Maribelle Mackenzie; helped immigrants

When she turned 20 in the summer of 1940, Mitzie Mackenzie took a two-week job at a Bible school in Chinatown.

When the job ended, she stayed to help immigrant Chinese adjust to life in the city, though she did not speak their language.

It was not an easy job, she said in a 2002 Inquirer interview, because it meant working until after midnight, "when people finished their shifts working in laundries."

On Monday, Maribelle Mackenzie, 88, who for 61 years was a staff member of what is now the Chinese Christian Church and Center, died of kidney failure at the Philadelphia Protestant Home on Tabor Road in Lawndale, where she had lived since 2006.

Born in South Philadelphia, Ms. Mackenzie graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls.

Carol Gung, a family friend, said that Ms. Mackenzie - known as Mitzie throughout Chinatown - began working in the young adult group at the center and was its director by the time the center dedicated its church building in 1949.

When she retired in 1991, Gung said, Ms. Mackenzie could count as her accomplishments establishing the center's Boys' Club, Girls' Club, kindergarten, and English as a Second Language program.

She was a board member of Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. from the 1970s until early this decade and of On-Lok House, a senior citizen home on 10th Street near Spring Street.

Ms. Mackenzie is survived by a sister and six nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by two brothers.

A viewing was set from 8 to 9 a.m. Saturday at the Chinese Christian Church, 1101 Vine St., before a 9 a.m. funeral  service there, with burial in Forest Hills Cemetery, Huntingdon Valley.