Focused on Community Hermon teen to lead New England Key Clubs

Katie Vashon doesn’t like to stand still, even to have her picture taken.

The 16-year-old Hermon High School junior is used to rushing past other students on her way to classes, track or field hockey.

However, she puts on the brakes for Key Club and devotes nearly all of her free time to raising money for the community organizations it helps support. Over the next year, the teen-ager will devote even more time to the organization.

Earlier this month, Katie was named governor of the several hundred Key Clubs in New England. She was elected April 8 at the regional convention in Springfield, Mass. More than 1,200 high school students attended the annual event.

“It was a great experience to run for office, whether I was elected or not,” she said last week during school vacation. “I decided to run because I love Key Club and I thought I could make a difference.”

Katie has been “making a difference” since she was a little girl and used to volunteer with her mother Carmen at the soup kitchen in Pittsfield. The Vashon family lived in Palmyra until Katie was 10, when they moved to Hermon.

“I think it came from family,” said Carmen Vashon of her daughter’s deep desire to give back to the community. “We’ve always told her that it’s important to be a good student academically, but we’ve said that she’s got to be a good person too.”

Katie’s older brother is a volunteer firefighter in Pittsfield and her grandfather traveled the world helping manufacturing firms in Third World countries improve production.

The teen-ager decided in middle school that she wanted to join Key Club when she entered Hermon High School as a freshman. One of her best friends, Erin Lucey, joined too. Erin, also a junior, was elected lieutenant governor in Springfield, the position Katie held last year.

Key Club is an international high school service organization sponsored by Kiwanis. There are Builders Clubs in a few middle schools in Maine and Circle K groups in colleges across the country. The Bangor Breakfast Kiwanis Club sponsors the club at Hermon High School.

Clubs in the New England district raise money to support the Kiwanis Pediatric Trauma Institute in Boston, Camp Sunshine, a camp on Sebago Lake for critically ill youngsters, and a worldwide project to eradicate iodine deficiencies in children. Locally, the Hermon High Key Club recently raised money for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Dan Guerette is the liaison between the Kiwanis Club and the Key Club. He attends many of the meetings at Hermon High School and attended the Springfield convention. He has worked with Katie for two years.

“Katie’s quiet, but she has a can-do attitude,” he said. “She comes across as someone who does what she says she’s going to do and backs up her words with action.”

During the 1999-2000 academic year, Key Clubs raised $61,000 district-wide, said Katie. This year, that figure increased a dramatic $20,000. Katie said she’d like to see the district clubs raise $85,000 during her tenure as governor.

The teen-ager said it is the smiles that keep her going.

“Through Key Club, I’ve been able to see the smile on a traumatized little kid’s face when I’ve given them a stuffed bear,” said Katie of her visits to the trauma center in Boston. “I have a want to help others, and to see the feeling of comfort a child can take from a little stuffed bear makes all the hard work worth it.”

Carmen Vashon said she finds her daughter’s optimism and altruism moving.

“When she came back from convention, she had me in tears,” said Katie’s mother, “and it had nothing to do with the election. She told me they had raised so much money, that she thought they could eradicate pediatric iodine deficiency real soon. It was when she went to the Kiwanis Hospital and saw things firsthand, that she just got super involved in Key Club.”

Katie will spend much of the summer traveling. She’ll attend training sessions in Indianapolis with other Key Club governors and the international convention in Washington, D.C., over the Fourth of July. Meanwhile, the local Kiwanis Club and school district officials want to recognize her accomplishment.

“It’s quite an honor for our club,” said Guerrette. “There’s never been a governor from a club north of Portland. I feel honored that one of our Key Clubbers got elected. It’s inspirational to think that two top leadership positions in the region are held by Hermon High School students.”

Katie will spend much of her senior year traveling throughout New England visiting Key Clubs. She also will be deciding which college or university to attend. It’s not important to her whether it has a college version of Key Club or not.

“If it doesn’t have a Circle K Club, I’ll just start one,” she said.