Kelly Fetzer-Fuller, according to her mother, was a giver.
Her daughter would plunk down $100 and ask that her church find four families who needed a heaping box of food through Angel Food Ministries. If she learned of children who needed Christmas, she would provide it. If she heard of people who had another need, she would see if she could do something about it.
“That’s how big her heart was,” said Cheryl Smith. “She gave so much and never wanted recognition. Everybody knew that Kelly had a big heart.”
On Jan. 15, 2006, according to authorities, Fetzer-Fuller, 37, was shot and killed in her East Brainerd home by her husband. After he shot his wife, the husband killed himself.
Tonight, Smith will hold a fifth annual tribute concert – at 6:30 p.m. at Christ United Methodist Church – for her daughter. But this is the first one, she said, where she’ll be giving back.
In addition to music, which had been the feature of previous tributes, there will be words of awareness about domestic violence. Proceeds will be given to the Domestic Violence Center of the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults.
Smith also is soliciting donations of clothing for women in the Domestic Violence Shelter, where women arrive often with only the clothes on their back. Those clothes, she said, may one day help women at the shelter who need to interview for a job after never having worked before or not having worked in many years.
In fact, she hopes to establish Kelly’s Kloset Foundation, which would be a repository for such clothing as well as a place for battered women to call to locate a specific piece of clothing, a source of funds to help women leave their homes or get an apartment after having been in a shelter, and a place to find an advocate.
Fetzer-Fuller, according to Smith, loved clothes and shoes, so taking an action to do with clothes seemed an appropriate way to honor her.
“I’m kind of that way [as a giver],” she said, “but not as much as she was. So I’d like to give something … like she did.”
The years since Fetzer-Fuller’s death have been “a struggle for me,” Smith said. She lost both a daughter and a son-in-law she loved, she said.
Counseling and her faith have helped her make it, she said.
At first, Smith said, she got mad at God and dropped out of church for three or four years. She already had lost her parents when they were hit by a drunk driver when she was 15. Eventually, she said, God gave her Kelly. And then she lost Kelly.
Smith said a counselor assured her “God takes care of everything” and that there is divine retribution.
While she still grieves her today, she leans on her faith and is eager to help others deal with the situation in which Fetzer-Fuller found herself.
“I don’t know how you do it without your faith,” Smith said.