|
 A
transplant to McKenzie, Kim Kelly puts forth the kinds of
roots that branch out, sending new shoots to thrive, making
the community a hundred times or more better than it would
ever have been without her.
At 44, she's still youthful in appearance and energy, which,
busy as she is with community, work, and family activities,
stands her in good stead.
She grew up on a farm in Collinsville, Illinois, about 20
miles away from St. Louis, with parents Burleigh and Beverly
Hawk and two younger siblings: Burleigh, II and Beth.
The name "Burleigh" has been a family favorite as Burleigh
II's son, called Trey, also bears the moniker and Kim's middle
name is "Burley", spelled the way her father had abbreviated
his name when he was in school.
The family farm eventually evolved from raising traditional
farm animals to keeping just a few cows and horses and raising
dogs--coon hounds and Brittany spaniels--sometimes two or
three litters of each at a time.
"As kids we worked," Kim declares, shedding light on her
tendency to stay busy. In fact, she tells that whenever her
family talks her into settling down to watch a movie, within
minutes, she falls asleep. "If I'm not busy, I'm sleeping,"
she laughs.
Eating only what was raised on the family farm, Kim says she
never knew what broccoli and brussel sprouts were. "We ate
green beans, corn, potatoes and tomatoes," she says.
Butcher friends would come out to the farm and cut up killed
cows and pigs for the family freezer. "We'd package it, wrap
it ourselves," says Kim, who in the mornings helped her mother
pick beans or strawberries in their big garden, and also
helped with cooking and canning.
Her brother was as busy outside; their dad would leave a whole
page of "to do" items for them each morning. "My mom was the
only one who could have an excuse for us not to have it done,"
Kim adds.
Her dad worked as hard, it bears noting. A steel mill worker
aside from the farm, he also provided custom tractor
work--plowing, disking and mowing--as well as welding and
automotive repair, jobs the children had a hand in, too.
"I know how to change plug points and condensers," says Kim,
"He'd have us doing all kinds of stuff. Wherever my dad went,
we went too, and worked. He made sure we had plenty of yards
to mow in summer, too." Only Beth escaped somewhat the rigors
of working so much, though periodic health issues were poor
recompense.
Among the families in the neighborhood, only one had kids the
same ages as the Hawk children. "We'd help each other get our
work done so we'd have time to play," Kim recalls. Other
families provided opportunity for Kim, as the oldest girl, to
earn money babysitting for, some days, up to 15 children.
A few families in particular became regular customers. Friday
evenings, Kim watched two small boys and a newborn baby for a
couple on their bridge night. Saturdays, she spent the night
across the street caring for children whose parents ran the
local bowling alley. On Sunday morning, she'd walk home and
get ready for church, where she played the piano from the time
she was in the seventh grade, the same year she expressed her
faith as a Christian.
Music was always a big part of my life," says Kim, who these
days is pianist at Long Heights Baptist Church in McKenzie.
Kim took lessons from the first grade until she was a junior
or senior in high school and started playing at her church in
the seventh grade. Her mother, schooled in classical piano,
had found it difficult to play the regular songs most people
wanted to hear. Kim was saved from a similar fate as her
teacher would assign several songs from the church hymnal for
her to learn each week. By the ninth grade, when the regular
pianist married and moved away, Kim assumed the lead position.
 "I've
always been very involved with church and that," she says, a
fact that gave her some flexibility in life as a youngster and
would soon become even more important.
Kim was 16 and a junior in high school when a friend, playing
matchmaker, asked if she would be interested in meeting a guy
her age.
"When I asked his name, she said, 'Oh, you won't know him,'"
says Kim. Yet the name "Scot Kelly", once spoken, struck a
chord in Kim's memory.
"Does he have red hair?" she asked, and soon discovered the
gentleman she was to meet had been her summertime romance for
two weeks of Bible School every year from first through third
grades.
"We always had to hold hands; whatever we did, we did at the
same table," Kim smiles. "Then his family had to move and from
the third grade to the end of our junior year we didn't see
each other."
Once the lovebirds were reunited, they never went out with
anyone else.
"Sometimes the only time I got to see him was at church,"
laughs Kim, whose parents otherwise allowed them to date just
once a week. "At least once a month we had a big, after-church
get-together," she continues. "We did so many different things
and it just always felt right; you had so many good friends
that you knew were good friends."
Kim and Scot were married in 1980, two years after graduating
from high school. In the meantime, she worked for a large bank
in Collinsville in a myriad of capacities: receptionist, new
accounts, bookkeeper, and secretary to the vice president.
She attended college at Belleville Area College, where she
studied accounting and computers, then worked at SIU (Southern
Illinois University) Carbondale's computer room while Scot
attended dental school. He eventually opted to become a dental
technologist.
"They hated me," she says of her fellows in the computer room.
The problem arose when Kim did so well at the level one
employment test for computer operators that she was tested for
level two and made it, sending her into the job at an earnings
level equal to that of many who had held the position for
years.
"No one had ever come in as a two before," says Kim, who was
also the only woman in the section aside from a student
assistant named Tyra, from whose name Kim would one day derive
her own daughter's name.
"That's when computers were BIG," laughs Kim, describing
monstrous machinery and "big, old windy tapes" on which data
was stored. The computers ran programs for the college,
payroll, and other applications 24 hours a day.
"It was a really neat job but they were so horrible to me; I'd
cry I'd get so upset," Kim admits, although she notes the
programmers were nice.
That experience was followed by a move to Iowa after Scot's
graduation, only to discover upon arrival that the company
that had hired him was in distress.
Before long, Kim was in distress as well, removed from family
and friends to an area of the country that seemed perpetually
cold. Her dad being injured at work was all the excuse she
needed to come home, but even then she was delayed by his
doctor's decision.
"Dad was burned by molten metal," Kim relates. "He saw slag in
the line and it's like water and grease; it'll explode."
He was able to turn the machine off just before hot metal hit
him from the chest down. Other men were swept into the soup,
suffering burns over 99 percent of their bodies. Burleigh was
burned 75 percent.
Kim was advised that, if she were to come home, her father
might think he wasn't expected to live through the ordeal. "It
was almost a week before they let me come home to see him,"
she says, adding that the story had a happy ending with all
the victims surviving.
Back in Illinois, Scot operated a dental lab from home,
producing dentures and partials. "When the kids were born (Tyra
in 1983 and Eryn in 1985) we decided one of us was going to
stay home with them," Kim explains. "So Scot ran the lab and
watched the girls when they were little."
After he took a job with General Motors, Kim worked part-time
at the truck stop owned by his parents. In addition to working
as needed, usually on the 3-11 or midnight shifts, she handled
the company's finances, balancing the books, handling payroll,
bills and the like. One of the perks of the job was that the
children could tag along.
"It was part-time work for me but it gave us extra money," she
says appreciatively.
When her in-laws decided to close the business, Kim was
offered a job by the accountant who prepared their taxes.
"She was a very good Christian woman," says Kim. "I just loved
working with Cathy. She taught me a lot about accounting and
doing taxes, but she taught me about everything."
It was the first workplace Kim had experienced where all the
employees were Christian and felt free to talk about God, "and
did talk about Him everyday," she says.
Scot had learned to weld at General Motors, so when he was
laid off, he began working for a door company's welded frame
department. In time, a former co-worker called from McKenzie,
where he was working for Republic Builders Products, to let
Scot know of a job opening.
Kim advised if they were going to make a move, it was the time
to do it, with the children then in the sixth and fourth
grades.
"The move took six months," says Kim. Scot arrived in June
1995 and she and the children followed a week before
Christmas.
"We moved in Monday and then Friday left and went home to
Illinois for the holidays, she laughs. "Me and the girls
stayed up there a week."
The family had many changes to get used to in their southern,
small town home. But one thing that was a welcome change was
the hospitality.
"Everybody is just so much nicer down here," Kim says, though
her own winsome ways are an offshoot of her father's
friendliness. "My dad's a waver person," she says, after
mentioning how, in West Tennessee, even folks who are
strangers often wave in passing.
Kim says that everybody who goes by honks or waves or pulls
into the drive to talk to her father, who is still a
hard-working farmer, though their new farm is 100 miles closer
than when they lived in Collinsville during Kim's youth.
Scot and Kim Kelly and children Tyra and Eryn on the Kelly's
25th wedding anniversary.
Concerning the differences in speech patterns, Kim laughs,
"It's been hilarious. Boy, I don't know what happened between
here and 100 miles. I think it's once you hit Cairo Bridge,
the accent changes."
Locally, Kim is account manager for Homecare, Inc. in
McKenzie. As an aside, she quilts and embroiders for herself
and, sometimes, the public. The quilting is done on a huge
machine located in the basement of her home while another
sewing machine crafts embroidered logos and other designs.
"I like doing that, but I don't advertise," she cautions. "If
I had too many people come, that would be a job and I wouldn't
enjoy it; it takes all the fun out of it."
Perpetually busy, she doesn't anticipate ever retiring.
"There's too many things to do," she says.
As for the near future, she echoes the desires of many
parents, "The kids keep me busy; I just want to get them
through college."
She'll take a break soon, however, for a trip with Scot to
Florida for their 25th wedding anniversary, which was actually
March 8. "We wanted to wait and go when it was warmer and be
able to enjoy the beach," she says, explaining how she'd
turned down Scot's idea of returning to Hawaii, where they had
honeymooned, opting to stay closer to home.
Outside work, for several years Kim assumed heavy involvement
in the McKenzie Band Boosters in support of her daughters, to
the benefit of many more McKenzie band students.
"That was almost a full-time job in itself," she acknowledges,
but her heart is in her work at the church, where she remains
heavily involved in youth activities despite the fact that
Tyra is now 21 and an engineering student at Murray State
University, and Eryn, 19, is a student of psychology at the
University of Tennessee at Martin.
"I've always taught Bible School and Sunday School," she says,
laughing at how she would play the piano, then go work in the
nursery and listen for the service's end, when she would
return to the sanctuary to play during the invitation.
"I love working with the kids and I love working with the
music," she continues, thinking back on all the church
activities with which she's been involved, from plays she and
Mona Mobbs put together to Awanas, a popular, Bible-based
program for children.
"It takes a lot of space to run a program like that; it's a
very structured program," says Kim. "We just ran out of room."
Like all the parishioners of Long Heights, she is excited at
the prospect of the new church being built "on the hill" in
McKenzie at the intersections of highways 22 and 79.
"I love working with the guys in the praise band," she says.
"It's so fulfilling--it just feels so right--it seems like
everything comes together with what Brother Kenny (Carr) is
preaching and you can tell the Lord's work is there... It's
amazing."
She's even more aware of the importance of supportive
relationships since daughter Eryn has been provisionally
diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis.) Doctors are waiting
for her semester to end before running final tests for the
disorder.
"There's a sincere concern among people at church for her;
it's such a caring group and it's not just the praise band,
it's that whole church. You just need to be there."
|
2005 Feature Archives: |
|
|
|
|
|
2004
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
. |
|
2003
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
. |
|
2002
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
. |
|
2001
Feature
Archives: |
|
|
|
