4 APRIL 2025
A very well attended funeral service was held at Minnis Chapel for Kay Kelly by her pastor Fr. Terrance Klein.
From the obituary:
Kay Kelly of Ellinwood passed away March 27th in Ellinwood District Hospital. Kay was diagnosed with lung cancer 6 1/2 years ago in sept 2018, fought and survived, deemed clear with no signs of return. In Feb 2025 while at an unrelated follow up appointment, the devastating news of a mass found in her pancreas was shocking. Three days in acute care the news of it being untreatable was difficult to relay to Kay. This form of cancer showed no mercy sickness and extreme pain Kay was so undeserving of took her life in 5 1/2 weeks’ time.
Over the years to current Kay has been involved in community in some way including, member of St. Joseh church and Altar Society, Barton Cougars Club, Barton County Historical Society, volunteer delivery for Meals on Wheels, member of the bridge club within the Senior Center. Member of Smoky Hills PBS.
Working close to home included Rockys IGA, Secretary at Knop Butane, John Henrys, Regis Inventory auditing, Annie Maes. Most significantly, Kay was a caring wife, loving mother and fun Grandmother. Kay loved life, the outdoors, birdwatching, star gazing, camping, fishing in the Rocky Mountains, having company, reading, learning new things, traveling, playing board games and cards. She lived a simple life being and incredible strong, determined women taking care of her health and didn’t need stuff, nor cared about status. She was authentically herself always. Proud of her family
Kay always thought about others and gave of herself without expecting a return. Such an inspiration to those around her. If things got tough, she was the example of how to handle life’s diversities. Work around it and move on. When Kay fell ill and began to show signs of fatigue and not feeling well, she always made the effort to make an appearance, be it birthdays or holidays or a grandchild school concert, if even for awhile. Even thru the pain, confusion, and suffering, was so smart and beautiful inside and out. Fought to the end out for love of life and family.
Kay Elizabeth Gardner was the first born to Gladys (Baldwin) and Howard (Bill) Estel Gardner in Duncan, Oklahoma 1944. She met and married her one true love, Canadian, Ronald Kelly of Canoga Park, California April 24 1961. The newlyweds led a life in the Airforce military while moving from base to base started a family. First born son John Howard, first born daughter Tracey Kay, second born daughter Lori Lynn. At this the family had moved to Kansas where they settled to raise their family. The couple was married 62 years. Kay said how she missed Ron, " He was my everything."
Kay was preceded in death husband Ron, only sibling Ann T. Brown, and parents Gladys and Bill Gardner. Survivors include son John (Marion) Kelly of Lee’s Summit Missouri, Daughter Tracy K Williams, and Lori Kelly both of Ellinwood. Grandchildren include Nicole (Kelly) Justin Jenkins (three children) of Kansas City. Forrest (daughter), Quincy and KellyAnn Williams of Ellinwood and four great grandchildren. Brother-in-law Terry Brown of Gunnison, Colorado. Long time friend of the family Bill Willliams.
Celebration of Life Service will take place Friday April 4th 4 p.m. with Father Terry Klien, followed by inurnment at Lakin-Commanche Cemetery in Ellinwood. Visitation will take place Thursday, April 3rd 4:00 - 7:00 p.m..
Memorials are suggested to Membership Coordinator, Smoky Hills Public TV PO Box 9, Bunker Hill Ks. 67626-0009. Or any help with final expenses family would humbly accept with much gratitude. Thank you for either choice. Send final expense gifts to Kay Kelly c/o Tracy K Williams, 112 West 2nd Street, Ellinwood, Kansas 67526. your consideration is much appreciated. God Bless.
| Daddy's Girl | Kay Kelly |
| Fr Terrance Klein | 4.IV.2025 |
Revelation 21: 1-5a, 6b-7 John 11:21-27
Have you ever wished you could return to your childhood? Of course, you’d be surrendering the freedom and agency of adulthood, but there’s something attractive about waking each morning without adult worries. Your parents provide everything your world needs. You glide through their generosity; you coast on their cares and concerns. We know it’s not possible, but the yearning is there.
Kay may have felt the tug of childhood a bit more than the rest of us. Both of her parents worked outside the home, first in Oklahoma and then in Corpus Christi, Texas. Unusual at the time, but it ensured that their little family was well provided for. Kay remembered having nannies and cooks, Callie May being a particularly beloved one. Her mother Gladys dressed little Kay in matching dress, shoes, and clutch, and adolescence meant high heels and gloves. Unlike her slightly tom-boyish sister Ann, whom Kay didn’t allow to sleep with her because she didn’t bathe after playing, Kay was always a “girl’s girl,” and she was definitely Daddy’s girl.
Growing up, if you’ve never stumbled or your parents have always been there for you, it’s perhaps not surprising that you wouldn’t be afraid of risks. And—let’s be honest—is there a greater risk than love?
When Kay’s first chance at love came, she jumped. She met Ron Kelly in California. Her family had moved, and he was stationed there in the Air Force. She was just sixteen when they married. Her parents considered preventing the union, but Kay was already sneaking out to see Ron. Grandma wisely counseled that marriage was better than a daughter leaving, perhaps forever, by eloping.
Turns out, grandma’s age and Kay’s youth were right about Ron. He and Kay would be the love of each other’s lives through some sixty-two years of marriage, so much so that when Ron died unexpectedly in a 2023 auto accident, Kay could say, in a way that rends the heart, that she was no longer sure she believed in heaven. “He was my everything.” Even God’s goodness had come into question.
And that’s understandable. When you work so hard for so long to build a life together, how could your faith not be challenged when half of that life ends, even if the teachings of your faith had always insisted that it would?
Ron and Kay had been happy. The Good Lord had blessed them with three children. Maybe Kay never compared her carefree life as a child with her life of cares as a wife and mother. She was too busy living that life, providing for her children, who rightly thought that their parents were wonderful.
A bit of her old ways remained. So many weekends were spent at Lake Wilson. Ron would join the kids in the water and the sun, but Kay would ensconce herself under a tree, equipped with an extra-large, extra-floppy sun hat. She had been raised to prize, not a tan, but skin untouched by the sun. Perhaps that’s why Kay looked at least twenty years younger than her age.
Did Kay struggle with her approaching death? Yes, and who among us will not, save the greatest of saints? Kay had grown up as a child of privilege. She gambled all of that on love and won, but not without years of hard work. How could death not appear as something that would rob her of what she had worked so hard to obtain?
Our faith tells us that although we die—it’s a law of biology written into our nature—the very direction of death has been changed in the resurrection of Jesus. Death is no longer a loss of life, a going down into shadows we know nothing about.
I remember discussing the life to come in the hospital with Kay. She listened attentively and then said, “But you don’t really know, do you?”
I responded, “Well, I haven’t died myself.”
It wasn’t the time to debate the issue, only to give witness to what we know happened to Jesus. Death didn’t end his relationships with those whom he loved. Indeed, when he rose from the dead he didn’t bother appearing to his skeptics, instead he reestablished his relations with his loved ones. He appeared to Mary in the garden, to Peter and John at the seashore, to the disciples in the locked upper room.
Indeed, the immense joy of the nascent Church was to discover that Jesus wasn’t less present to them in death. Through his resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit he had become more present to them. They had only to gather for his meal, and they knew that he was among them. They became convinced that the resurrected Christ hadn’t left them. He had become so interior to them that they were forced to speak of third person of the godhead, the Holy Spirit. As Saint Augustine would put it some three centuries later, speaking directly to the God whom he had so often overlooked while he was living his young life:
You were more inward to me than my most inward part;
and higher than my highest (Conf. III.6.11).
Kay struggled to believe this, but she did. She always graciously received me, because she knew, in a way she couldn’t fully explain—who can?—that her Lord was coming to her, speaking into her heart, assuring her of his love and concern. Her family gave witness to the same, saying so often to her, “Mom, it’s okay to let go, to go home, to be with Dad, and your first family.”
Now, Kay has done just that. Her time of depression and doubt has given way to joy and light. Come the end, Kay was able to say with Saint Martha:
Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah,
The Son of God, the one who is coming into the world (Jn 11:27).
Now we’re the ones who must remind ourselves that death doesn’t sever the bonds we forge on earth. To live in Christ is to live with all his saints, living and dead. To the extent that we join ourselves to Christ, we conjoin ourselves to those whom we have loved and lost on earth.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who confessed her own self to be a little princess and a Daddy’s girl, gave such beautiful witness to this truth when she was only a child, receiving her First Holy Communion. She had lost her mother when she was only a toddler. On the day of her First Holy Communion, her older sisters saw that she was crying as she approached the altar. They presumed their baby sister was weeping because her mother wasn’t there to witness the day. But Thérèse later wrote,
Oh! no, the absence of Mamma didn’t cause me any sorrow on the day of my First Communion. Wasn’t Heaven itself in my soul, and hadn’t Mamma taken her place there a long time ago? Thus, in receiving Jesus’ visit, I received Mamma’s. She blessed me and rejoiced in my happiness. On that day, joy alone filled my heart and I united myself to her who gave herself irrevocably to Him who gave Himself so lovingly to me.
That’s what we must remember now. Death removes our loved ones from our sight, but not us from theirs. To the extent that we belong to Christ, we continue to belong to them and they to us. I said earlier that all but the greatest of saints fear death, and here we have an example of a truly great saint telling us not to fear separation from our loved ones. If they belong to Christ and we belong to Christ, we are together in a way we can’t see now but one day we will, when Kay and all those whom we have love tell us how they watched, and waited, and aided us until we came to join them. Then we and our loved ones will hear the one on the throne say,
Behold, I make all things new.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
The beginning and the end (Rev 21:6).
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