Frances Ellen Kay

Frances Ellen Kay (Fran) passed away at her home in Durham, North Carolina, on February 20th, 2024.

Fran was born on August 5th, 1948, to the late Bert Wesley Hungerford and Cleo Marion (Mattson) Hungerford, who welcomed their middle child into the world at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan, at 10:40 in the morning. Bert worked in construction, banking, and for a time trucking, and Cleo was a homemaker and part-time employee for a local newspaper. Cleo was a good writer and enjoyed writing and receiving letters, sadly a fading art.

Fran’s love, smile, laugh, care, and spirit will be missed by those who experienced them: her sons Jason (Jill) and Bryan (Emilie); her grandchildren Samaritan, Jackson, Jonathan, Everly, Nicolas, and Lucas. Fran loved her many nieces and nephews – she shared a special relationship with Jenna Berry (Hungerford). Fran’s sister, Elizabeth (Mike), and her brother, Bert, survive her. Fran was proceeded in death by her parents, Bert and Cleo. She also leaves behind generations of friends, some current and some past, literally too numerous to mention. You know who you are.

There will be a memorial service to remember Fran at 10:00am on Friday, March 1, 2024 at Hall-Wynne Funeral Home in Durham, NC, and all who know her are welcome to attend. In place of flowers, please consider donating on Fran’s behalf to the SPCA of Wake County.

Growing up in the Waterford area of Michigan, Fran enjoyed playing sports, loved animals, and enjoyed being outdoors. She played basketball, softball, and cheered. She was the homecoming queen twice. In the summers, she enjoyed swimming, skiing, and spending time at the many lakes in Michigan - Higgins Lake and West Branch held special places in her heart.

Fran graduated high school from Our Lady of the Lakes Catholic School in the class of 1966, with a world ahead of her. A special shout-out to Father Delaney, who was the head of the school at the time and with whom Fran had a close connection, always fondly remembering his kindness and leadership throughout her schooling. He should know that it shaped her throughout her life. The summer after she graduated from high school, she married Daryl at the age of 18.

She lived in several Michigan cities in their early years, including Kalamazoo while Daryl attended college after being honorably discharged from the Air Force. The young couple moved to Ann Arbor when Daryl was offered a job with Ford Motor Company, where her boys were born. A local nun, upon observing Fran cuddling skin to skin with her child in the hospital (before that was a thing), remarked that it was one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen. Fran remembered her words until her death. Her love literally shone out of her when it came to her children. The couple then built their first home in Brighton before Daryl’s work took them to Indiana for a new work opportunity with Ford, beginning the longest chapter of her life.

So in the summer of 1978, she moved with her husband and two boys to Bloomington, Indiana, where she established a new home and continued her career in sales for Bell Telephone, which eventually became AT&T. The sales profession suited her well, as she worked hard and had high standards for herself; she could see the immediate results of her work. Fran won numerous sales awards over her career and was often recognized as one of the best at what she did for Bell and AT&T. Co-workers looked up to her for guidance when times were uncertain, or if they needed an ear to listen. At times, work was not easy, and there were many changes throughout her career, but she was proud that she worked for a Fortune 500 company and successfully navigated the many ups and downs that came her way.

Her work with AT&T eventually moved her office to Indianapolis, while she continued to commute to work as a single mom while her boys still in school. In 1996, AT&T again moved her office to Evansville, Indiana where she relocated, with her boys now mostly grown, and began a new community of friends for nine years before retiring and moving to Brandon, Mississippi in 2005. There she lived out in the country with lots of animals and room to roam but the allure of grandchildren and more convenient city amenities drew her to Rock Hill, South Carolina (just outside of Charlotte, near Jason) in 2014. In the summer of 2017, she had a serious heart attack and again relocated to Raleigh (near Bryan), eventually buying her house in Durham in August of 2019, where she passed away.

She was 75 years young when she died. Sometimes people use the phrase “such and such years young” and you are left not quite sure what that means. With Fran, you know exactly what it means.

If you knew Fran at all, you knew her completely. Which is to say she was one of the most sincere, authentic, and unvarnished human beings most people would say they had ever encountered. She stayed that way from the time she was young until she passed. She loved everyone and everything, almost all of the time.

She loved people - family, friends, and strangers alike. She could, and did, talk for hours and hours in a single conversation with anyone who would participate with their heart, or at least with their ear. Those conversations would almost invariably involve the full range of human emotion and experience, the topic itself seemed to be just a medium for the emotion. There was raucous laughter, sobbing tears, hopefulness, despair, irritation, consolation, anger, compassion, empathy, judgement, tenderness, and critique. And that was just over her trip to the pet store. To not have a conversation like this with her was unusual. She backed up grocery store checkout lines asking about the cashier’s children. She ran the minutes off your phone plan, when that was a thing. She gave life advice over a drive-thru speaker. Her boys joined her on shopping trips only with grave trepidation and advance scouting of the locations of a nearby chair for sitting and a bathroom in case of emergency - shopping was as much a tour of people as it was products. She got that from her dad, who believed the thing people needed most in this world was to feel understood, appreciated, and not alone. Ironically, they both felt alone more than most people knew, and more than we wanted.

Fran was, at once, endlessly generous and fiercely demanding. She gave away jewelry and clothing like she was a QVC sub-outlet store. If you experienced this, you get that joke. If you toured her home at nearly any point in her life, you get that joke even more . . . and you have multiple sweaters, pants, and accessories that may or may not fit, some with fur, and some with leather. She playfully demanded a discount at stores or restaurants because there was a dent or scratch, but also because she was a senior, or because she had been a single mom, or - this really happened - not because she herself was a veteran, but because she had one in her family (actually several). She ordered off the kids menu at 73. She once required managerial intervention because she demanded she be able to order the new Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich, which she was convinced they were holding back on her. Except, she learned later, she was asking for it from the Bojangles drive thru (true story, she got confused). She bought Christmas presents years in advance, not because she intended to, but because she bought gifts all year round and then waited for an opportunity to give them. We are absolutely confident there are some she never gave.

She loved animals, largely because she loved things to take care of and to keep her company. Growing up, we were constantly only a weekend away from having a new pet. Because she had a friend who had puppies. Because she found stray kittens behind the store. Because her neighbor had rabbits or a horse. Because the forest had a baby deer or a turtle that needed to be rescued. Because her boys wanted a snake. Or a bird. Or a fish. I’ll note that all these were real pets for her or us at some point. But she really loved dogs - loyal, energetic, always needful of, and giving, love. Sometimes wandering off but always wandering back to your side. Teddy was one of the first in her long line of close canine connections, then Buddy, and finally Brooke, her friend to the very, very end. Perhaps she loved them because, like her dogs, Fran’s currency was love - always requiring it, earning it, and giving it away.

Fran was really funny. Not always but most enjoyably, inappropriately funny. She loved a joke. But she especially loved (cover your ears kids) a risqué and uncomfortable joke, which hit precisely on the line between poor taste and an intimate commonality everyone could relate to and laugh about. She loved to laugh about everything. If it wasn’t capable of being framed as humorous, it should be. She even laughed about herself. It takes a genuine humility to quickly pivot from anger or criticism to robust laughter at the moment of a properly timed and daring turn of a phrase. She would laugh about you, too, especially when you were being overly serious. And if you didn’t laugh, she would poke at you. Sometimes verbally, sometimes literally. Not having the humility to laugh at your own shortcomings or mistakes was not an option - we know, we tried. And from this we learned to be ourselves without fear. She was proud of that.

She loved water and beaches. An airplane trip was a dream come true: a captive audience on a trip somewhere fun. If you drew the luck of sitting next to her on the plane, you were absolutely going to see her pictures and you had a 50/50 chance of being invited to her next vacation. She loved to travel. It gave her the opportunity to see new places and meet new people and ask curious and borderline inappropriate questions about other cultures. She made her boys go to college because they ought to know about other cultures. She distrusted corporations and governments and people who thought a lot of themselves or abused their power. She enjoyed all kinds of food, even the gross stuff. She once asked her grandkids to alphabetize her pantry. Yet she completely ignored expiration dates on stored food. She knew, or would shortly discover, a better way to do just about anything. Her contacts list included friend’s names, store specials, Alfredo recipes, wise sayings from Oprah, and reminders to set an alarm. She loved to dance. Like, oddly, fervently loved to dance. And, when the mood struck, she demanded you dance with her like a gangster demands getting paid. She once made teenage grandchildren dance with her in the driveway, with no music playing. We have video to prove it, which will be safely preserved until their weddings. While they thought that was unusual, it wasn’t. Her boys endured it for years, thankfully without as many cameras around. She loved sparkly, flashy clothes, because they were fun and made her feel special and she didn’t much care what you thought about that. She owned a motorcycle in her late-50s. She was an instant party and would hustle you at cards. She loved letting kids win, because she could watch them be proud of themselves and see their confidence grow in real time.

But far and away, the thing she loved most of all was close family. She has six grandchildren, ranging from 17 years to 6 months old. They all knew her a little and deserved to know her more. Whatever she knew of them, she loved, and was proud of. She had two sons, whom she doted on in youth and over-counseled in adulthood. She really, really, really loved being a mom. It was her thing. She praised her boys constantly and challenged and taught them in exhausting detail. Her sons were, in her words, “her whole life.” She was, as the kids today would say, a boy mom. She fiercely fought for them and defended them when they were opposed and she spanked them with random kitchen utensils when she deemed it necessary. She was committed to leading them, to the point of striving ferociously with them at times, when their path was wayward or reckless. She taught them big words but got mad if they used them at her. She believed in long hugs, deep words, and sincere sharing of all of life’s shaping pains and resurrecting joys. And if there is such a thing as skin to skin contact in sharing one’s soul with another, she believed in that too. She was the largest and most loving force of nature her boys knew.

We will share with you some of her final written advice, which you can apply now or later, as you see fit and in your own circumstance.

"You have made me proud in so many ways. My sons were my whole life. I wasn’t perfect, none of us are. But I tried my very best and I took my job seriously. I loved and praised my boys and taught them right from wrong. And I gave them compassion, grace, kindness, generosity, forgiveness and, I hope, patience and sweet words. May your journey embrace all of those. Each day you work at life together, help each other see a better way to do things because we lose our way from time to time and need to readjust our thinking and approach. You will touch so many lives and children will learn from watching the love, respect, and kindness you give to all around you. Strive to make God, your children, and yourselves proud. The love and pride I have for my boys was my most important job in teaching and sharing the mistakes we all make is a great way to help us all continue to grow and be better."

Which is where, quite sadly, we leave her. Both alone and with a massive legacy of lives touched and influenced. Her love stretched out far and wide and caused ripples - sometimes waves - that will stretch out beyond our knowledge or imagination. And they will almost certainly stretch out for more generations than those affected will recognize. Her life and probably some of her quirks will go on to show up, in ways unknown and unknowable, in people who may never have known her heart, but who nonetheless will most certainly be affected by her brave love, generously given, to all who would themselves bravely join with her in their own version of paradoxical emotions worn always on the outside, like a tough-as-nails suit of armor, a flowing and warm fur coat, or a sparkling diamond ring. You decide which, or maybe all.

Ironically, in the end, she died of heart trouble. Which was far and away her largest, endlessly powerful, and most frequently used organ. Perhaps she used it too much. But we prefer to think that she just, finally … used it up.