faith! - Bobbi Kennedy

Bobbi Kennedy believes in the power of storytelling – whether that be a story told to a child, or a story of faith told to another believer, or the story of disparity that someone bravely steps up to share in the public spotlight. Stories are how we define our lives and give our lives meaning.

Bobbi’s story began in the small South Dakota town where she was born 74 years ago. Hot Springs, S.D., registered at 3,711 people for the 2010 census. Despite its size, Hot Springs was a faithful community. A resourceful one, too. When there wasn’t enough money to support individual congregations, the community created The United Churches, a shared community of faith among Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians.

“What was neat about this is that I didn’t get covered up with all the prescriptive belief systems,” Bobbi said. “That meant I went to a Baptist camp in the summer, which was always a great experience,” but the youth also may have attended a Presbyterian ski trip or a Methodist Sunday school. For one cycle, the Baptist minister might lead worship; the Methodists, the choir: and the Presbyterians, the Sunday school curriculum.  “And then this would rotate,” she said.

Living the Golden Rule

This exposure to varied ways of practicing Christianity gave Bobbi a broad perspective. Being surrounded by South Dakota’s Native American communities also taught her that there were people apart from the majority who possessed great wisdom that was to be valued. Years later, when developing a statewide reading curriculum for S.C. ETV, those formative lessons of Bobbi’s youth sustained her.

In her early work, Bobbi traveled the state with Dr. Ruby Davis, a Black colleague, listening to stories of people who needed to be heard, building trust and striving to encourage use of the reading programming S.C. ETV was creating. One of their earliest tasks was to visit S.C. State University in Orangeburg where the Orangeburg Massacre had taken place three years before their visit. (Often overlooked by history books, the Orangeburg Massacre predated Kent State by two years, leaving three dead and 27 wounded in the 1968 encounter between the S.C. Highway Patrol and students, many of whom were civil rights activists who had grown up in the town’s elite African American community. The deadly event grew out of the students’ desire to integrate the All-Star Triangle Bowling Lanes.)

“Being the only white person on campus (when visiting with Davis for ETV) -- this was to be in the deep pool immediately,” Bobbi said. “That really framed early that this is big work to do.”

Her travels across the state illustrated how ill-quipped far too many schools were, she said. “That experience really opened me to understanding what it meant to be in South Carolina in the 60s, and not only what the potential was, but also the extraordinary disparities.” The opportunity also “fed my spirit,” she said, recalling the sense of accomplishment that came from providing quality educational materials through trusted relationships built over time. That trust continued to serve the network throughout Bobbi’s 49 years with ETV – work from which she retired in August.

“Our agency and organization partners shared similar values,” she said. “They applied the Golden Rule  and found creative ways to support those who had not previously been at the table.” Looking back, Bobbi realizes that her faith experiences taught her everything that she and her team needed to build those relationships.

A young St. Martin’s

Bobbi and her husband, the late Ray Kennedy, arrived in Columbia on July 4, 1969, in the waning days of  Vietnam. An Army officer and Bobbi’s childhood sweetheart, Ray had been assigned to Fort Jackson. Fortunately for the young couple, the war ended before Ray was deployed, but the couple chose to stay in Columbia, where they ultimately raised four children and became integrally involved in life at St. Martin’s. The church provided an “open, caring community” that matched what Bobbi and Ray had learned in those varied church services of their youth.

As a young mother of preschoolers, Bobbi jumped into the life of the parish. “I was 2,000 miles away from anybody who was next of kin. We had little ones and it was a great place to be,” she said. Part of what made it wonderful was the devotion of people such as the late Sarah McCrory, Frances and Jim Tupper and many others “who are so much a part of our history.”

During that era, Bobbi not only helped educate young children in the faith, but the adults helped nurture their own faith, too. Programs such as Faith Alive, Stephen Ministries and Disciples of Christ in Community each built upon small group development and learning one another’s stories.

Faith Alive, for example, taught that “everybody’s story holds so much grace, and hearing those stories allows people who listen in a safe container to see God in the now.” In Stephen Ministries work, participants learned about holy listening – being present for one another. Disciples of Christ in Community taught the fundamentals of the Episcopal Church and how to “reflect on your journey.”

Exiting the valley

Bobbi, who was diagnosed earlier this year with stage four pancreatic cancer,  is concerned about the absence of those values in the public square today. “The summary of the law (love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself) is really where it’s at,”  she said.

She senses an answer to this loss in the recent work of NYT columnist David Brooks with the Weave Project, an organization that asserts that relationships are key to building across-the-divide understandings. “Clearly we’re in a valley, and what do we do?” she asks. “How do we be for and with each other while honoring those people (unlike us) individually?”

Brooks teaches that “the way out of the valley is through weavers – people who show up and engage and are willing to have relationships in spite of the differences.”

As Bobbi battles cancer, supported by her four children and longtime friends at St. Martin’s who have met weekly to pray for her throughout her chemotherapy treatment this summer, she is more convinced than ever about the value of weavers.

“It’s the summary of the law and the Golden Rule,” she said. “I think our message is: Let’s be weavers.”

Bobbi has been a member of St. Martin’s since 1978.