William Peter Midgley, age 86, of Hopkinsville, KY, passed away on Thursday, November 9, 2023, at Vanderbilt in Nashville of natural causes. Funeral Services will be held at a later date at Johnson County Funeral Chapel in Overland Park, Kansas. Maddux-Fuqua-Hinton Funeral Home has been entrusted by the family to handle local arrangements.
Mr. Midgley was born May 8, 1937, in Kansas City, Missouri, to the late Kenneth E. and Nelani I. Williamson Midgley. A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, William Peter Midgley, born during the Depression, lived his entire life in Jackson County, Missouri, and environs, the “center stake of zion”, until he and his wife, Randi, moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in 2005. Mr. Midgley is fourth generation of 1850’s Utah pioneers. Mr. Midgley graduated from the University of Michigan, School of Architecture, in 1960 with a B. Arch; and he spent the next 50+ years in the practice of architecture, 47 years as a registered architect and 38 years as founding principal of his own firms, the most recent being the 60+/- person firm, HMN Architects, Inc (Hansen Midgley Niemackl), in Overland Park KS from which he retired in 2010. In addition to programming and designing complex educational, commercial, and industrial projects for major regional and national corporations and for local and state education clients at all levels through the years. Mr. Midgley provided design services for a wide variety of religious clientele, including Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, as well as over 23 years on projects for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the Midwest. The organizational and spatially attuned skills required for providing architectural services related to finding physical order for theoretically complex programs are the skills that Mr. Midgley brings to this work on geographic order. Mr. Midgley has served in almost every local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints calling including having taught all four years of Gospel Doctrine class in Sunday School. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his daughter, Sherri Wells; and his sister, Nelani Walker.
Survivors include his wife of 45 years, Randi J. Owen Midgley, of Hopkinsville, KY; his sons, Gregory Midgley of Plainfield, IN, Gordon Midgley (Dona) of St. Peters, Missouri, Wally Midgley of Hopkinsville; his daughters, Cynthia Schliecher (Scott) of DeSoto, KS, Shelly Huntington (William) of Huber Heights, OH, Sally Murphy of DeSoto, KS, Amy Midgley of Hopkinsville, KY; his son-in-law, Clayton Wells of Hopkinsville; his brother, James Midgley (Denise) of Plano, TX; his 26 grandchildren; and his 31 great-grandchildren.
