Kathryn Cantley Raynolds

Kathryn (Kate) Cantley Raynolds, age 67, of Kingsport, TN, passed away on June 24, 2025 after a period of declining health. Kate’s parents, James Bookout Cantley Sr. and Vivian Ellis Cantley, had roots in the Deep South and intended to raise a proper Southern lady. To please them, she consented to being presented to polite society at a formal coming-out ball while she attended Dobyns Bennet High School, at a time, in the early 1970s, when such traditions were scorned by her peers. Her mother cherished the thought that Kate would attend Milligan college and become a “legacy” at her former sorority.

Alas, Kate was not meant to be a debutant. She started smoking at the age of 12 and, blessed with the features of an adult and a youthful photographic memory, started acting as an adult in local theater productions at 14. One or two readings of a script was all it took to learn her lines as well as everybody else’s. A twenty-five-year career saw her act, stage manage, direct, and produce, all while hardly leaving Sullivan County. There were Fun Fest productions, children’s theater, the Kingsport Theater Guild, and she wrote a play that was performed at the Renaissance Center. No high-brow stuff; she was happy if people laughed and had a good time. The Old West Dinner Theater was her favorite venue.

Every actor needs a day job, and Kate puts her business degree from Tusculum College to use in the office of her father’s company, Cantley-Ellis Manufacturing. When the business failed, she worked with the bankruptcy lawyers and the State labor people to make sure that the hourly workers got paid before the bankruptcy was filed. At the very end, she was the one to turn out the lights, lock the door and put the key in the mailbox.

As if on cue, a certain Peter W. Raynolds appeared; a Yankee and an Eastman man to boot. He, too, had a fine memory and more brains than he knew what to do with, and twenty-three years of marriage passed in an instant. So much didn’t have to be explained or apologized for, like her habit of shooting suction cup darts at the TV when a politician she didn’t like was speaking.

Kate’s faith was known to none, but it centered on the Eucharist, with a full appreciation of the mystical and the unseen. She didn’t care for the hustle and bustle of Sunday morning parish life and instead favored mid-week Mass with only a few people in attendance. For many years she was a moderator on the theology section of Christianity.com, where she was charged with breaking up squabbles between people (always men) who should have known better, spanning the major divisions of the world-wide church: Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and Anglican. A typical evening would have her hunched over her laptop with a cigarette dangling out of the corning of her mouth, adjudicating a spat caused by a Russian Orthodox seminarian who was baiting a Tulip Calvinist from rural Georgia. One church had a heart for her, and St. Timothy’s Episcopal created a non-elective position on the Vestry so they could benefit from her immense intelligence, sage advice and good humor. She was especially known for the quality of the Happy Hours she would organize for Vestry retreats. She knew enough Greek grammar to translate, slowly and with the help of a dictionary, the Cyrillic text of the Greek New Testament, but that was a lot of work. Her proudest achievement in the organized church was being proclaimed Official Smart Aleck of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee by then-Bishop Robert Tharp. But that’s a story for another day.

Kate was preceded in death by her parents and her brother, James (Jay) B. Cantley Jr. She is survived by her husband; a nephew, James (Jay-Jay) B. Cantley, III; a niece, Laura Cantley Jones, and sister-in-law Serena Cantley.

Arrangements will be announced later.