Melody Kenison ran away from an abusive home when she was just 9 years old.

She had the first of her three daughters when she was 15, was badly injured in a car accident about 12 years ago, and was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2005.

Ms. Kenison died of a brain aneurysm Tuesday. She was 52.

Despite the difficult circumstances she faced throughout her life, Ms. Kenison always put others before herself, said her youngest daughter, Melissa Kenison of Westbrook.

“She was just very compassionate, so genuinely compassionate toward everyone,” her daughter said Saturday.

Ms. Kenison grew up with six siblings in Gorham before she ran away.

Her daughter didn’t know exactly where she lived between then and her early 20s, when she moved to Standish with Michael Kenison, the man she married.

“She found places to stay,” her daughter said.

Around the same time Ms. Kenison got married, she earned her GED and started working as a tax specialist at a firm owned by a family friend who trained her.

After getting divorced in 1995, Ms. Kenison moved around for a while. She lived in Waterboro for several years before moving to an apartment in Biddeford about three years ago.

She lived between there and the home of her sister Pamela Boucher in Steep Falls, where she spent the last two weeks of her life.

Her daughter said that Ms. Kenison allowed friends who were homeless to stay in her Biddeford apartment, both when she was there and when she wasn’t.

She got into trouble with her landlord, who thought she was subletting the apartment, but she never took rent money from anyone, her daughter said.

Ms. Kenison always wanted to help people, her daughter said. During the 1990s, she took care of the home and cats of an elderly woman in Sebago, and prepared meals for and gave rides to an elderly man while his wife was in the hospital.

“She wasn’t getting paid or anything,” her daughter said.

Ms. Kenison was known as “Barbie” to some, because of her dyed bright blond hair and good looks, her daughter said.

She admired Marilyn Monroe because she was “a strong independent woman that was also very beautiful,” her daughter said, much like her mother.

When Ms. Kenison’s children were young, she would take them and their cousins to the beach, the playground and Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth for picnics.

“My mom always had fun things for us to do,” her daughter said.

Kenison said her mother always asked how people were doing and whether there was anything she could do for them. She gave out great compliments, and would notice a new haircut when others wouldn’t. She had many friends and no enemies, because she was such a pleasant person to be around, her daughter said.

“She’s had a life full of strife, but she always had a smile on her face and never let anyone see her down,” her daughter said.

Staff Writer Leslie Bridgers can be contacted at: 791-6364 or at

lbridgers@pressherald.com