Knox’s First, First Lady was laid to rest yesterday at Crown Hill Cemetery. Alice Kay, 101, was the wife of Knox’s first Mayor, Glen Kay.
In services at the Catherine Kasper Home Chapel in Donaldson, Father Mike, Acting Priest for the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ Ministry, noted in his funeral mass that Alice liked to dance. He said, “I hope that someone will commission a mural painting of Alice dancing with Jesus in Heaven.”
Ted Hayes remembered that on her 100th birthday everyone at the party saluted her with a glass of expensive champagne. Alice didn’t say much but indicated to her caretakers that she would pass on the cake for another glass of “the bubbly.”
Mrs. Kay was an enthusiastic Dixieland Jazz fan and Father Mike asked everyone standing in the vestibule following the service to join in the singing of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
During her years living in Knox, Mrs. Kay resided only a half block from St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church and spent many days at functions there. A devout Roman Catholic, she would have been impressed with the number of nuns, many in traditional religious habits, who attended her service.
Mr. and Mrs. Kay were politically of the Republican persuasion, but Alice always said on her birthday (May 8th), “I share my birthday with two pretty good Democrats, Judge Almo Smith and Harry Truman.”
The end of an era, the passing of Knox’s First First Lady.
