‘We could have had some beautiful times’: Long lost half-sister found
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was just a few weeks ago a local funeral home started searching for any family of a 99-year-old woman who had died.
That woman was Katherine Shirley, a woman who had battled enough adversity for two lifetimes.
FOX4’s story on the search for her family reached her half-sister in California, who was able to be in Kansas City today for her farewell services.
The color of the day, pink, was Katherine Shirley’s favorite color.
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It was with a joyful noise, and a praise dance to go along with it, a community and a family said their final goodbyes to a remarkable woman.
Shirley was a fearless woman of God who made it through 99 years. The best way to describe Katherine Shirley was “everything.”
“No matter what situation she was in she was always the nicest and most pleasant person,” Katie Basey, one of Shirley’s caretakers, said.
“She will truly be missed by a lot of people like she just had that calm spirit that just cleared the atmosphere,” another caretaker said.
Those sentiments from her caretakers who, over the course of her 30 years at the Life Care Center of Grandview, became her family. Up until now, no one knew if she had any living relatives.
That’s when Marcom-Harvey Funeral Care turned to FOX4.
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In less than a week and because of viewers’ willingness to share the story, Shirley’s half-sister Shelia Johnson was found and made it from Los Angeles just in time to lay her sister to rest.
“I’m just sorry to have missed all the years to be with her that we could have had some beautiful times together but I’m here now, here in love and in spirit with her,” Johnson said.
Johnson is full of gratitude, never imagining she’d get this moment for Shirley who she hadn’t seen in more than four decades.
“From the bottom of my heart words cannot express how I feel knowing that she was loved and very well taken care of,” Johnson said.
Shirley was laid to rest at a cemetery not too far from Marcom-Harvey Funeral Home.
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