Robert "Kelly" Lingerfelt

Kelly Lingerfelt, age 73 of Athens passed away Wednesday, January 8, 2025 at Parkwest Medical Center in Knoxville. A native and lifelong resident of McMinn County, he was the son of the late Roy Lee and Mildred Shell Lingerfelt. Survivors include the following: One brother Jeff and Donna Lingerfelt of Athens; nieces, Kristin and Andrea Wolfe, Jillian and Christopher Ratti, special grand nephew, Ian Lingerfelt Wolfe; other grand nephews and niece, Luke, Will and Eva Kate Ratti; aunt and uncle, Bill and Margie Shell, uncle, Marvin Lingerfelt: Several special cousins: lifelong friends, Scott Spears, Nancy Brady, Brent Burnett, Lisa Di Risio, and Nick Brady. 

 The family is holding a celebration of life on Friday January 17th at the Conference Center at Regional Park in Athens from 5:00 to 7:30. We invite anyone who knew Kelly to stop by and share any stories you might have about him. In keeping with Kelly’s style this will be very casual event. We all know Kelly wasn’t a flower person so In lieu of flowers please send a donation to code.org. Code.org is a non-profit organization and educational website that provides computer science (CS) curriculum and resources for K-12 students

 My Uncle Kelly was one of the coolest people I’ve ever known, but it took me a while to figure that out.

Growing up, I knew Kelly as a quiet but powerful presence around my grandparents’ house, always smoking and usually watching sports. That’s all I knew about Kelly. For a while, I was sure Santa Claus was real because our stockings would be filled and gifts left at my grandmother’s house while we were gone to Christmas Eve church services. There was no one home then but Kelly, and I just knew my stern Uncle Kelly wouldn’t be involving himself in Christmas for two little girls. But I was wrong about that, and a lot more.

It would be easy to spend some time near Kelly without quite realizing what a special person he was. He didn’t advertise or try to impress anyone. He was private, quiet at first, gruff. He was never formal and not at all interested in playing social games. But if you knew him, you knew how startlingly gifted he was. That brain quickly made itself obvious in any conversation. He had opinions on every topic and loved a good discussion. Every time I talked to him, I found myself surprised by his sly sense of humor, the depth of his knowledge, the connections he would make.

He loved sports maybe best of all, with special interests in women’s basketball and softball in recent years. As a kid he played baseball, he loved fishing, and he was a pretty dangerous bowler once upon a time. But he also loved books and movies and TV, especially science fiction. He followed politics and had strong opinions on that, and of course he was always fascinated by electronics, computers, and technology. Our family learned only after his passing that he ran an online message board devoted to women’s basketball. The site has existed for many years, and the community there is mourning his passing just as we are.

Kelly studied and learned electronics beginning early in his life. He took some college classes, but the bulk of his knowledge was acquired on his own. He worked at Textron for many years programming machinery and equipment, but he was always, always studying something. My grandparents’ house where he lived was absolutely littered with his books and magazines. A Stephen King novel was shelved right beside a manual for learning the programming language C++, which was right beside a magazine about the coming internet. And eventually, those were right beside a Nintendo video game system. I have Kelly to thank for introducing me to Mario and to Tetris.

Kelly was the first person I knew to go online; in fact, because of Kelly, I was probably the first of my friends to even know online existed. He called long-distance to Knoxville to access his CompuServe account in the early 90s, and the frustrations of that experience culminated in McMinn County’s first internet service provider, Computerized Control Concepts (CoCoCo.net) of which Kelly was a founding partner. I was lucky enough to spend a summer working in the CoCoCo office on Maple Street, listening to him cut up with Scott and all the guys. I saw how they respected him, how he made us all laugh, and I saw how he was the one who knew the answers to the hard questions.

Kelly held many jobs over the years, and the throughline for me has always been the way his friends, colleagues, and co-workers talk about him. There’s always affection mixed with a little bit of awe. What a guy, they always seem to say. Kelly’s last decade was full of health problems and challenges, including a ruptured ulcer, colon cancer, and a stroke in 2018. He worked incredibly hard in therapy to regain motor function after the stroke. And though speech became more difficult, his intelligence and humor never dimmed.

Kelly didn’t fit any mold. My sister says the best way to describe him is as so much more complex and multifaceted than he appeared, and I think she’s right. What he taught me was you don’t have to fit a mold. Kelly showed me you can pursue knowledge and refuse to wear anything but jeans. You can opt out of the rat race and follow your own genius. You can decide how to spend your life. What a gift those lessons have been to me.

His friend Steve Walker said, “It seems a pity that the wisest and best among us seldom speak freely or openly. Instead of trying to impress us with everything they know, they leave us wondering and thinking. And though I suspect Kelly figured his actions were more important, those too were subtle and rarely observable. But almost always good.”

More than his intelligence or knowledge, Kelly was a good man. He loved quietly but deeply. He was a good friend, a good son, a good brother, a good uncle, a good grand-uncle. Now that I’m grown, I’m not a bit surprised that Kelly was our Santa Claus. To be kind and helpful, but behind the scenes, taking none of the credit, that sounds exactly like Kelly to me.

 Those unable to attend the celebration of life may leave condolences for the family at https://www.laycock-hobbs.com/obituaries/robert-lingerfelt

Laycock-Hobbs Funeral Home will be in charge of the arrangements.