Even though her family lived at the western tip of Virginia, Kay started life in a hospital in Bristol, Tennessee. When she was 12, the family moved to Staunton where her father started a chain of NAPA stores. She left the mountains to go to the College of William & Mary which she selected because it had an excellent academic reputation, a beautiful campus, and she preferred a coed school. A love of the game of football motivated Kay to become a W&M cheerleader. After receiving a Bachelor's Degree in English, she taught high school English for a year in Goochland County.
Marriage to a VMI graduate took her to Germany in 1969. While there, she had her only child, John-Garrett, and taught English and Algebra to servicemen who were studying for their GED. She discovered that she really liked working with adults, so when she and her husband moved to Norfolk, she applied for a job in Adult Education with Norfolk Public Schools. She was interviewed and hired by Rotarian Bob Latimer who was director of the program. A few years later she became the Title I program planner for NPS and then in the late 1970's George Raiss, husband of Rotarian Marty Raiss, hired Kay to work in the Public Relations Department.
In 1980, Al Ayers, the superintendent of Norfolk Public Schools, asked Kay to go to Richmond to look after the district’s interests in the legislature which resulted in her career taking major turn. Three years later, she was hired by ODU to become the Director of Government Relations. In 1990, Kay became the first female vice president of ODU; her responsibilities included public relations, fundraising, publications, and alumni, in addition to government relations. Kay decided to start her own government relations firm, Kemper Consulting Group in 1996. Her first hire was her son, John-Garrett, an attorney. She retired from Kemper Consulting in 2016 after a total of 35 years of working with the Virginia General Assembly. She found this work was challenging and a true "chess game," but also a real “opportunity to make things better.”
Sponsored by Bob Latimer, Kay was among the first women in our Rotary Club, joining in 1988. She believed Rotary was the best of the service clubs and liked the fact that it was truly an international organization. Kay was the first woman president of our club (2001-2002). There are many things that Kay enjoys in our club including the speakers and the fellowship of the club members. She also thinks there are more opportunities with the innovative and flexible program we adopted two years ago to learn about South Hampton Roads. Kay has been very generous to The Rotary Foundation and is a Paul Harris Fellow + 6.
Kay has taken advantage of the international aspect of Rotary. She was the team leader for a Group Study Exchange (GSE) to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island, and she is returning there on vacation this week. She also participated in the Rotary Home Exchange Program and was a member of the International HE Committee. This resulted in a visit to Tenby, Wales, the home of her favorite poet Dylan Thomas. Kay says it was a remarkable experience, and Welsh Rotarians opened their homes to her, arranging for her to meet people who had known and worked with Thomas at the BBC. She has also made up in Istanbul, Madrid, Beijing, and in many other cities across the globe and laughingly calls herself the “international make-up queen.”
Kay married Denny Parker in 2008. Kay and Denny had known each other for years as their children had been childhood friends. That friendship continues today, and Kay says it is "wonderful chaos" when all 18 of them get together.
Kay continues to travel, most recently to Bora Bora (bucket list item of "sleeping on stilts"), Tortola, Greece, and Italy. She and Denny live on Outer Banks during much of the summer, and they recently bought a home in Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island just off the west coast of Florida. Kay is currently a member of the Old Dominion University Board of Visitors and the CIVIC Leadership Institute which she helped found in 1996. In her spare time, she follows politics, reads historical novels, bikes, kayaks, and walks. An interest in her family history has resulted in her working with a local woman on her ancestry search. She is delighted in the stories of her family the genealogist has been able to uncover.