Ethel Turner, beloved Kansas City mother and businesswoman, dies at 84

Editor’s note: This feature is part of a weekly focus from The Star meant to highlight and remember the lives of Black Kansas Citians who have died.

Ethel Turner liked to prove people wrong.

When she wanted to become a Realtor as a middle-aged mother of four, there were some people — even her loving husband she married at 17 — who cautiously warned her it could be too big of an undertaking, Turner’s daughter, Leslie Chandler, recalled. She had only recently started working at General Motors in Kansas City, Kansas, after she was laid off from her job of 20 years at the Lake City Ammunition Center. She never went to college, only holding a GED equivalency, Chandler said.

But with persistence she found a position at a real estate company, and after getting a feel for the work Turner realized she could make more money if she earned a broker’s license, Chandler said during a phone interview. Turner completed the courses she needed and focused on starting a business she could call her own.

In the 1970s, she opened the Turner Realty Company with the assistance of her husband, Percy Turner Jr., who more than had faith in his wife by this point.

Later on, at his wife’s suggestion, Percy Turner Jr. launched a pest control company, Turner Pest Control, turning his longtime side-hustle into a full-fledged operation. She got her pest control license, too, and ran the business with him.

“She was always kind of one of the people that stood in the background, but was very strong and very strong in her convictions,” Chandler said. “If she decided to do something, she did it all the way.”

Turner, a self-made entrepreneur and businesswoman who in her twilight years remained a dedicated mother, grandmother and great-grandmother in the face of mounting health obstacles, died on June 16, family said. She was 84.

Chandler, who resides in St. Louis, made an effort to see her mother nearly every week over the past several months, the four-hour drives starting to feel like a repetitive blur, she said. Turner struggled with diabetes and the lingering effects of a stroke, both of which were exacerbated by a pandemic that forced her to miss out on physical therapy.

Linda Gray, Turner’s 63-year-old niece from Kansas City, noticed in her regular visits how Turner’s husband did all the things she used to but couldn’t anymore. He cooked her dinner each night, combed her hair. He told her, Gray said, “Don’t worry about seeing, I’ll see for you.”

Turner made sure to smile in her final weeks and days.

“She was a bright shining light, no matter what,” Gray said. “Even when you did something wrong, and she was getting after you, she still did it with a smile.”

‘Really strong’

Born on November 20, 1937, in Paris, Texas, Turner was the third-born child in her family, growing up with an older brother and sister, plus one younger sister. Their father had work that took him, and sometimes them, around the country; when Turner was 3, they moved to Kansas City, Kansas.

Their mother homeschooled them at times, Chandler said, and preached the importance of education. But Turner didn’t graduate from high school, and was married by the time she was 17, in December 1955.

Turner’s mother died in the hours after the wedding, suffering a heart attack at the most unthinkable moment. The young bride was helped through it by her new husband.

“They were really strong on that,” Gray said. “You would think she would feel bad on her anniversary, but he gave her a lot of wisdom.”

Two years later, the couple had their first child, marking the beginning of their lives as parents. Turner, however, didn’t stop pursuing her professional goals, first working for Lake City Ammunition before she moved on to General Motors, where her husband was already an employee.

‘Miss Gracefully’

Her mind turned to real estate when her children reached their teens and didn’t require the same amount of help. She thought of her future, and of the example she wanted to set for her kids, and proceeded to do whatever she could to make her dream come true.

In the beginning, family said, Turner Realty had four or five houses. It eventually managed 40 properties.

She was reflecting on her own experiences when she suggested to her husband he start a pest control business.

“He was working for somebody else doing pest control,” Chandler said, “and she goes, ‘Why would you need to work for somebody else when we can own our own pest control business?’”

Chandler — who today operates her own pest control company in St. Louis with her husband — remembers her mother took them on trips to customers’ properties. The thing she was most struck by, she said, was her ability to listen with full attention, making the person feel heard and feel special.

It was the same thing she did around the home, too, like at Christmas, when she would make sure everyone in her immediate and extended family had presents, no matter what. If there was a certain shirt or sweater that her sons had, for instance, she would make sure her nephews got the same one, Chandler said. Gray saw her aunt as the unofficial “Santa Claus of their family.”

Gray’s mother experienced health problems when she was young and Turner took on a much larger role raising her, becoming like a mother to her. She was, to Gray, a quiet and steady inspiration in her life.

“She carried herself gracefully all the way,” Gray said. “I called her ‘Miss Gracefully.’”

‘Now I’m free’

One of Chandler’s favorite stories of her mother came from her cousin. When they were all kids, the cousin was playing around some of the Turner family’s furniture and accidentally spilled nail polish remover on it, stripping away some of the varnish. The girl was afraid she would get in trouble, Chandler said; Turner, however, never said anything to her.

It wasn’t in her nature to yell at her loved ones, as the cousin expressed when she told the story at Turner’s funeral service.

Chandler read a poem at the service she had found online and felt captured her mother. The first lines read:

Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free

I’m following the path God laid for me

Sometime after the ceremony, Chandler was looking through her mother’s belongings and made the surprising discovery that she had long ago cut out the exact same poem from a newspaper and safely tucked it away.

The incident of parallel thinking made her feel special, in the way her mother always made people feel.

“We didn’t know that she already had wanted it,” Chandler said of the poem.

Turner is survived by her husband, Turner Jr.; daughters, Chandler and Joyce Morrison; and several grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews and other family members.