It was never a question where the Mooney family would celebrate Christmas. Everyone knew they were headed over to Kingsley and Tom’s house in Stevenson.

In her nutcracker-filled home, Kingsley Mooney would set the couple’s banquet table with ornate tablecloths and dishware, while presents piled under the tree. She’d spend the day cooking and baking while her family anxiously awaited her famous hot milk cake — “it’s like a pound cake, only better,” her husband said.

The first Christmas without her will be strange and sad. But her family will keep her memory alive by keeping the traditions alive, too.

“Whatever it was, she just so believed in family and family traditions and carrying them on,” said Gilly Babb, Kingsley Mooney’s closest friend. “She’d serve the same foods, she’d do the same decorations. It was really important to her that her kids come back to home and feel like it was their home.”

Kingsley Mooney, also a former mortgage banker, expert gardener and talented athlete, died April 7 of complications from a stroke. She was 64.

Mooney was born Dec. 25, 1960, to Garland P. Moore Jr., a banker, and Kingsley Black Moore, a teacher. She and her older brother, Charlie, grew up in Baltimore, and she attended Calvert School and Garrison Forest School. In high school, she played lacrosse and field hockey, often talking trash (lovingly) with Babb, her occasional opponent.

“She always had a very strong moral compass, even as a child. She knew right and wrong,” Babb said. “She was an incredibly supportive, kind friend, who you could always count on, but she also wasn’t really a risk-taker. She was very considerate and deliberate about what she did. She was well-liked by everybody, because she was friendly to everybody.”

It was much the same when she went off to Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She was voted student government president and continued playing sports. In her senior year, she was the captain of the lacrosse team, and she was later inducted into the school’s hall of fame.

She began her career in retail marketing in Boston and Washington, D.C., before coming back to Baltimore in the late 1980s to work as a mortgage loan originator with the B.F. Saul Co., a real estate company. One day, she happened to visit the office where Thomas Joseph “Tom” Mooney IV worked as a Realtor. They joked about his lunch (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich) and scheduled a date for the next week.

On their second date, which took place while they were both on a work trip in Ocean City, Tom Mooney told her that he was in love with her and that he would marry her. It “scared the daylights out of her,” he joked, and she told him “not yet” when he proposed six months later. But in the end, it was a winning strategy. The second time, another four or five months later, she said yes.

She made a great first impression on his family, too. Her sister-in-law, Megan Mooney, remembers noticing her beautiful blue eyes, but it was her “incredible,” loud laugh that really won her over.

“She was a very confident woman,” Megan Mooney said. “She would do anything for you. She was always a giver. She’d rather give than receive.”

The couple married in 1990 and celebrated with about 400 people at the Church of the Redeemer. Their first daughter, Kingsley Mooney Hoy, was born about a year after the wedding. Three years later, they welcomed twins, Garland Mooney Walker and Thomas Joseph Mooney V.

In the latter half of the decade, Kingsley decided it was too much to work and raise three children, so she became a homemaker — a role she cherished deeply. She was there for every sports game, every playdate, every late-night homework session, family and friends said.

“She didn’t see that it was her role to be critical,” Babb said. “She felt she was there to lend an ear, to be supportive. … She really felt her role was to be there as a mother, and mothers are there to support their children in any way they can.”

Family meant everything to Kingsley, who shared a first name with her mother and daughter. As her children aged, she was the “glue” that kept them connected, Tom Mooney said.

She kept close bonds with her kids as they grew up and started their own families. Her greatest joys were her three granddaughters, Louise Kingsley (who goes by “Weezie”), Lucy and Quinn.

“She loved seeing those grandbabies,” her husband said. “Whether they were in Charleston or Charlottesville, didn’t matter. She’s like, ‘I’m going down.’”

Kingsley also loved to tend to her garden, and she would plant and hang flowers around the house every spring. It was handy knowledge when she started writing blogs about healthy diets for her brother’s meal-planning company, Dinnertime, a few years ago.

She was also involved in her community and served on the boards of the Orokawa Y, the Building for God Foundation and the Women’s Board of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was a passionate supporter of women’s rights and supported access to reproductive care.

Shortly before she died, Kingsley learned she had a mass on her ovary. Her family was never able to confirm it was cancer, but her husband is pretty sure that was the case. He’s working with Johns Hopkins to establish a memorial fund that will support research for ovarian cancer prevention.

The family is also scheduling a memorial service for May 17 at 10 a.m. at the Church of the Redeemer, where Kingsley and Tom exchanged vows nearly 35 years ago.

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