Ann Elizabeth Spicer

Ann Elizabeth Farmer Spicer began the next chapter of her eternal life on February 8, 2025, after persevering through 23 years of health challenges related to lupus. Ann was born in Kansas City on Aug. 4, 1968. She grew up in Independence, Raytown, and Blue Springs, graduating from Blue Springs High School. She attended Missouri State University, where she met John Spicer. They married in 1990 and lived in Kansas City while she finished her bachelor's degreein English at UMKC.
Ann and John moved to Iowa City, Iowa, in 1991, where their daughter, Kathryn, was born in 1994. They moved to Blue Springs in 1995, and their son, Daniel, was born in 1996. In addition to teaching English as a second language, Ann invested herself fully in the children's lives. Family favorites included visits to parks, nature centers, the library, and the home of Ann's mother and stepfather, Merlena and Bob Turner. Ann also began exploring her passion for gardening at their home in Blue Springs, sharing countless cuttings with her mother and living out the plaque in her yard: "In search of my mother's garden, I found my own."
In 1999, the family moved to Austin, Texas, as Ann and John both studied at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest. As John worked toward a master's in divinity and ordination, Ann earned a master's in pastoral ministry, which she hoped to use in church ministry. However, during seminary, Ann experienced a health crisis caused by lupus, leaving her hospitalized for two months. It was the beginning of a new phase in her life. Step by step, day by day, she stood firm as chronic illness compromised her cardiopulmonary and vascular systems. In addition to coping with ongoing pain and breathing challenges, she endured vascular grafting in 2003, as well as pulmonary artery hypertension in 2008, which left her with a 50% chance of two-year survival.
Driven by her love for her family and passion for life, Ann turned those terrible odds into a study in faith and personal resilience, not just surviving but thriving in the facets of her life that mattered most to her. She reveled in family vacations, traveling with John and the kids to the Rockies, North Carolina, Sequoia National Park, and England – and many shorter jaunts – despite wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. She directed her passion for gardening into volunteering with the Johnson County Extension Master Gardener hotline and making her yard into a botanical showplace. Over the years, her "garden" encompassed her entire corner lot, with trees, shrubs, and flowers turning a suburban yard into a gallery for masterpieces of creation. Marveling at the intricacy of flowers and their painstaking design, she saw the hand of God at work. As a laborer in that vineyard, Ann spent day after day with her trowel, green gloves, and straw hat, bringing new creation to life.
Ann also excelled in building relationships. She and her mother, Merlena, cultivated a relationship most best friends would envy. Everywhere she lived, she built friendships that lasted beyond her time in that place, keeping herself connected with people in Iowa City and Springfield, as well as friends from childhood, college, and seminary. Her humor, intelligence, and gift for pastoral presence made her a powerful companion and confidant. Ann carefully tended to her relationships with Kathryn and Dan, growing alongside them expertly as they grew and matured, producing true adult friendships. And with John, Ann revealed nothing less than divine love as she guided him to know grace he couldn't see on his own.
Ann is survived by her mother, Merlena; her husband, John; her children, Kathryn Hurwitz (Sam) and Daniel Spicer (Charlie); her stepbrother, Charley Turner; her nieces and nephews Rhiannon Strick (Eric), Jasmine Cloud (Nick), James Fry, Grace Hoel (Chris), Greg Heard, Wesley Turner, and Hudson Turner; nine great-nieces and -nephews; family by choice everywhere she lived; and beloved pets Petey and Maisey.
A celebration of Ann's eternal life will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025, at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Kansas City. The service also will be live streamed athttps://standrewkc.org/watch/. In lieu of flowers and to honor Ann's passion for gardening and the well-being of others, donations are requested for the Kansas City Community Gardens, https://kccg.org/.