Community Voices

For many of us, when we hear of the 4-H club, we get an image of rural youth focusing on activities more likely to be seen on a farm rather than in suburban neighborhoods. While those images may be accurate, it's not the full picture... This is Keri Hart, Tommy Thomas III and your local 4-H club.

Keri Hart, a Lee's Summit resident and junior at Brighton Academy, the 4-H club has given her focus and a path to opportunities she says she may not have had through what some may call traditional community or school activities. Yes, her main involvement this year comes in the form of equine activities and archery, but she's also been active in photography, as well as other disciplines. Tommy Thomas III, 4-H Youth Development Specialist for Jackson County, said the organization has the resources and capacity to provide participating youth with access to virtually any subject where there is significant interest. The continuing goal for 4-H, he says, is to provide leadership training for youth from all environments.

Thomas, Hart, and her mother Theresa sat down with Community Voices host Nick Parker last week to talk about the club and its opportunities.

(Note: I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626 Ft: J Lang, Morusque)

Whether its with a pencil, computer, saw or bucket of ink, this local artist is always looking to make something. A self-proclaimed tinkerer, he finds joy in the riddles of constructing new art and learning new ways to create both for himself, his clients or his young daughters.

This is Brian Pilachowski.

The man can talk a mile a minute. This morning, he has more ideas and images of success in his than some of us will think of over the course of the next two weeks. But that's just how his brain works. This is Ben Rao.

For Rao, finding opportunity and creating solutions to shared problems is just part of his muscle memory. Over the past dozen years, he has made himself a fixture in Lee's Summit's entrepreneurial scene, starting a real estate tech company in his garage, playing a role with what is now Velocity LS, repurposing the former downtown Lee's Summit Post Office, purchasing the former Dayton Hotel building, and more. Those last two things are part of what he's calling a collision of his collective passions and skill sets into a set of businesses he sees playing a major role in the future of the community he now calls home. Rao sat down with Community Voices host Nick Parker to talk about entrepreneurship and some of his plans for the future.

He's a teacher, director, producer, and all around champion of the arts in Lee's Summit, MO. This is Ben Martin. Martin sat down with Community Voices host Nick Parker this month to talk about his career as an educator and a lifetime on and around the stage.

Lee's Summit Educational Foundation director Sheryl Franke sits down with Community Voices host Nick Parker to to talk about the foundation, the programs it offers to the school district and how it draws support from the Lee's Summit community.

Filmmaking is his passion. There's no question Trevor Hawkins has built a successful commercial production studio in Mammoth Media, but the driving goal for the young director and producer has always been to make a feature-length film. The life-long Lake Lotawana resident had always told himself, and others who would listen, that he wanted to have his first film made by age 30. So, at age 27, his wife Cori Jo told him he better get busy.

Now, nearly three-and-a-half years later, the couple is in the finishing stages of post-production work on a film set in his hometown community, and based in large part on his own experiences weighing lofty romantic dreams with the realities of life and setting real priorities. Both Trevor and Cori Jo sat down with Community Voices host Nick Parker to talk about the movie, Lotawana, and their experience teaching themselves how to chase this dream and learn a new way to tell stories. They're currently working on submissions to film festivals and choosing the best distribution network for this, the first of their passion projects.

This is Gorilla Dance Club. Over the past couple of years, this Lee's Summit-based cover band has been making a name for itself as one of the Kansa City area's premier bands-for-hire. Cory Carmichael and brothers Weston and Jeran Krska joined Community Host Nick Parker to talk about the band and their approach to entertaining crowds in bars, festivals, corporate events and weddings.

Words on a page are dead, he says. We make them come alive in the way we use them to connect with others and make friends — that, he says, is how the words come alive. This is Hubert Neth. The longtime Lee's Summit resident and United Methodist minister sat down with Community Voices host Nick Parker to talk about his role in the church and the community where he's spent the past 30-plus years "making friends" and learning to be of help to the people he meets.

Kathy Smith is not a native of Lee's Summit, Mo. But when the charms of some of the city's original architecture piqued her interest, she became hooked. Since then, she has immersed herself in the stories and people who have been a part of the community's evolution from earliest days as the Town of Strother. Now, as the executive director of the Lee's Summit History Museum she has become the city's unofficial historian capturing and passing along the rich history. Kathy sat down with Nick Parker to talk about some of these stories, the history she loves and the museum she runs.

Music, he says, should take you to a different place. It should help you feel the emotions of the composer as he put the music to paper. This is Russell Berlin, conductor and music director for the Lee's Summit Symphony. As the symphony enters its 15th season, Berlin sat down with Link 2 Lee's Summit's Nick Parker to talk about his passion for music, the symphony he loves and a professional music career spanning more than 30 years.