Eulogy

Words of remembrance for Kay were given on May 13th, 2019 by grandchildren (Joelle, Jordan, Tyler, and Riley) and brother (Clyde).

Joelle:

On Friday May 10th, my grandmother Kay passed away peacefully surrounded by her loved ones. Less than two weeks before, we discovered she had an aggressive stomach cancer. Up until then, Kay had been working from our Charlottetown office full-time, doing what she loved most, and was only a few weeks shy of her 80th birthday when she passed away.

Kay’s mission was to help children and adults unlock their potential of a full life through literacy with the two companies she founded, Spell Read and Ooka Island. In the process, she reached countless students across Canada and around the world. Her success in business was a byproduct of her passion for reading and her belief that literacy was the key to a meaningful life.

Kay would always cheer for the underdog and would fiercely defend those who were misunderstood in the classroom. She believed in children. In Grammy’s eyes, every child was smart, every student could learn, and every person deserved the same opportunity to reach their life’s potential. Kay’s passion and entrepreneurial spirit came from a sense of duty. Her work will now be carried on by her colleagues, family and friends who have worked by her side at SpellRead, Ooka Island, and Scholastic.

My grandmother was many things to many people throughout her life – an educator, researcher, and entrepreneur; a loving and warm friend, colleague, and neighbour; and the anchor in our family. And she was the exact same person to her core in all of these roles.

She was a visionary leader who cared about improving children’s lives. She was passionate about creating work that was relevant and truthful. She was driven by a clear set of values that encompassed both her personal and professional life.

Building Ooka Island with my grandmother has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I learned a great deal under her mentorship. She knew how to stay the course, trust her instincts and to be patient. She taught me that what matters most is to move the needle in the right direction and to take time to celebrate the small wins. Building a business from scratch is difficult and overwhelming, but Kay knew how to focus on the small victories that would happen each day. She always worked with this optimism.

She trusted her principles because she developed them in the classroom. She then pursued international research partnerships to solidify her principles and I am happy to say that the data collected from Kay’s lifetime of research overwhelmingly shows the positive effect of her groundbreaking reading method on students. And today, children all over the world, are learning to read using her method.

Grammy was never so happy as she was when she was celebrating someone else—and graduations were her favourite. In her commencement speech at UPEI, she shared this message to the graduating class, “Life may ask you to cut a path through the jungle rather than simply stay on the flat paved road. Commit to the truth and be courageous and relentless in that commitment.” That’s who she was. She never took the easy path, but she also never gave up on her vision, dreams, and truth.

Kay was proud of her record as a business woman and she treasured her life, family and work on Prince Edward Island. It was an honour to support her in her quest to eradicate illiteracy and my life’s work will continue in her legacy. There are not enough words to encapsulate my grandmother and the big, beautiful life she had, but I will forever cherish all the time I was privileged to spend with her and am thankful for all the memories we made.

Jordan:

This past week, our family and friends have been so fortunate to have one another to lean on, to support one another through this hard time, and to tell stories recounting the best we remember of my grandmother, Dr. Kay MacPhee, Grammie.

At one point, while we were all sitting around Grammie in the hospital, some of us were saying how remarkable it was that she never raised her voice in anger at anyone.

So I said, “Actually…” There was this one time when my sister Joelle and I were very little, maybe I was 5 years old and Joelle was 7, and we and my parents were living with Grammie in New Dominion in the house where she had raised Lowell and Cammy.

I was probably annoying Joelle like I’m known to do, and Joelle was probably screaming at me to leave her alone as she was justified to do.

I remember that Grammie came into the room, looked directly at the two of us in exasperation, and said — perhaps not in a full shout, but at least in an “outdoor voice” — “Why can’t you two just get along!” and then stormed out of the room.

Grammie was only ever truly upset when she saw people she loved not getting along. Togetherness with family was immensely important to Grammie. She would be so happy to see so many people she loved gathered together like this today to celebrate her life and remember her.

Now, the OTHER time Grammie raised her voice in anger was when — and I unfortunately wasn’t there to witness this, so I’m retelling this from what I heard from Joelle a number of years ago — at a meeting with some of the video game developers who were working on Ooka Island with her.

The developers were running into some technical difficulties, I think with the learning sequence that repeats the child through a group of tasks at one level of difficulty until they complete them sufficiently enough to go to the next level of difficulty.

This learning sequence is a crucial component of the reading system Grammie had spent her entire life developing, and she wasn’t about to see it downgraded due to “technical difficulties”, so when she reached a peak moment of irritation with the developers, she just started picking up her things off the table, saying, “Well, if we aren’t going to do this right, then we may as well not do it at all!”… And then stormed out of the room.

That was the other part of Grammie’s life that was immensely important to her — education, together with family, these two things were everything to her. And she was pretty good at storming out of rooms when the occasion called for it too.

By the way, as far as I know, these were the only two times Grammie ever did this. Grammie would want me to clarify that so I wouldn’t be leaving anyone with the impression that she was a haughty or temperamental person. She was anything but.

In all other moments of Grammie’s life, in all my experiences with her, she was always the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful soul I’ve ever had the pleasure to have known.

She was an oasis of love that our entire family drank from to sustain ourselves through all the struggles and disappointments we face from day to day. And Grammie was always there to celebrate with us and gather the family together when we finally achieved a goal or reached a milestone in our lives.

In one of her final days, I wanted to recount to her what an amazing life I thought she had led. I marvelled with her that out of such humble beginnings growing as a child on a farm in rural PEI, she built an education empire, with nothing but her passion for teaching children to read, AND beyond that, she raised a wonderful, loving family.

I said to her that most people could only do one of those things — empire-build or family-build — but she did both. And then I thought for a moment, and corrected myself — many people can’t do EITHER of those things. So it’s doubly remarkable what Grammie accomplished with her life.

Grammie had a Biblical calendar on her table at home, and each page for each day in the calendar had a note about faith along with a short phrase from a piece of scripture.

Grammie brought that calendar with her to the hospital, and on the day she passed away — Friday, May 10 — the note was titled “Take the initiative.”

It reads, “We cannot save nor sanctify ourselves — God does that. But God will not give us good habits or character, and He will not force us to walk correctly before Him. We have to do all that ourselves. To take the initiative is to make a beginning — to instruct yourself in the way you must go.”

The piece of scripture at the bottom reads, “Add to your faith virtue.” 2 Peter 1:5

Grammie took the initiative her entire life, in her family, her work, and her faith. She walked every day with good habits, virtuous faith, and character made of steel, and she made it look easy.

But I don’t believe it was easy. I believe every day Grammie lived was an effort of graceful and ever- present persistence in her mission to serve her passion and her faith. From passion and faith of that enormity, it WOULD seem easy to us looking in from the outside, but that’s only if we have not yet cultivated ourselves to follow such a deep calling in our lives like she did.

On the reverse side of the calendar, it reads, “I indeed am at the end, and I cannot do anything more — but He begins right there — He does the things that no one else can ever do. Get to the end of yourself where you can do nothing, but where He does everything.”

Grammie got to the place where she could do nothing more in her life. A life like Grammie’s challenges us to be the best version of ourselves.

Most of the time, we cower from that challenge, because we fear that on the opposite side of the required sacrifice, service, and dedication, there is only loss, servitude, and drudgery awaiting us.

But Grammie knew, and lived it through every day, that on the other side of sacrifice is plenty. On the other side of service is freedom.

And on the other side of dedication is perfection.

As flawed as we all are, Grammie Kay was as perfect as a person can be, and we have all been infinitely lucky to have known her and be loved by her.