Rory Large

It is with immense sorrow that we announce the death of Celestia Grace Large, formally known as Rory Blain, who passed away on Wednesday, August 27, 2025 at the age of 19.

Celie was born as a beautiful baby boy named Rory Blain on May 31, 2006. She came out as a trans woman in late 2022. At that time, she was known as Luna by her close friends and family. Celie passed away as a beautiful young woman who was cherished by many.

As a child, she loved running "fire fast" and climbing trees. As she got older that turned into indoor rock climbing as well as climbing up the sides of buildings to get on the roof. She would collect interesting looking rocks as a child and even as a young adult. She was deft at playing chess and stellar at doing card tricks. She loved strategy puzzles like the Rubik's cube and metal disentanglement puzzles.

She always loved listening to music and had a talent for playing percussion, namely the marimba. She was introduced to percussion through Mr. Colby Snider and Mr. Brent Hopper while in middle school. She went on to perform in All-West Band in 2019, 2022, and 2023, as well as getting an award with WTSBOA for Solo and Ensemble in 2018. She performed with Houston High School's marching and concert band all four years of high school.

Her biggest passion was for game coding and design. She had so many ideas and games that she started to make. Many notebook pages of design themes, game ideas, and game levels. She loved playing VR games and had aspirations to build a VR game in the future. She would stream and make videos for YouTube on occasion as well.

She recently traveled to the Netherlands to meet some of her friends she met online. She had a lovely time and seemed genuinely happy while there. She had the goal to one day move to Europe and visit many countries. She wanted to see the world.

She wanted to show kindness to others and was considering getting a degree that would allow her to work with non-profit social programs that helped underprivileged youth. As a child, she worked with MJCC in their Mah Ani program to help with non-profits around the Memphis area.

Celie is survived by her parents, Dan and Mary Helen Large, her grandparents, Brenda Bennett, Samuel and Anne Large, her aunts and uncles, Pam Hogan (Tom), Don Bennett (Theresa), Brent Bennett, Jonathan Large, and David Large (Nicole), her family dog, MaBelle, her family cat, Bearcat, as well as many cousins that loved her dearly.

She was so much to so many people-Rory, Luna, Celie, Celeste, gingrbread, lunabreadd. We will always remember all versions with fondness, immense love, and joy. As per her wishes, we will not be having a standard funeral service. She will be cremated and laid to rest. We will be having a Celebration of Life within the year and will reach out to everyone with notifications of details.

In lieu of flowers, we ask that donations to be made to DayBreak Treatment Center (daybreaktreatment.com), OUTMemphis (outmemphis.org), or Memphis Rox (memphisrox.org) which are all programs that have helped and meant much to Celie over the years.