Lacy Gray Kelley

Lacy Gray Brown Kelley, 74, a resident of Highland Home, Alabama, passed away peacefully at Jackson Hospital on Friday, September 12th, 2025. Funeral services for Lacy will be held at 2 PM on Monday, September 15th, at New Ebenezer Baptist Church with Rev. Jim Looney officiating. Interment will follow in the cemetery there at the church with Turners Funeral Home of Luverne directing. The family will receive friends at the church on Monday for one hour prior to the service time.

Lacy was absolutely a brilliant ray of sunshine in this too often cold, cruel world, and every life she touched felt the warmth of her love. She was blessed with such an outgoing and empathetic personality that strangers simply didn't exist in her life; they were simply friends she hadn't met yet. Everyone who met this unstoppable force of good and Christian love knew they had been blessed. And when I say unstoppable, I mean that in every sense of the word. She was not someone to rest on her laurels or lay about the house. A truly hard worker at heart, Lacy loved working in her garden and keeping her beloved hummingbirds fed, but where she truly shined was in the kitchen. Whew! There wasn't a single thing that came out of that room that wasn't absolutely delicious and she loved to cooking up a storm for everyone who ever crossed her threshold. If you were lucky enough to get some of her chicken & dumplings or banana pudding, you knew you were fortunate indeed.

Lacy was a proud graduate of Highland Home High School where she met the love of her life and high school sweetheart, Ralph. They married at 16 and settled down close to home so they could raise their beloved three children in the same nurturing small town environment they had thrived in. Family was everything to Lacy as well. There was nothing she wouldn't do for them and they felt the same way about her. They knew her door was always open where she had a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on whenever her loved ones needed it. She loved supporting and being present for not only her children and their children & grandchildren, but her siblings and their families as well. Words cannot express how much she loved each and every one of them with her whole heart. Lacy also instilled in them one of her strongest guiding principles: that there was nothing more important than being there for people that you love. Her passing leaves behind a hole that can never be filled, but there is comfort to be found in the knowledge that she is now safe in the arms of her loving Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Lacy was preceded in death by her son-in-law, Waylon Commander; parents, Bud & Blanche Faulk Brown; parents-in-law, Eunice Clayton and Ralph W. Kelley Sr; and siblings, Tommy Brown, Mary Sue Reynolds, and Katie Arthur. She is survived by her loving husband of 57 years, Ralph W. Kelley Jr; their children, Michelle (Travis) Bynog, Dorthey Commander, and Bubba (Amanda) Kelley; grandchildren, Johnathon (Niki) Bynog, J.W. (Kelsey) Bynog, Alexis (Shane) Donaldson, Cheyenne Commander, Dalton Commander, Bailey Kelley, Christopher Mosley, JD Mosley, and Jacob Mosley; great-grandchildren, Adalind, Emory, Lacey, Ryleigh, and Pasleigh; siblings, Doug (Dianne) Brown, Danny (Jennifer) Brown, Mike (Millie) Brown, Ruby (Glenn) Davis, Annette (Jerry) Stephenson, and Linda (Charles) Myrick; and a host of nieces, nephews, extended family members, and friends.

Active pallbearers will be Johnathon Bynog, J.W. Bynog, Dalton Commander, JD Mosley, Doug Brown, and Danny Brown. Honorary pallbearers will be Travis Bynog, Mike Brown, Christopher Mosley, Jacob Mosley, and Shane Donaldson.