Weighing a mere four pounds and two ounces when she was born on December 27, 1937, at St. Luke’s Hospital, baby Audrey Cynthia “Cindy” Kelley was fed goat’s milk and grew to be the dynamic, vivacious, independent-thinking woman she is today.
Her favorite Bible verse is, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” — and she has called on that strength many times throughout her 86 years. Raised by her mother since her parents divorced when she was a child and her stepfather was away in the Merchant Marine, she never really had a father figure except her grandfather.
“I didn’t realize until I got older how important my mother was. She was always there for me,” Cindy said.
This gracious lady sprinkles her conversation with Southern witticisms. After graduating from Andrew Jackson High School, she attended nursing school at Jacksonville Technical High and Duval Medical Center. Fate would intervene there one day, when a supervisor asked her to take some ice chips to a young man who had just had his appendix out. She walked into the room to find a groggy, black-haired, green-eyed Bernie Williams, who took one look at her and said, “Hello, beautiful.”
After that, they immediately became an item. One night, after they’d been dating for a while, they visited the 5 Points Movie Theatre to see a screening of Marlon Brando’s “The Tea House of the August Moon.” The theatre was so crowded, they wound up standing on the balcony and it wasn’t long before Bernie suggested they continue their evening elsewhere. They found themselves on a walk at the Peninsula building.
“He couldn’t wait to get that ring on my finger,” Cindy recalled. “…It was so cold — the wind was blowing — and I put my hand in his pocket. He thought I’d felt what he had hidden in there. He pulled out a ring and said, ‘I don’t have any fancy words, but I love you. Will you marry me?’”
The couple wed in September and three months later, Cindy was pregnant with their first child. She still completed her studies and was the first pregnant woman to graduate later that year.
“That baby is sixty-five years old now,” Cindy said, laughing.
The couple had two daughters, Tina (Phillip Brown) and Julie (Ray McGowan), four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Williams describes their first years as poor. Neighbors lent them money to build a home for their young family.
“Bernie was a controlling husband, and I had the children, so I didn’t work outside the home. I was a good Mama, but I lost my independence,” Cindy recalled.
In addition to running the household and raising two children, Cindy would also make clothes for herself and her girls. Eventually, she would also be a caretaker for her mother and then, later, her father for 10 years.
Bernie passed away in 2005 from Parkinson’s disease and leukemia, but they shared many years as Gator Fans going to University of Florida games and singing with the Williams Brothers’ Quartet. They spent time in their home near Branford, Florida on the Santa Fe River..
She worked as an Avon Lady and when her husband balked at the idea, she drove their red pick-up truck to work her huge client base. After Bernie passed, Cindy vowed never to marry again.
“I was single for several years and just as happy as a lark,” Cindy said. “Girls got married too soon back in my day. You have to find out who you are – love yourself first. I learned not to let some man run over you.”
She spotted Ed Murphy, a “friendly, jovial man,” while attending Branford’s First Baptist Church and one day, she invited him along with some friends to her house for dinner. Ed was very sweet, smart and brave — and he thought she was gorgeous. Sadly, they had only been married a few months and were planning a trip to Miami to meet his friends when Ed was diagnosed with severe heart issues, became depressed and, determined not to “be a burden on her,” and took his life.
In 10 years, this stalwart woman lost her beloved mother, her sister, two husbands, her daughter Julie, and her only grandson. Her granddaughter Lacey McGowan remarked that her grandmother is an amazingly resilient woman whose motto is “Don’t just deal with it, make the most of it.” To honor the legacy of her mother and grandmother Lacey has “Most of it” tattooed on her ankle in her grandmother’s handwriting.
Cindy loves to cook and misses having her own kitchen now that she lives in assisted living. She is a “gatherer” who loves to get folks together so her granddaughter and her friend Ronald’s granddaughter chauffeur her to Publix to shop so she can cook her famous roast beef, green beans, potatoes and homemade chocolate pie at Ronald’s house. Although she no longer rides horses, she continues to garden, play bingo and loves to go barefoot while keeping her hair coiffed and her lipstick just so — always making “the most of it.”
