Billye Adele Jackson

Billye Adele Jackson was born on December 19, 2010, in New York City, a fact of which she was very proud. She moved to Kansas City on her first birthday, where she began living a life of joy, love and curiosity, not untouched but ultimately unaffected by all the usual frustrations and setbacks of being a small person in an adult world. Billye passed away Thursday, October 17, 2013.

Billye had very large feet seemingly from birth, took her first steps at 10 months and enjoyed going on “little walks,” around her Brookside neighborhood. Above all else, she loved books, being read to and “reading” herself. She was a subscriber of several children’s magazines, and was ecstatic when new issues arrived in the mail. She was a wide reader, and enjoyed a range of fiction, non-fiction, comics, fairy tales, old legends and poetry. She would undoubtedly have racked up some serious library fines.

Billye is survived by her parents, Courtney Kobet and Reed Jackson of Kansas City, grandparents, Margaret and Louis Kobet of Camas, Washington, and Jennifer and Keith Jackson of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, her great-grandmother, Barbara Cary, of Butler, Pennsylvania, her uncles, Eric Kobet and Scott Jackson, and a vast array of great-aunts, great-uncles and cousins. She is also survived by her daycare family, Dianna, Imani and Quinn Costello, her KC friends Jack, Aidee, Graham, Ava and Ruby and her NYC friends Iona, Waverly and Grant. Her church family at Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ will miss her on Sundays.

Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the St. Mark Child and Family Development Center, 2008 East 12th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64127 or Wayside Waifs, 3901 Martha Truman Road, Kansas City, Missouri 64137.

A memorial service will be held on October 22 at 11 a.m., at Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ, 205 West 65th Street, Kansas City, Missouri. She will be deeply missed and intensely mourned.