a community honors its philanthropic leaders
Whether she inherited it from her parents when she accompanied them as a teenager to help out in soup kitchens, or whether she absorbed it from living in California at the height of the civil rights movement, community service is in Beverly Timmons’ blood.
It is inherent in her vocation as nurse at Shawnee Mission East High School and in her avocation as coordinator of the school’s SHARE program—Students Helping in Areas Related to Education. Since Timmons took over the fledgling program when she came to the school 17 years ago, it has grown into a dynamo run by four student executives. The student executives oversee120 student chairpersons who organize the volunteer experience for Shawnee Mission East students with over 60 community agencies. Over 7,000 volunteer commitments were made at the school this year, and in May the program won the Victor E. Speas Foundation Award for Volunteer Program of the Year—Public Category.
SHARE touches all aspects of service from caring for abused children to building houses for Habitat for Humanity to delivering Meals on Wheels to diversity training. Timmons recalls especially a whirlwind trip to New York with a handful of students and parents to help at ground zero. From 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. one weekend night in February, she and the others worked from St. John’s Chapel providing policemen and firefighters food and warm clothes and rest. She recalls a constant flow of workers telling their stories in hushed tones as 40 firefighters slept on the pews of the church. "It was very quiet," she says. "It was a very tender experience."
Timmons herself was also honored in May with a Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics Outstanding School Nursing Award for her community outreach efforts. Whether describing her annual trips to the Dominican Republic where she leads a team of doctors and nurses to provide health care for the Haitian poor who cut the sugar cane or whether she’s talking about her Survivors’ support group of Shawnee Mission kids who have lost family members, the word "passion" comes up in her conversation often. There’s no doubt it’s in her blood.