Frances Elizabeth Teresa Farah

Frances Elizabeth Teresa Farah, 77, of Kansas City, MO passed away November 8, 2023 at Overland Park Regional Medical Center from influenza. Celebration of life services will be held at Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church of Lenexa, KS on December 1, 2023 at 7pm. Ms. Farah was born in Baltimore, MD and grew up in Lowell, MA where she graduated from Lowell High School. While attending the University of Iowa to receive her Bachelor of Arts in English, Ms. Farah met and married her first spouse, Dr. Louis T. Giron, Jr.
Ms. Farah later continued her education and was awarded an MFA from the University of Missouri Kansas City in Directing. She worked at DST for many years and, after retirement, at the Mid-Continent Public Library and then the Kansas City Public Libraries. Ms. Farah founded New Directions Theater, taught at Theater for Young America, and directed inmates at Leavenworth in theatrical productions. She also produced and founded In Play Productions with her wife and creative partner, Jacqee Gafford. Together the two of them introduced many new, socially concerned plays for Kansas City audiences.
From the time that she was a child, Ms. Farah was concerned with fairness, kindness and generosity. She was a life-long activist for causes of social justice and civil rights and coordinated volunteer initiatives for underserved populations. She always stood up for justice and for those in need. Ms. Farah was an organizer for Heartland Alliance for Progress and was that organization's liaison for Missouri Jobs for Justice. She coordinated the gathering of thousands of signatures for ballot initiatives on behalf of ethics reform in state government, workers' rights and Medicaid expansion. She organized volunteers for progressive candidates and public policy. For these and many other reasons, she was the recipient of the KC Shephard's Center 70 Over 70 awards in 2021.
Ms. Farah is preceded in death by her father, Joseph Farah and mother, Rosa Farah.
Ms. Farah is survived by her wife Jacqee Gafford and her two daughters from her first marriage Felix Giron (Wen Lin) in Shantou City, China and Gabrielle Giron in Kansas City, MO as well as her two sisters, Jo Anne Dickerson in Cape Girardeau, MO and Linda Carroll (William Carroll) in Sarasota, FL and their children.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Rose Brooks Center: https://rosebrooks.org/ or The Kansas City Pet project https://kcpetproject.org/.