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Literacy Council Recognizes Kenigson Family for Volunteer Work

Hendersonville Star News
By Tena Lee
Staff Writer
March 5, 2003

For the first time in its 20-year history, the Literacy Council of Sumner County has nominated a family to receive one of the Mary Catherine Strobel Volunteer of the Year awards.

Each year the Literacy Council recognizes some of its volunteers by nominating them for the award that recognizes individuals and groups who have selflessly given their time and talents to improve the lives of others in Middle Tennessee.

The Kenigson Family: Kathy, Roger, Jessica, and Jonathon

The Literacy Council of Sumner County provides resources, counseling and tutoring to children, youth and adults to enhance their skills in all academic areas.

This year, Director Margie Anderson has nominated the Kenigson family for recognition in the innovator category.

“They bring such an energy to the Literacy Council,” said Anderson. “It’s contagious. Both our board members and volunteer tutors are inspired by them.”

Each year, several hundred volunteers are nominated from Nashville and the surrounding counties by local agencies, neighborhood groups, schools, museums, hospitals, civic clubs and church congregations. Once nominated, each application is screened by peer volunteers and agency leaders who choose a small group of finalists. These finalists are reviewed by a “celebrity panel” of judges who choose the five winners.

Whether or not the family receives a Volunteer of the Year nod, Anderson makes one thing clear – the Literacy Council has already “won” by having the family be so dedicated to its organization for the last 18 months.

“The entire family takes on a holistic approach to problem solving for almost any challenge that the Literacy Council faces,” wrote Anderson in her nomination of Roger, Kathy and their two 15-year-old twins, Jonathan and Jessica.

The family’s involvement began when Kathy received a list of local organizations from United Way of Sumner County. When she called Anderson and asked how Jonathan and Jessica, then 13, could become involved, Anderson immediately put them to work on a mail-out.

“Since I was having to bring them over every week, I started asking Margie what she needed for me to do,” said Kathy, who immediately started cleaning and organizing the office.

Roger, the family’s patriarch, was pulled into volunteering one weekend as organizing resources and files turned into assembling, installing and staining shelves.

“We have painted, spackled, moved, cataloged, filed and computerized everything,” said Kathy.

Roger, who writes and designs construction applications for computers for the Rogers Group, started going through the various computers and computer parts that had been donated to the Literacy Council and determined what could be used.

The family then spent another weekend assembling a massive computer desk which Kathy designed herself. Then they put together the computers.

While Kathy sits on the council’s board of directors and each of the family members tutor for the organization, perhaps the biggest contribution to date reaches well outside of the literacy council’s walls.

The twins have designed and written two complete computer applications for the literacy council. One is an internal data entry application and the other is the council’s Web site.

The two spent hundreds of hours making up questions and answers for the Web site as well as designing the Web site itself.

“We wanted to implement a Web site so that people could access the Literacy Council’s resources without actually being here,” said Jessica.

In a world where families seem to be going their separate ways for activities like soccer practice, dance classes and other individual pursuits, the Kenigsons say that volunteering together brings them closer together.

“We all have different interests,” Roger said. “This brings together the best of us. To do this as a family brings together all the skills we all have.”

They also feel like they are somehow giving back to their community.

“We need to pay back for all the good fortune we’ve had and we’ve had plenty,” said Roger. “It’s so easy to take from this world but so hard to give back.”

The Kenigsons will join other nominees and winners at a luncheon ceremony from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Friday, April 25 at the Downtown Sheraton in Nashville.