Taini Mae Kinney
By the time she died at age 23 of complications from an automobile accident, she had cut a swathe of friendship so wide that 500 people in a town of 850 attended her funeral in June 2004 (even business owners hung up "CLOSED" signs in order to attend). The turnout also said something about the community in which Taini and her sister, Kalli, had grown up; where her father, Alfon, plows driveways and cuts firewood; and where her mother, Cathy, is a para-educator and a clerk at Ted's Market.
The Taini Mae Kinney Scholarship will not only help students pay for education; potentially it will add to the health-care resources in a part of the state that is chronically underserved. That would have been important to Taini, a physical therapy assistant just starting her career at North Country Hospital when the accident cut short her plans. The scholarship, established in 2008, is for residents of Caledonia, Essex, or Orleans County who are pursuing medical studies.
"It could be anything," Cathy explains. "Dentistry, occupational therapy, nursing… There's a real need in the Northeast Kingdom."
This emphasis is different from the original program planned in Taini's name. Using money raised at a community talent show for the Kinneys' benefit during Taini's six-week hospitalization, the family launched a program shortly after Taini's death, awarding scholarships to members of the dance company at North Country Union High School, a group that Taini loved.
Then, in 2006 Taini's friends organized the first annual Labor Day Pond-a-Thon to raise additional money. Although loosely described as a race, the event involves circling Island Pond – the body of water that gives the town its name – by any nonmotorized means. "People run, some walk or bike," says Cathy. "Some families just walk their dogs around the lake." In its first year, the Pond-a-Thon raised $4,000. In 2007 it generated $5,000.
For help with this more ambitious scholarship program, the Kinneys turned to the Vermont Scholarship Fund, recalling that a VSAC counselor had helped Taini choose her career, and obtain grants and loans for her education. The Kinneys also changed the focus of the scholarship.
"We felt we could reach more people by promoting medical professions in this part of the state," says Cathy. "We've tried to honor the whole gamut of Taini's life. It was a short life, but a rich and full life."
