Success Stories

In 1952, Frank and Lovelle Kennedy with their daughter, Carol, and son, Tommy, moved into a house on Reynolds Drive in White Oak. They were soon active members of the White Oak Baptist Church where they participated in numerous church service projects and related activities, and Mr. Kennedy later served as deacon. The Kennedys also became involved members of the White Oak community. During that time, White Oak’s schools were led by only three board members. Mr. Kennedy was one of those members serving at least one term as Board President.

Lovelle was very involved in school activities including Scouting, PTA, Band Boosters and most any other activity in which her children were interested. As the children grew older, the Kennedy home was often a gathering place for their friends with Mrs. Kennedy providing lemonade and chocolate chip cookies.

Frank was part of the group that was instrumental in White Oak receiving its city charter. In fact, the process began with several citizens meeting late into the night on different occasions right in the Kennedy’s living room.
Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy, Carol, and Tom preceded Mrs. Kennedy in death. She died in 2011 at the age of 91 having spent more than 50 years in the home where she and Frank first settled their family in White Oak. Both had invested years of time and energy working to insure a promising future for our community.

The White Oak Education Foundation is proud to be a recipient of part of this family’s trust fund. This year, $25,000 of the fund was awarded to the Primary and Intermediate Schools to fund the renovation of the Elementary playground insuring that hundreds of children each year will benefit from her generosity.

The foundations biggest ongoing project, which also enjoys lots of community support, is the White Oak District’s nature center. That support has come in so many different ways, it sometimes boggles the mind. By far the greatest financial support of the ongoing development of that center is to the credit of the White Oak Education Foundation. Aside from the numerous smaller grants that keep things going, the foundation has provided the lion’s share of financing for the pavilion and the tadpole pond, both pictured below.

Parents of our students know that some extraordinary learning opportunities have been developed and implemented in that outdoor arena. You can see a few of them on the foundations achievement page and almost all of them are featured at some level in individual teacher blogs and a few student portfolios.

Please consider subscribing to this page for updates, some quite casual, about the nature center itself. I’ll endeavor to keep this page up-to-date on some of the uses, all of the needs, the condition of the facility, and the opportunities in it.