Karen Delores Blye

Karen was the eldest of twelve siblings, and from an early age she carried a natural sense of responsibility, strength, and care for others. She helped raise many of her younger brothers and sisters alongside her mother, beginning a lifetime in which nurturing, guiding, encouraging, and protecting people became second nature to her.

She made Fort Wayne, Indiana, home, building a life there as a wife, mother, woman of faith, artist, avid reader, music lover, and devoted member of her community.

She was fiercely intelligent and endlessly curious. She loved books, Shakespeare, music, travel, beautiful clothes, bold colors, ornate patterns, and the richness of a wide world. She believed her children should know that world too, exposing them to literature, music, movies, culture, faith, and ideas far beyond the boundaries of any single community.

Above all, Karen was a woman of extraordinary faith. She served as an Elect Lady and minister in the House of God Church and devoted much of her life to helping others strengthen their own relationship with God. Her ministry was practical, direct, and deeply personal. She taught people to choose faith over fear, to “stretch out on God.”

For Karen, faith was not simply something spoken from a pulpit. It was something lived—in hardship, in uncertainty, in motherhood, and in the everyday work of loving people.

Karen carried that same spirit with her when life took her to Huntington, West Virginia, where she would spend more than two decades. In true Karen fashion, she did far more than simply adapt to a new place—she thrived there. Wherever she recognized love, wherever she recognized God, and wherever she felt the presence of the Holy Ghost, Karen knew how to make a home.

She built relationships, ministered to people, encouraged them, laughed with them, prayed with them, and became part of the fabric of the community around her. Her years in West Virginia were not simply a chapter of where she lived; they were another expression of who she was. She had the remarkable ability to enter a place, recognize the good within it, and pour herself into the people she found there.

As a mother, Karen was loving, protective, disciplined, playful, and deeply intentional. She raised her children to think, read, question, learn, work, laugh, and stand on their own and together. She could be gentle enough to comfort a little boy and rough enough to wrestle with him on the floor. She taught with flashcards, made clothes, prepared simple meals that became lifelong memories, filled the house with music and movies, and created a childhood in which faith and imagination existed side by side.

Karen’s life cannot be measured only by the places she lived or the titles she held. It is measured in the people she raised, the siblings she helped guide, the congregation she strengthened, the friends she made, the people she ministered to in Indiana and West Virginia, the grandchildren who carry her forward, and the countless people who encountered her warmth, conviction, intelligence, humor, and faith.

Preceding her in death are her mother, Mary, father, Matthew, and siblings, Kerry and Tamula.

She leaves behind her husband, Orgetorix, her children, Matthew, Joshua, Adam, Stephanie, and bonus son DeMarlo, three grandchildren, Cameron, Nicholas, and Lucas, nine surviving siblings, Ricky, Michael, Alvin, Anne, Ronald, Tina Sheila, and Bridgette, other family members, extended family, church family, and heaps of people whose lives were changed simply because she was part of them will remember her in the way she lived: vividly, in bold colors, in music, in stories, in food passed from one generation to another, in laughter, in prayer, and in the faith she returned to again and again throughout her life.

Lady Blye lived with the conviction that God could be trusted. She taught that conviction to her children and to everyone willing to listen. Her family will carry it, and her, with them until they meet again.

Karen loved anything that was lavender, purple or mauve. In honor of her memory, attendees are invited to wear your most vibrant colors or boldest prints.

A visitation will be held on Friday, September 25, 2026, from 9:30 am to 10:30 am, followed by a celebration of Karen's life starting at 10:30 am. at D.O. McComb & Sons Funeral Homes - Lakeside Park, 1140 Lake Avenue, Fort Wayne, IN 46805.