Medical staff honored with 100 plaques

Kennedy honors late wife, medical staff with 100 plaques
By Dave Taylor

Allen Kennedy spent most of his 73 years adoring his wife Lois, but after losing her in 2018 to cancer he’s vowed to spend his remaining years honoring her memory. Since early 2019, that’s taken the form of crafting more than 100 wooden plaques for the medical workers who cared for her during her long battle.
“We were married for 52 years,” Kennedy said. “I met her in the first grade, so it was a lifetime thing.”
The couple first got together in fourth or fifth grade, and aside from a couple of years in high school, they were together ever since.
“That red hair and those pretty blue eyes just encapsulated me as a kid,” he said.
After Lois was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer in early 2017, the couple sought treatment at Vanderbilt in Nashville, where their daughter Michelle, one of their two adult children, lives. When the cancer spread they moved to Saint Thomas in the same city, where she fought the cancer as it affected her heart, her brain, and eventually succumbed in December 2018 when it moved to her lungs.
While Lois battled, she and Allen collaborated on ways to thank the medical workers who had taken such good care of her. They decided Allen could use his woodworking skills to make plaques for each of them.
“We talked about it in terms that we – she and I – were going to give these out when she got well,” he said. “But that wasn’t the case.”
Their extended stays in more than one hospital and in more than one ward meant they had time to get to know the staff and to come to appreciate them.
“They were so nice, they were so sweet, they were so helpful, they were so loving and so caring, that I wanted to show our appreciation for the work that they do,” he said.
He’s made more than 100 of the round, multi-piece wooden plaques, each with a thick wooden base and a thin layer of lighter hickory on the front cut with an inspirational saying and each worker’s name. He’s handed out more than 75 and plans to hand out at least 21 more next week when he goes back to Nashville.
Kennedy, who retired from human resources, originally took up woodworking at his wife’s request.
“I came home one day just totally stressed out and Lois said you need a stress reliever, so she bought me my first scroll saw for Christmas that year,” he said.
He took classes and learned to use the scroll saw to cut intricate designs, and it became his outlet for stress.
But when his beloved Lois was gone it wasn’t so easy.
“When you lose your mate of 52 years and a lifetime like that, it’s just a life-changing event,” he said. “I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to get out of bed.
“I couldn’t even go to the wood shop,” he said, “because she would come out there so much, and she bought me the scroll saw originally.”
In April or May of 2019, about six months after Lois died, Allen got back to the plan they’d come up with together.
“It finally kicked in and I said OK, I know we promised each other that’s what we were going to do and I’m going to get out here and get at it,” he said. “I would spend eight hours a day, sometimes seven days a week just out there making those things.”
“(Lois) was the sweetest, most caring, loving individual I’ve ever known,” he said. “and it’s been an incredible…”
He paused for a second before continuing.
“I needed this. I really needed this,” he said. “Because it’s been a time of suffering.”
He’s spent countless hours working on the plaques, but it’s been cathartic.
“It’s been a blessing for me because as I was doing this, I can recall (them),” he said. “The work that those folks do, hey it’s not a job, it’s a calling. I’m convinced it’s a calling or they could not do what they do.”
Once he finds every worker and makes them a plaque he won’t just stop, he said, because he knows he has plenty more to do.
“My focus is, knowing I’m a sinner and fall short many times, is to try to do the Lord’s will in my life,” he said. “And he left me here for a reason.
“I don’t understand that. I don’t question that, just like I don’t question her death, because I know she was ready and I know I’ll be with her again some day,” he said.
“When you lose someone in your life there’s not a replacement,” he said. “It’s not about replacing, it’s about remembering them and honoring them, and every chance I get I remember her and honor her and will always do that.”
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