Kathleen Mae DeYoung

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As of Thursday, November 11, 2021, at the age of 91, Kathleen (Kay) DeYoung’s human experience has expired. She passed away peacefully in her Wyoming home of 40 years with family by her side. She is survived by her children, Keith, Mark, and Patty DeYoung; seven loved grandchildren; and their children. She is preceded in death by her husband, Raymond (Ray) DeYoung; daughter, Kathy DeYoung; sisters and brothers, Janet (Gerald) Longcore, John, Sydney, and Martin Hoogerland, and Phyllis (Donald) Johnson. Kay spent most of her time in the summer on a golf course, and when it became a bit too much for her, she wouldn’t give it up and became the treasurer for her league. Unfortunately, no one in the league knew that she had never actually used a computer much, and anyone around at home proofreading it tried to make it legible for the teams to understand. If Kay wasn’t on the golf course she was “mowing” the lawn. Driving a lawn tractor on her acre+ lawn was not even close to her lead foot on the pavement. Over 40 years she was known as the Mario Andretti of the lawn mowers in the neighborhood. There was no slowing her down or cutting too close to the trees. That passion ended up with her driving as fast as she could through fall leaves and not once, but twice, causing a fire of leaves following her and her tractor with a daughter screaming and trying to chase her down to stop. This was way before headphones, yet she was still so tuned into her private race she couldn’t see a fire, child, or anything else in her determination to win that gold medal in her mind. When Kay wasn’t mowing or spending time at the Pines she was watching the Detroit Tigers and could name the players from as far back as the ’60s. As fall came around Kay could be found outside, even at the age of 90, sawing branches with a hacksaw for the other love in her life, her fireplace. So many hours were spent in her house with her fire - in the fireplace her husband made - that not even her grandchildren can imagine the winters there otherwise. She wasn’t from a farmer’s family as her husband was. She was a girl from Grand Rapids who worked at Herpolsheimers in downtown GR until he came back from the war, but she was loved stronger in life than you’d find in any of the trees found on their property.