objecting to their union. The rest is history. “A true connection is profound and enduring... a true connection actually changes the way you go about life…. You are comfortable in your trust,” Diane said, after much deliberation, when asked to define “love.” Diane made her home in Pittsburgh with Chuck in 1982 after he accepted a professorship at University of Pittsburgh in the English Department’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Traveling in a 1971 Olds Cutlass Sedan, leaking oil, Diane made a six-day solo road trip from San Francisco to Squirrel Hill to follow him. A few years later, their beloved home on Wightman Street would become the center of much buoyant and decadent behavior and often included a who’s who of American authors hobnobbing around Diane’s koi pond, Diane standing off to the side with a knowing grin.

Diane was slinky like a cat, and had as many lives: student, high school teacher, partner, advertising director, unofficial manuscript editor, and social worker are a few. One hand held a white Russian while the other rested atop her crossed legs. Demur. Decadent. Beautiful. To many, Diane was the cigarette smoking, partying, fashion iconic, quietly radical, witty, patient, caring, close-listening, advice-giving mom they longed for. Not that she wanted to be their mom, but wherever she lived, from Missoula to San Francisco to Pittsburgh to Key Largo and back to Pittsburgh again, her home was your home. Crawl through a window late at night to nap on the couch? No problem. She and Chuck fostered creativity and mischievous joy in their wake.

Chuck and Diane relocated to Key Largo, Florida in 2014 and Diane lived there until Chuck’s passing in 2019. Key Largo began their new adventure as wannabe pirates in a condo along Buttonwood Bay, surrounded by mangrove trees dotted with pelicans and cormorants. “The transition from snowbird to permanent Florida resident felt like slipping into a pair of well-worn slippers,” Diane said. Floating on their pontoon boat The Tomcat, with the sun setting, Diane saw their time there as an extended honeymoon. In 2020 Diane re-relocated to Pittsburgh in the middle of a global pandemic.

Diane was not afraid of death. In 2023 she self-published Undercover Confidential: A Meta Memoir. This 476-page book includes a cover drawn and designed by Diane: a dead woman’s body on a gurney, covered with a sheet. Her toe tag reads “Undercover Confidential.” A tiny spider crawls on the ground in the right corner. The quotations in this obituary are from this book. In a note to family she said she wrote her memoir “smiling at situations that I once believed would be my undoing.” But they weren’t.

A lover of light as a “fuel for her soul and a…spiritual joy,” Diane passed peacefully in the window-filled living room of her Pittsburgh condo, looking out over the Mon Valley. She will be missed forever by her friends and family.

A memorial will be held to honor Diane’s life on Friday, April 24, 2026, 6:30-7:30pm, in the Edward P. Kanai Funeral Home, 500 Greenfield Ave. 15207. (In lieu of flowers please buy a couple really good books from your favorite independent bookstore.)

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