A Memorial Service for the Reverend Ken McCoy will be held Saturday, November 5th, 2022, at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Germantown (Presbytery for the Midsouth). Rev. McCoy died July 12, 2020. Gathering time: 12:45 p.m. Service: 1:00 p.m. Reception Following. Address: 2385 Riverdale Rd, Germantown, TN 38138
The Reverend Kenneth Lee McCoy, 72, died in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 12, 2020. He struggled to control his diabetes and was in poor health for the last several years of his life. Known often as Ken, to some as Kenny, and to a dwindling few as Roy’s Boy, the Reverend McCoy was a long-time preacher in Madison and Memphis Presbyteries and then, after middle judicatory realignment, West Tennessee Presbytery. His was a personality, and a voice, larger than life.
Ken was born to Roy Flippin McCoy and Virgina Dale Ward McCoy on January 22, 1948, in Memphis. Roy was a hotel and restaurant inspector for the state of Tennessee. Ken’s uncle was the Reverend Lewis Edgar McCoy, a Cumberland Presbyterian Minister.
Ken was educated in the Memphis city schools, graduating from Messick High School in 1966. He was a “band nerd” and played trombone. He attended Bethel College in the late 1960s when the school thrived from an influx of students, many from New Jersey, spurred by Vietnam era draft deferments. He thrived in his music classes.
Ken lived just off Bethel’s campus at the near legendary “Pop Johnson’s.” His circle of close college friends became his extended family.
Ken came under the care of Memphis Presbytery on April 13, 1967. After graduation from Bethel, he attended Memphis Theological Seminary. While in seminary, Ken served as supply pastor for Pleasant Grove in Moscow, Tennessee, and worked as education minister for Wesleyan Hills United Methodist Church in Memphis.
Ken was licensed April 15, 1972, and ordained at East Side Cumberland Presbyterian, his home church, on January 25, 1976. The Reverend Hinkley Smartt preached the ordination sermon. The Reverend Dr. E. Colvin Baird asked the questions preparatory to ordination and the Reverend Paul Allen delivered the charge. After ordination, Court Avenue Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Selmer, Tennessee (Madison Presbytery), called Ken as pastor. He served Court Avenue from April 1976, to November, 1988.
He worked from 1989 to 1992 for the Central Accounting Division at the Cumberland Presbyterian Center while it was located on Union Avenue followed by Bethel College from 1992 to 1994 as a residence hall director until he suffered an unfortunate accident on campus.
In 1994, when Ken needed to return to Memphis to care for his aging parents, Bethel Cumberland Presbyterian Church near Atoka, Tennessee, called and Ken served as pastor until recently retiring. According to people who believe such things, the cemetery at Bethel, with markers dating back to the 1830s, is the most haunted place in West Tennessee. Ken scoffed at the idea.
Ken was unmarried.
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