Percy James Latimer Pettway was born on April 2, 1972, in Detroit, Michigan, to Addie V. Rogers and James Percy Latimer. He was the second of two sons, and the younger brother to Dywand Pettway. He died on June 9, 2026, at his apartment near Sloane Lake in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 54.

Percy grew up in Detroit before the family relocated to Doraville, Georgia, where he attended Sequoyah High School. Some of his earliest friendships — with Dominique Campbell and Rondell Biffle, formed in the first grade — followed him through childhood, and by what his cousin Troy Skinner Scott called “the universe putting them back together,” the three found each other again in high school, this time alongside Theodore Richardson and Christopher Kelley. They played basketball, told jokes, and built the kind of friendships that last a lifetime. Troy remembers Percy as a boy who loved his toys — “the ones his brother didn’t tear up” — and as a young man who was always laughing, always smiling, always glad to see her. “He would look for me and I would be looking for him,” Troy recalled. “We’d run up on each other, give each other hugs, and even fall down on the ground rolling in the grass.” Troy was his favorite cousin, and Percy was hers.

Percy spent much of his adult life working — always somewhere, always with a gig, always hustling. He worked steadily until his health failed him in 2022. In 2016, while staying at the Salvation Army in Atlanta, Percy met a man named Atilla Sunay, and the two became roommates and, in time, close friends. Percy began spending weekends at Atilla’s mother’s house, helping out around the home, and a friendship of his own grew between them. “It was comforting to have a friend you could count on,” Atilla later wrote, “someone who would have your back and tell you the truth, even when it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.” The two went on to room together again, this time at the Darlington downtown. Percy returned to the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center three times over the years — in 2016, 2018, and 2019 — a testament not to failure but to persistence, to a man who kept choosing to come back and try again. His openness about that journey later led to his being featured in Stories in Black and White: Sharing the Impact of the Overdose Epidemic.

In 2020, Atilla moved to Denver to start something new, drawn by a city that he found genuinely supported people trying to rebuild their lives. He called Percy and told him he ought to come give it a try. A few days later, Percy was on a plane. He hit the ground running — found work, found his own apartment, and built a life for himself in Colorado. When Atilla later needed a place to stay, Percy made sure he had one. “Our lives kept getting better,” Atilla wrote, “because we pushed each other to be better.”

In Denver, Percy worked at Snarfs and at Good Times, where he became a supervisor, and later alongside friends at Park Burger, Coors Field, and the Denver Art Hotel. He was, by every account, the kind of person who made a shift fun. One afternoon in Boulder, working a CU Buffs game as a bartender, he had the entire line laughing — customers and coworkers alike. “He always had a way of everyone knowing who he was,” Atilla Sunay remembered, “in a good way.” At the time of his passing, he was working toward his GED. He had also grown deeply connected to CAMCAM — the Center for Addiction Medicine’s Community Action Meeting — held on the third Friday of each month at Denver Health. Atilla had been attending alongside him for about two years, and it was one of the places he had planned to share Percy’s passing with their community in person, rather than over email.

In his free time, Percy loved watching sports and old episodes of Gunsmoke, cooking, and calling his family just to check in. He stayed close with friends from his Salvation Army days, many of them through Facebook Messenger, long after their paths had separated geographically. He was close with his aunt Renee, his favorite among his mother’s sisters, and he kept in touch with family scattered from Detroit to Atlanta to Florida.

Percy was the father of Maleeka Taliha Hollaway and grandfather to Kerrington Kaelle and Kingsley Knox. Distance and time did not always allow him to be present in the day-to-day, but he showed up when it counted. Maleeka’s fondest memory of her father is from a birthday visit to Selma, Alabama, when he paid for the whole neighborhood to eat Church’s Chicken and ice cream, and brought her a copy of The Lion King. She also remembers him meeting her for the first time at her own book signing. Her daughter Kerrington’s clearest memory of her grandfather is sharing lunch with him at the Salvation Army in 2019. He was a father who tried to make it right in his own way.

Those who knew Percy best remember a man who took accountability for his own life and refused to blame others for his circumstances. He was reliable to the people he let in close. He celebrated other people’s successes as if they were his own, and he showed up for their struggles without being asked twice. He did not always say what people wanted to hear, but he told the truth, and he showed his love far more through his actions than his words.

Percy was preceded in death by his mother, Addie V. Rogers; his father, James Percy Latimer; and his grandparents, Frances and Harold Rogers.

Percy is survived by his daughter, Maleeka Taliha Hollaway; his grandchildren, Kerrington Kaelle and Kingsley Knox; his brother, Dywand Pettway; his aunts, Priscilla Rogers Skinner, Beverly Rogers, and Constance Harris; his uncle, Thomas Rogers; and a wide circle of cousins, including Troy and Thomas, who both loved him as a brother. He is also survived by the friends who became his family — Atilla and Susan Sunay, Sam Murray, Tapiwa Gondo, John, and his sponsor, Jeff, among them — and by the many people he met along the way at the Salvation Army who never lost touch.

“I always thought we would have more time together,” Atilla wrote after Percy’s passing, “but I am extremely grateful for the time we did have.” Percy James Latimer Pettway leaves behind a legacy of accountability, loyalty, laughter, and love shown through action — a man who, again and again, chose to make it right.

With memories and words shared by Maleeka Hollaway, Troy Skinner Scott, and Atilla Sunay.

Please send flowers or donations, they can send to by July 10, 2026 to:

Maleeka Hollaway

Spirit & Truth Church

2240 Springdale Rd SW

Atlanta, GA 30315

United States

The service will be streamed.