Born in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, the daughter of District Judge William L. Parsons, Kay began her business career in 1920 with Cowin & Company, Inc., a Minneapolis based steel products manufacturing firm.  By the 1950′s Kay had become an owner.

Kay served on the Phyllis Wheatley Board for many years and permitted the organization to use her 100 acre property on Oak Lake near Watertown, Minnesota, for outdoor recreational activities.  In 1954, she gave the property to Phyllis Wheatley.  A modest lodge and cabins were build on the property to accommodate the growing numbers of African-American children in Minneapolis who had few options available to them because of the racism of that period.  The camp bears her name in honor of her incredible courage,  generosity and vision.

Archival research completed in 2011 by the University of Minnesota Anthropology Department, led by Dr. Katherine Hayes, and funded by a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, indicated that the property had been used for organized camping as early as the mid-1940′s.  The research also indicated that the use of the property for camping is tied to an even older camp program run by the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House beginning in the mid-1930′s.  While further research would be needed to support the claim, this makes the camp program an example of the developing movement towards organized outdoors recreation pushed by the Depression-era WPA, and certainly one of the earliest examples in the United States, specifically directed by African-Americans for African-American children.