The sweet-tempered woman pushed to her death by a subway psycho was a compassionate “angel” who came to New York to pursue dreams of a career in art and writing, her devastated mom said yesterday.
“She was so special – she was my angel,” Kendra Webdale’s mother Patricia, her voice choked with emotion, told The Post from her home in the Buffalo suburb of Fredonia.
“I just can’t stop crying. I miss her so much because she was so lovely and caring and always a joy to be around … She was such a beautiful young lady and now she is gone.”
Webdale, 32, died at the hands of the kind of troubled person toward whom she had the most empathy, one of her four sisters said.
“She was the kind of person who would help the type of person that pushed her,” said the sister, Kim Webdale.
“She was the best. She was a very loving and caring person.”
The third of six kids – five girls and one boy – Webdale was working on a screenplay and did freelance photography since arriving in the Big Apple three years ago.
Like millions of young people drawn here with lofty aspirations and little money, Webdale worked long hours to keep her dreams alive, recently holding down a job as receptionist for Masterdisk, a music-editing company in Manhattan.
She shared an East 23rd Street apartment with a roommate to keep expenses down, her family said.
Webdale also is survived by a brother, Ralph, of West Redding, Conn., and sisters Suzanne Webdale Johnson, Krista Webdale and Kelly Manzella, all of the Fredonia area.
“My heart aches so much for her,” their mother said, recalling Kendra’s last visit to her mom and dad, Ralph, over Christmas.
“We had such a beautiful Christmas together. We had such a great time … I miss her so much because she was so lovely and caring and always a joy to be around.”
The blonde aspiring screenwriter returned to Manhattan the following Sunday – exactly one week before a deranged madman identified by cops as Andrew Goldstein shoved her off a subway platform at 23rd Street and Broadway, just blocks from her apartment.
It was a double irony, her family said. Webdale not only cared about strangers and those less fortunate, but never feared the mean streets.
“She wasn’t afraid to ride the subways at all,” her sister Kim said. “She took it all the time.”
Her mother added: “She was hard-working – she was always at the library doing research for her screenplay.”
The large family also includes a cousin, Ken Webdale of Scottsdale, Ariz., who yesterday tried unsuccessfully to fly to Buffalo but was stopped by a huge snowstorm that shut the upstate airport.
Kendra Webdale’s funeral was tentatively set for tomorrow.
“It’s very shocking and agonizing,” said Ken Webdale’s wife, Jenny.
“It doesn’t seem real. She was the nicest person you could ever meet … It seems very random. [Goldstein] seems to have had no purpose – the whole family is devastated.
“I couldn’t ever see her yelling at someone to set them off.”
Added her mom:
“It just makes us so mad that this person killed her just because he felt like doing it. This man is a sick person. He is disgusting.”
The well-loved Webdale graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a degree in communications, even as she worked as a switchboard operator at Brooks Memorial Hospital in Dunkirk, and as a restaurant reviewer for a defunct weekly, Nightline.
But her dreams of writing began to take off in July 1995 with her first newspaper job, as a photographer and reporter for the Buffalo Rocket and West Side Times, both Buffalo weeklies.
“She always got the job done,” said her editor there, Craig Turner, who described her as “sweet, smiling and shy.”
In 1996, Webdale was ready to strike out on her own in New York City, her family said.
“She loved the city,” and everything it had to offer, said her mom.
Co-workers at Masterdisk, where she worked for over two years, were also devastated.
“What we will most of all remember is her bright smile and sweet demeanor,” a statement from the company said. “We will forever miss her.”
The company’s statement called the young woman “an exemplary employee. It is a tremendous and painful loss to all who knew her.”