The True Life of Keely Gray
Some call her artistic, some call her turtle, but most know her as Keely Gray.
Born in LaGrange, North Carolina on July 25, 1983 was Keely Irene Gray. The youngest of three children, Keely grew up in LaGrange with her older brother Ashley (30) and her sister Lindsey (26).
At a young age Keely found her love for the cartoon the Smurfs, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese. Keely also loved ketchup. She would put ketchup on everything, sometimes mixing the hot dogs with macaroni and cheese and then ketchup.
Being the baby girl in the family came with lots of luxuries for Keely. Up until Keely was two she didn’t even have to talk. Keely’s mother took her to the doctor because she wasn’t talking, and her mother was worried that something was wrong with her. The doctor told her mother she had no reason to talk with her older sister Lindsey doing all the talking for her. Keely would just point at things until she decided she was ready to talk. Her mother says, “Now you can’t get her to stop talking, and she’s loud. I guess that comes from cheerleading though.”
Keely would stay in LaGrange and attend North Lenior High school. There she was the freshman and junior class princess. Then, she decided to go to another school after many students at her high school were dying from drunk driving and drugs.
Keely talked with her mother and they decided that she would go to Brenau Academy, a boarding school in Georgia. While there Keely demonstrated her love of sports as a varsity cheerleader, softball player, and volleyball player. Keely got the nickname turtle from playing softball because she was slow, and she looked like a turtle when she put her helmet on.
Keely also had an artistic flare about herself enjoying drawing, painting, and photography.
After finishing high school Keely decided to attend ECU after she had some financial issues with attending Palm Beach Atlantic. Keely was excepting more money than the school was willing to give her, and she didn’t qualify for the scholarships she applied for. In her own words, “It was close to home. Well actually after some financial scholarships fell through, ECU was somewhat a last resort.” Other than not receiving the scholarships there weren’t any other financial issues for Keely because her grandmother set up a college fund for her at a young age.
Keely’s grandmother was able to start a college fund for her because she has a successful business that operates several mental health care facilities. This business came about when her grandmother’s first grandson Sean Ashley Webb was born profoundly retarded, so she began keeping him in her nursery. When the rest of the community found out about his condition they began to bring their kids who had similar problems to her and the business grew from there.
Keely came to ECU for a year and then bounced around to different community colleges for three years before returning back to ECU to finish her major in public relations.
The reason she ended upon public relations was because it fell in place after taking some communication classes. Everything in her communications classes made sense to Keely. For the first time she felt like she could understand and apply the concepts to everyday life.
Once Keely graduates with her degree in public relations she would like to be a patient representative. A patient representative works for the patients at hospitals making sure they get the correct information from the doctors and nurses. Her dream job would be to work for a major corporation doing crisis management. “I plan to pursue a career in crisis management. The plan is to get a job, the dream part would be if they would send me to school to finish my PhD while working.” Keely will be waiting to receive her degree summer 2008.
When she’s not hard on her school work she enjoys going to the beach and scuba diving.
Some quick facts to know about Keely are that she loves her two Boston terrier dogs Buddha and Snack very much, when she’s not spending time with Buddha or Snack she is usually cuddled up with her boyfriend Chris.
Although she doesn’t have a favorite celebrity, she loves movies. Her favorite two movies are “Space Balls” and “Braveheart”. If she could pick any place in the world to live it would be Sydney, Australia.
“Keely is the type of person that will go out of her way for someone, even if the person doesn’t ask for it.” says Maggie a friend of Keely. She also said that Keely is very random and she is always coming up with some concocted plan or story of some sort. Maggie also describes her friend has a movie buff, who will kick your butt in rock trivia, she tells her friend that she should have been born in the 60s because that’s the kind of impression that she projects.
Filed under: Classmate Profiles, Spring 2008