Willie Denning

Jenice Heflin was born on October 13, 1932, to Sherrill Heflin and Florence Nall in Boaz, Kentucky. She was raised through her high school years in New Kensington, PA, then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she worked for the Cleveland Browns football team.

Jenice married Seymour Schlein in 1978. They moved to Americus, Georgia, where they worked together and enjoyed spending lots of time on their cabin cruiser. Jenice and Sy retired to the mountains in Hendersonville, North Carolina. They lived in a beautiful mountaintop home in Kenmure. He died in 1999.

Jenice met her soulmate, Robert Denning at a ballroom dance in Flat Rock, NC, and they married on May 24, 2008. They spent three joyously happy years together before Bob’s death in 2010. Jenice moved to Carolina Village in 2020, where she was very active and surrounded by her many friends.

Jenice loved to dance. She was a great fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. She spent a week each spring with a group of friends at the beach. She was an avid reader and enjoyed card games with her friends right up until this week. She loved to travel, both internationally and domestically.

In her 80s, Jenice made a bold decision to do one adventurous thing every year she’d never done before. A few of these adventures have included whitewater rafting, a trip to Jerusalem in the snow, target shooting with an AK-47, and margaritas!

Jenice was a warm, vivacious, welcoming woman who gathered her chosen family to her from far and wide. Each of us has been profoundly blessed to be wrapped in her loving embrace over the years. She will be deeply missed, and her spirit will live on in all those she touched.

She is survived by her cousin Vicki Stayton, daughter Mary Stinich, children Holly and Scott Denning, their spouses, and grandchildren.

A celebration of life will be held in June at Carolina Village, Hendersonville, NC.