Vol. 3 Issue 1
(Note: you can listen to the spotlight below)
This issue of Terry County Spotlight focuses on a lady that loves all things sports, Brownfield Cubs,her community and most of all, her Lord. She is a dedicated mother and grandmother, who is a cheerleader for her grandchildren and children in all aspects. She is a champion of kids that may not have that cheerleader, and treats all of the wonderful people of Terry County with kindness. She is a strong voice in Terry County, and works diligently for the expansion and improvements for businesses here in Brownfield at Brownfield Industrial Development Corporation. It is possible you already know who this extraordinary lady is, but if you haven’t figured it out yet, we would like to introduce to you Gina Caswell Kelly!
Gina started strongly answering our quick questions! If you had to choose between one of these three choices, Dr.Pepper, Coke or Big Red, which would you choose? Gina stated that she was only a water drinker for a long time, and said “I have fallen off of the wagon. You know, right now I am drinking caffeine-free diet coke, I prefer caffeine free Dr. Pepper but during covid that became unavailable so i have fallen over to the dark side and had to start drinking diet coke.” Next, we asked what her favorite sports team is, and Gina replied, “Well obviously the [Brownfield] Cubs, followed by Texas Tech in any sport and Duke Basketball. I started watching Duke before it was popular, in the early 90’s. I think it had to do with whoever was on TV the most and we didn’t have many choices, so Duke was on a lot. When asked about her favorite color she stated, “Generally red. I like to wear red and pink.” Her favorite food as Gina says, “Mexican food, probably. Chile relleno is my go to with a side of pico. Tenchas pico is definitely spicy like I like it.” When asked about her favorite social media platform, “The one I use probably the most is Facebook. I like Twitter, well, X for news. I have recently found 1440. It is supposedly unbiased. I’ve been looking at it for about three or four days now and so far I’m fairly impressed by it.” Gina said. We discussed her favorite movie, Gina replied, “You know I really like The Sandlot. I also really like the Princess Bride. I have watched that so often that while I was going to Tech and working on papers, I would put that on in the background and work on my paper and I could just see the movie in my head.”
Then we asked Gina where is from, she laughed and said,“Well that’s pretty simple. As my dad would say I was born at a very early age. I was born at the Tridway Daniel Hospital over here off of the square, what is that off of? Sixth street, back in 1955.” She continued “My dad grew up in his teenage years at Meadow and then went to highschool at Brownfield and ended up going to the military. We always farmed, but daddy was a preacher. He was a preacher at Union Baptist church. Until I was nearly five, and then we moved to Woodrow, which is the Cooper school district, and he was the preacher at the Woodrow Baptist Church until I was in the 8th grade.”
Gina even shared a neat story about moving back to Brownfield after her time closer to Lubbock, and said, “Little bit of trivia about when we moved, we moved in the summer of ‘69, and the day the man walked on the moon we stopped in the middle of our move and watched it on TV. So I tell ya, July 20th 1969 was the day we moved back to Union from Woodrow.” Gina is a true native to West Texas and long-time member of the community here in Terry County. She considers herself a life-long resident of Terry County, because they always had farm and ranch land in Terry County, as well as many family members that are and were part of the community.
We went on to talk more in depth about Gina’s family, and she just beamed while talking about her children. Gina said, “My immediate family right now is Kristy Gacria. She’s married to Jesse whom I love. He and I travel to basketball games. You know he’s the best son-in-law I could’ve asked for, he’s good to Kristy, he’s good to those boys.” Gina’s daughter, Kristy has two boys and her husband Jesse has three girls, and she is amazed at her son-in-laws ability to parent her grandchildren exceptionally well. She is so proud of Kristy, as she went on to say, “She will soon graduate from college with her BSN, she’s been a nurse for years, but did the slow track. She’s working at UMC, she is on the trauma one team, and she’s also on the cardiac heart team one. You get chosen for that by the doctors you work with so that’s very prestigious.” Kristy was also named the Operating Nurse of the Year in 2023. It is safe to say Gina is her biggest fan, and it definitely comes through when she talks about her. Her son, Kyle, who she also extremely proud of, is married to his wife Carol. They are Lubbock residents, and have earned Gina’s praises as well. Gina said, “He works for South Plains Compost. He does a lot of Wayne Schilling’s farming. He just loves what he does. They got a treasure when they got him. He helps Tatum and Allen too.” Gina mentioned, as she talked about Tatum Henson Schilling, her honorary daughter that she treats as one of her own. Kyle’s wife is a doctor, Gina says, “Carol is Dr. Mason Kelly, she is a cotton breeder in the Tech/A&M research center. She works very hard and she’s received lots of honors, she’s very respected in her field. I’m so proud of what she’s done.” Gina went on to brag some more about her children, which is well-earned. She is truly a mother that loves her children, and has supported them in everything they do. Gina is also Kenneth and Braylin or “BMoney”’s grandmother, and makes sure to watch all of Braylins sports games, as well as encourage Kenneth in his adventure in gaining his welding certification!
We moved on and asked Gina about her highlights and achievements, and Gina sat back to think about that one, then stated, “It’s hard to say because so much of my life is not about me, its about seeing the success in others and that sort of stuff.” she continued, “So I cant really say that my highlights would be my own.” She dove deeper, discussing her life after her late husband, Mike Kelly had passed in a sudden tragedy. She said,” Im proud of me and my family and the resilience that me and my family were able to show after my husband died in 2000 in an accident. We had to take over the farm immediately with virtually no knowledge.” Gina’s eyes started to water as she recalled this time for her family. She also said that she is proud at the end of the day if she has made someone smile or shown them Jesus.
Next, we went on to talk about bad days, and Gina quickly said, “A bad minute does not make a bad day.” and we continued, asking about a bad day Gina has had, and she responded, “ Well I mean, immediately I think about the day that Mike died, and that was a bad day, but the way that I have seen God work through that and the blessings I have seen in my life through that, the number of people that ministered to us through that, and the way I have been able to use what God has put in front of me to help others.” she continued saying it was a very sad day, but she would have “missed the blessings” that God placed in front of her after the accident. Gina said, “It was hard, really hard, and I wouldn’t wish it for anybody else”, and she continued with a testimonial, “I can remember very distinctly one day that I was out walking, and I can remember the exact location, and clear as I could hear God say, ‘be a good steward of Mike’s death”, Of course she was taken aback, but in that moment knew exactly what he meant and what her purpose was from that day forward. She said, “Being a good steward of Mike’s death, to me means being willing to reach out to other widows as they start the journey or others that are struggling and use what I have been through to help others.”
We started to close our conversation with three more questions for Gina, the first one being “The worlds on fire. What do you believe is the greatest challenge facing society today?” Gina’s gears were already turning in her mind, and she replied, “I think, getting past the fact that the world’s on fire, as we raise our children, the choices are so many more than what I had when I was growing up. The so-called ‘options’ that are out there now are just crazy.” She continued,”I think that it’s so important for parents to be so involved in your kids’ lives. Mike Kelly and I made a conscious choice whenever our kids were in highschool that we would eat supper together… we made the conscious choice to show them what a normal family looks like, you know like a mother and father in the home.” Gina went on, “Some people may take offense to me saying that a normal family and I get that, but you know what I’m saying the family as God intended… and I know things happen, please don’t take this as judgemental at all, but we had so many kiddos that were growing up that didn’t even know who their daddy was, so we made a conscious choice to show others what a family looks like.” she said. When talking about this topic, she made another point, “I don’t think we spend enough time in our homes talking about the importance of having Jesus in your lives and I think that goes back to all fires in the world. So much of the problems we have today would be over if people would just follow God.” She continued this conversation, “The world is on fire, but there’s another fire burning, and we’re seeing it. We’re seeing our pro athletes so many more coming up to the podium and stepping out for Jesus… and I think we’ve seen so many revivals on college campuses, so I think there’s two kinds of fires burning in the world right now, and you’ve gotta decide which fire you wanna be part of and which one you wanna help put out.” She said.
We segwayed into asking Gina what she is most passionate about, and she said with a smile,”Well I think you can tell. Serving God and making sure that he is the Lord of my life, and every day I have begun to intentionally start my day, and give my first fifteen minutes to God first thing in the morning, and it’s made a huge difference in how my day goes… I mean I start my day of talking and listening to God, and I have a couple devotionals that I listen to and I mean, that’s a huge difference in how you start your day. When you start your day with God then it’s gonna definitely go better.” Gina said. Gina then stated what her passion is, saying, “I think I would say my passion is to have everybody within my boundaries to know Jesus.”
We ended off the time we had with one more question, asking what does the community of Terry County mean to you, and Gina was immediately excited to say, “I love this community so much! I was born here, I love this place.” She said, “There may be somebody that loves Brownfield as much as me, but nobody loves it more. And I drive around and I’m so proud of us. I’m so proud of the community spirit that I see and how supportive this community is of our kiddos. I went to work just yesterday and we’re working on planning the job fair that’s coming and through that I see people that want to be part of the kiddos and their lives.” Gina said.
Gina then again reminisced, “You know going back to Mike Kelly, I mean my stars, when he died the outpouring was unbelievable.” She went on to share a story from that time, “Mike’s brother lives in Amarillo and he’s a prestigious guy, people know who he is, and he told me, he said ‘You know I just keep thinking… if this had been me, it wouldn’t have been anything like this. I live in that huge town, but it isn’t a community.” She said, “I think we support ourselves in good times and bad times. I love the sense of ‘let’s grow this town’, it’s happening all over town…. I have people come into the office all the time with ideas of new businesses, and they don’t want financial help, they want advice and if I think it’d work. I love the excitement they have and the belief they have in this town that it will support them. I love that.” Gina said.
Listen Here to the Terry County Community Spotlight with Gina Kelly:
