Stephanie Keith Mercomes

Stephanie Gayle Keith Mercomes had a way of making the world more beautiful.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, to James “Jimmy” Keith and Gertrude Hooker Keith, Kansas City legends in their own right, Stephanie’s life would eventually take her across the country and around the world. But Kansas City was, and always would be, home.

Stephanie first attended Lincoln High School before becoming one of the students who integrated Southeast High School in Kansas City. She graduated in 1966 and went on to Stephens College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design in 1969.  

Her talent soon took her to Boston and the House of Bianchi, one of the country’s celebrated bridal fashion houses. After about a year in Boston, she returned to Kansas City, where she met and married her first husband, an international dentist from Iran. The newlyweds moved to Iran, and in 1973 Stephanie became a mother for the first time with the birth of her daughter, Laila.

Stephanie and Laila remained in Iran until the Iranian Revolution forced them to return to the United States while her husband remained behind. It was the beginning of yet another chapter in a life that would repeatedly demonstrate Stephanie’s remarkable ability to meet uncertainty with courage and simply figure out what came next.

Back in Kansas City, Stephanie’s lifelong best friend, Nevada, had just completed medical school and was preparing to begin her internship and residency in Southern California. So, the two young mothers packed up their daughters and headed west together, beginning their California lives in Van Nuys.

Stephanie and Laila eventually made their way to La Jolla, where Stephanie later married again. In one of the many unexpected turns of her life, her new husband received an opportunity to work in Saudi Arabia. Stephanie, having already lived in the Middle East, was ready for another adventure. They moved there in 1981. Her daughter Ashley was born in August 1982, followed by Amber in January 1984.

Later that year, the family returned to Kansas City.

Stephanie bought the house where her daughters would grow up, creating the home that would become the center of their childhood. After her marriage ended in 1987, she raised her three daughters largely as a single mother. Several years later, Stephanie’s mother, Gertrude, joined the household, making it a home shaped by generations of strong women. Stephanie made that home and the lives lived inside it beautiful.

She could take a piece of fabric and turn it into something extraordinary. She could turn a childhood birthday into an extravaganza and an ordinary day into an occasion. Over the course of her life, she designed and sewed what must have been thousands of costumes, each one bearing unmistakable evidence of her creativity, skill and refusal to do anything halfway.

To her daughters, though, Stephanie’s greatest gift may have been her absolute belief that there was nothing they could not do. She was the human embodiment of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” If one of her girls had a dream, Stephanie never began with the reasons it might not work. She simply set about figuring out how to make it happen.

Her daughters grew up wanting to make her proud; not because she demanded perfection, but because they watched their mother work extraordinarily hard, give generously of herself, and approach life as though almost anything were possible if you were willing to work for it. That belief in possibility extended far beyond her own family.

As a teacher, Stephanie worked with children from whom the world did not always expect very much. She did. She expected them to work hard. She expected them to succeed. She expected them to go to college. Most importantly, she helped them imagine lives beyond the struggles and circumstances they knew. Nearly thirty years after Stephanie taught her, one former student called Stephanie’s daughter after her death to share a story the family had never heard.

Stephanie had recognized the young woman’s talent for fashion and wanted her to understand where that talent might take her. So, she bought bus tickets from Kansas City to Atlanta and accompanied her student there to visit a fashion design school. Together they toured the school, attended a fashion show and went to the mall before boarding the bus for the long ride home to Kansas City.

That young woman went on to earn a degree in fashion design; something she said she had never imagined for herself before Stephanie imagined it for her. She said that when she gives her testimony and tells the story of her life, Stephanie is always at the center of it.

That was Stephanie.

She saw what could be.

She saw what fabric could become in her hands. She saw what a home could feel like when it was filled with beauty. She saw what a birthday could mean to a child when it was treated as an event worth celebrating. She saw futures in students who could not yet envision those futures for themselves. And she saw limitless possibility in her daughters.

Stephanie was extraordinarily talented, creative and hardworking. She was also very funny, usually in the wonderfully understated way of someone with a dry sense of humor who didn’t need to announce the joke.

She could be quiet, too. As she grew older, she didn’t collect large numbers of new friends. Perhaps she didn’t need to. She possessed something increasingly rare: friendships that had lasted nearly an entire lifetime. Women who had known and loved her since childhood remained beside her through the decades and were still there at the end of her life.

In 2003, Stephanie and her mother left Kansas City and relocated to Arizona, beginning the final chapter of a life that had stretched from Missouri to Massachusetts, Iran to California, Saudi Arabia and back again.

Her greatest role was still ahead of her. She became Mimi. And to her grandchildren, she was simply the best.

Stephanie adored her grandbabies, and she showed that love in the way she showed so much of her love, by being there. She did not miss the recital. She did not miss the baseball game. She did not miss the graduation or the school concert. Whatever mattered to them mattered to Mimi, and if one of her grandchildren was doing something, there was nowhere else she would rather be.

Stephanie understood that life was worth celebrating. She made things beautiful because beauty brought people joy. She made costumes because she could see what a piece of fabric might become. She created celebrations because the people she loved deserved to be celebrated. She pushed her students because she could see futures for them they could not yet see for themselves. And she believed fiercely in her daughters because, to her, their possibilities were limitless.

Her family will miss the things she made, the celebrations she created, her dry humor, her determination, her presence in the audience and the stands, and the unmistakable magic she brought into their lives.

But most of all, they will miss her.

Because for the people who were lucky enough to be loved by Stephanie, she didn’t simply make life more beautiful. She made them believe they could make something beautiful of their own.

Stephanie is survived by her three daughters, Dr. Laila Hishaw (Alex), Hon. Ashley Rahaman (Darius), and Amber Liekhus (Justin); grandchildren Mikaila, Hayden, and Nicholas Hishaw, Grayson and Violet Rahaman, and Julien and Jasper Liekhus; brothers Kenton Keith and Gerren Keith; and lifelong friend Dr. Nevada Lee.

To celebrate Stephanie's life and her legacy of mentorship, memorial gifts may be made to Mentorships in Dentistry (MIND), founded by her daughter, at https://secure.givelively.org/donate/mentorships-in-dentistry-inc/in-memory-of-stephanie-mercomes-a-legacy-of-mentorship or to the Alzheimer's Association at https://donorservices.alz.org/page/FUNYAFYQDKA

Services will be held at Mt Moriah, Newcomer & Freeman Funeral Home, 10507 Holmes Road, Kansas City, Missouri 64131, on Friday, October 16, 2026. Visitation will begin at 10:00 with the Funeral Service following at 11:00 am.

A Committal Service will take place at Mount Moriah Cemetery South from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm. A Repass will be held back at Mt Moriah, Newcomer & Freeman from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.