Dear City of Lakes Waldorf School Alumni,
After more than 30 years of teaching at CLWS, we will be saying farewell to Mr. Kane as a full time employee of the school. We will be honoring Kevin at our Winter Festival on Friday, December 20, at 10:30 am, and we hope you can join us.
If you are able, please come to the school at 9:30 am where alumni will gather in our Music Room on the second floor to practice the song “What a Wonderful World” to sing for Kevin during the Winter Festival. Former Admissions Director and Choir Teacher, Susan Sophocleus is working with our current music teachers to provide music direction and accompaniment. If you are unable to join us for the practice, please arrive at the church across the street by 10:30 am. We will have a section reserved for you in the back east side of the hall (enter the sanctuary from the stairwell on the right).
Following the Festival, please join us back at CLWS in the Third Floor Commons for refreshments and socializing with Mr. Kane.
CLWS Winter Festival
Honoring Mr. Kane
Friday, December 20, 10:30 am
Minneapolis First Seventh-Day Adventist Church
(across the street from CLWS)
Alumni Song Rehearsal @ CLWS, 9:30 am
Refreshments and social time @ CLWS following the Festival
If you are unable to attend the event, please visit the For the Love of Kevin Kane Facebook group and add your memories, photos, and words of gratitude.
Thank you so much for helping us to honor Kevin in all the ways that will be most meaningful to him. Kevin loves each one of you!
We hope to see you next Friday, or another time very soon. Please forward this message on to other CLWS alumni!
With gratitude,
CLWS Faculty and Staff
About Mr. Kane
Kevin Kane is truly a founding father of our school whose work has greatly supported the school’s healthy development and allowed the school to flourish. Among his many duties, Kevin was our school’s first Woodworking and Art Teacher. He is beloved by generations of students; Kevin has been asked by numerous graduating classes to speak at their graduation ceremonies. The most common question asked by CLWS alumni returning to visit the school is “Do you know where Mr. Kane is?” Along with teaching students, Kevin also led the CLWS faculty in artistic work together during staff inservice days for many years.
Additionally, as an artist, woodworker, and the school’s Aesthetic Coordinator, Kevin has been an essential force in the 24-year journey of making this beautiful historic building at 2344 Nicollet Avenue South our school home. He has brought his knowledge, care, and attention to every corner of this building, and knows our building and campus like the back of his hand. Kevin has always been involved in the creation of handcrafted items for classrooms such as cubbies, benches, and nature tables, selecting and obtaining classroom rugs, framing pictures, choosing paint colors, and gracing our walls with murals and lazure painting. Additionally, Kevin has designed stage props and painted set backgrounds for class plays and the circus, obtained flowers for all of our special events, and has famously illustrated every festival program and Bike-a-thon and Circus poster and t-shirt. Kevin is the artist behind so many things that are extraordinarily beautiful, and extra special about City of Lakes Waldorf School.
Kevin has carefully held the festival life of our school for all of these many years in ways that are often unseen by parents and students. He is always there, humbly preparing the spaces and remembering all the special details – from the Rose Ceremony on the first day of school, to the Winter Spiral and the Spring Maypole, to the final day of school and the 8th grade graduation.
Kevin is beloved not only for all that he does but mostly for how he sees the world, as well as how he approaches and accomplishes his tasks. Time does not exist in quite the same way for Kevin as it does for the rest of us. Kevin never says no to a request for assistance. With every encounter, he invites you into his magical world where beauty and kindness reign, and conversation, tasks, and life are not to be rushed. Whether he is teaching you how to approach a piece of wood, or layer watercolors onto the paper, or reading passages from “Winnie the Pooh”, his manner of speaking and thinking transport you into his world: a better world where careful observation, whimsy, and deep philosophical wonderings intermingle, warm you from the inside, and make you happy to be a human being on the face of this beautiful blue earth in the center of a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos.
You will hear more about the legacy of Kevin Kane at our Winter Festival where we will celebrate the incredible gifts that he has brought, with tremendous love and dedication, to shape and nurture the heart and soul of our school. We are forever grateful to Kevin Kane for setting the stones of our foundation, and tending the flame of the Spirit of the School. He has quietly and creatively tended all of our spirits with the greatest of kindness over these past 31 years.