Sharon Elizabeth Kelley died at Woodside Village on Nov. 17, after a remarkable a life where she skated with the Ice Capades, danced with the Rockettes and served as friend and companion of the late Mother Teresa. She was 83

She was born June 11, 1937, the fourth of four children in Bedford, N.Y., to George and Ethel (Dillon) Kelley. Their house, behind their restaurant, had a small pond, where she taught herself to figure skate.

While at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, where she graduated in 1955, she would often go into New York city and skate at the Rockefeller Center rink.

Skating there one day, when she was 15, someone told her that Radio City Music Hall was holding auditions for dancers and skaters to be in an ice show and maybe even be a Rockette.

Sharon, already with the uncommon beauty and fluent grace that would accompany for all of her life, added three years to her age to pass for 18 and was hired. She balanced the Radio City ice show and the kick-line all while finishing high school.

The combination saw her travel with the Ice Capades, including a European tour which led to a stint in the former Soviet Union, were she taught skating as part of a cultural exchange.

By way of her skating, she formed a lifelong friendship with Dick Button, the most prominent male figure skater of the 20th century. It was never a romantic pairing — she had husbands for that — except maybe the first one. At age 19 while she was living in New York city, she worked as a waitress at high-end places like the Copa Cabana and the Rainbow Room, and in 1956, there was a daytime TV show, where beaming, young couples were married on the air.

The bride and groom, which was the name of the show, pledged eternal joy, and were then showered with gifts: a set of silverware, a refrigerator and the like. Sharon and a male friend were the magic couple, but her family had that marriage annulled within a week. They split the bounty and she went merrily into her first real marriage.

In 1957, she briefly married Donald McCauley, to live in Massachusetts and Virginia, before they parted and she began her stint as an executive assistant in New York city.

By 1965 was married to Harry Clements, a K-Street lobbyist. They lived in Virginia and Washington D.C, where she began her career in communications and as an executive assistant.

Meanwhile, in what she described as curious adventure, Sharon had begun and enthusiastic correspondence with Mother Teresa.

When her marriage to Harry ended in 1970, she returned to Manhattan and her executive capacity until 1976, when Mother Teresa asked her to help to establish a mission in the Bronx.

Sharon did that, and next accompanied Mother Teresa to Santa Fe, N.M., to work with native American people.

After returning to New York, she met and married Sidney (Bud) Walker of Greenwich, Conn. and joined him on his 65-foot, custom-built, aluminum ketch. On a voyage to Bermuda, Sharon had a terrible accident when her motorbike collided with a truck. After months of recovery in Bermuda, then back to Manhattan, she and Bud rented a home in Edgartown, where she spent another few months, with one kidney and a prosthetic shoulder. Her months on the Vineyard were complicated when Bud had to leave and return to his life.

The marriage ended in divorce and in 1990, she returned to New Mexico. She remained in Santa Fe, working for the Olympic Committee and serving as executive director of North American Institute NAMI, a nonprofit facilitating trade between the U.S. S, Canada and Mexico, until her retirement in 2019, when she headed back to Martha’s Vineyard.

She had no children, but left her precious Jack Russell Terrier, Annie, and a legion of exceptional friends. She is also survived by her sister Patricia and nieces Kim and Amie of Providence, R.I., and by her nephew Robert of Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and niece Aileen of Raleigh, N.C.