Adele Ann Roberts (Kinney)

April 19, 1938 – April 8, 2026

My mother, Adele Ann Roberts, was born April 19, 1938, in Muskegon, Michigan—at Hackley Hospital, the same place I would later be born. We always liked that detail. It felt like a stable bookend before we ever knew what book we were writing together.

She grew up in Montague, Michigan, the youngest of three children. Her sister was seven years older, her brother Jim, who was four years older—both now gone ahead of her. Montague was small, steady, and honest, and in many ways, it never left her. She carried its sensibility with her everywhere: work hard, tell the truth, finish what you start, care about people.

From the time she was in third grade, she wanted to be a teacher. Not thought about it—knew it. A teacher named Mrs. Sharmer had done something holy without knowing it: she awakened a calling. My mother never seriously considered another path. Teaching wasn’t a career choice; it was simply who she was.

After graduating high school in 1956, she worked for a year at Shaw-Walker, a printing company woven deeply into Muskegon’s history and into her own family’s DNA. Her father was a typesetter. Ink, words, order, and precision surrounded her long before she ever began writing herself.

Then she went to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, earning her degree in elementary education. She became exactly the kind of teacher children remember decades later. When she taught fourth grade in North Muskegon, parents once came to the superintendent—not to complain, but to praise her. He told her it was the first time in his career that had ever happened. She was embarrassed by the attention but not surprised by the work. Loving children well felt normal to her.

Later, at the encouragement of school leadership, she earned her master’s degree in counseling—again from Western—under an arrangement so generous it still makes us smile. The school district paid for it all. My mother liked to joke that she might be the only person in the country who got a free master’s degree. But the truth is simpler: people trusted her, believed in her, and wanted her to keep doing what she did best—listening, guiding, caring.

She married my father, Ralph Roberts, in 1971. They shared 54 years together. I have never heard her say she would change a single one of them.

They moved nine times. Nine. Each move was an adventure. When my dad once said he wanted to live on Martha’s Vineyard and build boats, she laughed and asked if that was “kind of like living on the moon”—and then she went anyway. Every house they lived in became warm, thoughtful, and beautiful. They never struggled to sell a home when it was time to leave. She had a gift for making places feel like they belonged to someone.

After marriage, she stepped away from full-time classroom teaching, but she never stopped being a teacher. She tutored. She sold World Book Encyclopedias—not because she loved sales, but because she loved the product. She believed in it. When my mother believed in something, you could feel it.

In 1977, she and my dad came to faith in Jesus Christ on the same day—February 11—under the teaching of Pastor Jack McLean. From that point on, Scripture became home to her. She read her Bible daily. She underlined. She wrote notes. She filled journals. Even near the end, when her body was tired and her strength thin, she kept reading—sometimes Leviticus, sometimes Jeremiah—laughing a little and saying, “Lord, help me understand You.”

She believed truth mattered. She believed God looks at the heart. She believed that salvation rests in Christ alone. And she had a way of explaining things—especially to children—that made God feel near, not abstract.

Later in life, her love of words bloomed into writing. She had always been a storyteller. In one classroom, a child once asked her to write a story about a skunk. The class laughed. She didn’t. That question became Sammy the Skunk, and eventually eight children’s books filled with warmth, humor, and gentle wisdom. She was published in Michigan and Tennessee papers, featured by the Tennessee Writers’ Guild, and later commissioned to write Critters Don’t Litter for the state of Tennessee. COVID limited what could be done with that book, but it never diminished her gratitude for the chance to write it.

She played piano at church. She loved the people at Orchard View Baptist Church. She loved quiet faithfulness more than platforms.

As my mother, she was my safe place. I never hesitated to come to her. She picked me up from school. Took me to McDonald’s. Helped me with homework. Cracked the whip when I needed it. Loved me without condition. I always wanted to come home—and that says everything.

As a grandmother, she loved deeply and prayed constantly. She treasured the years she had with her granddaughter Cadence. She believed God whispers before He shouts—and that if you listen long enough, you’ll know what to do.

She leaves behind myself – Robert “Bob”, my wife Sarah and our daughter Candace Roberts. She has now been reunited with her beloved husband Ralph and her parents James and Emma Kinney along with her siblings.

Near the end, she said she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t dreading what was coming. She was waiting.

If you want to know who Adele Ann Roberts was, remember this:

She was truthful.

She was faithful.

She cared deeply.

She finished what she began.

And she loved everyone.

Graveside Service will be held on Thursday, April 16, 2026, at Orchard View Baptist Church Cemetery at 11:00 A.M.

Sharp Funeral Home is proud to be serving the family of Adele Ann Roberts during this time of need.