Listen to the interview here!
Wendy Kerschner
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Wendy Kerschner with me. Hi, Wendy.
Wendy Kerschner: Hello there.
Toni: So Wendy, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Wendy: I’m a farm raised girl from Berks County, raised here all my life, and I attribute a lot of who I am to that upbringing, some lessons in perseverance and hard work, and also love of my family. Speaking of family, I have an awesome family. I’m married to Ken, who is a teacher at Wilson School District, and I have two awesome boys, Casey and Conlin.
Toni: Great. Thank you for being here. Let’s go into the first question. What does inspiration mean to you?
Wendy: Inspiration means to me a feeling of giving someone the power to do something they didn’t think they could possibly do.
Toni: Who would give that power to someone? What does that mean?
Wendy: I think anyone is capable of giving that power to someone. It can be through their words, their actions. It can be through something as simple as a smile, or just a look, or a thumbs up.
Toni: Wow, I like that! How do you put inspiration into practice here in Berks County? Have you been given thoughts, actions, to be inspired yourself?
Wendy: Inspiration comes through a lot of ways, and there are definitely people who touch me, and they might not always be the leaders that are necessarily on a pedestal that give you the inspiration. They could be just the everyday common people that you meet in the street.
Toni: Give me an example.
Wendy: It could be the person you meet at Walmart who is bagging your things or the clerk, and they just give you a look and say, “How’s your day going?” You can honestly look at them and say, “My day is fantastic.” They can say, “Good, I can see it!” and that just gives you that extra lift in your day.
Toni: So when you are inspired by someone, what do you do with that? How do you, when you feel inspired, put that into practice here in Berks County?
Wendy: I think just sharing it with other people. I think it’s about building people up. People have told me that I live on the sunny side of life. I have a positive outlook on things, and I like that about myself. If I can share that with other people and help to build other people up and make them have a good day or help them to have a good day – that’s what it’s about.
Toni: How does that work for you in the line of work that you do? Do you find yourself inspiring others with the type of work that you do?
Wendy: I work for Comfort Keepers, and we find that a lot of times people are challenged with helping their aging loved ones through situations, and I don’t know that I necessarily inspire people through my conversations with them, but I’d like to give them ease. I like to put them at ease and give them pause that they can think that they’re not the only people going through this situation, and maybe give them some helpful advice or some resources where they can go. So perhaps it is inspiring to them; I just don’t necessarily know it.
Toni: As you said earlier, there’s a lot of times people are inspired or they’ve inspired someone and they have no idea, right?
Wendy: True.
Toni: What about your children? Do you find that you inspire them or you have given them the power to be inspired to go do something?
Wendy: They inspire me.
Toni: Okay.
Wendy: My kids have definitely made me a better person, as has my husband. My oldest son, we would go for walks. He would ride his bike, I would walk, and he’d say, “Mom, can't you jog?” I would say, “Casey, I can't run. I can't jog.” He would say, “Would you just try?” So I tried, and I started by jogging a quarter of a block and then a half a block, and as time progressed, I can run for a half hour. I can do a 5K. I would have never done that had it not been for him.
Toni: That’s a great example of that. Your son inspired you, challenged you really, to say, “You can do it,” and you did it, and that’s amazing. So who in Berks County inspires you?
Wendy: I think rather that just one person, it’s groups of people. People that are willing to put themselves out there, people that are willing to help someone else, whether they know you or they don’t know you, to give you an idea or brainstorm with you or just share their time with you. That’s really what inspires me – people who want to build other people up.
Toni: Can you give me an example?
Wendy: My bosses are inspirational to me, because they spend time with me, and not so much from a business perspective, but because they care for me as a person to take the time to find out what I’m looking to do in life and where I want to go, and meld those goals and desires together with what needs to happen in a professional setting.
Toni: So really it’s that human touch.
Wendy: Absolutely.
Toni: What would you like your legacy to be?
Wendy: I’m sure my legacy will be that I am a tough person. I have high expectations, and that’s not only of myself, but of the people who are around me as well. I think people will think of me as a positive and fun person. My husband and I were just talking last night, actually. I have this silly smile on a stick in my car. You can buy them online. Had it for years. Both of my sons, Casey and Conlin, we have such a good time with this smile on a stick. When we’re driving in traffic, they’ll get it out of the glove box and they’ll look at people as we pass them by, especially truckers, because they’re bored. The smile is so huge it encompasses almost your whole face, and people laugh and point, and get other people in their car to look at you, and it’s all in good fun. We have a good laugh, that other car, we just made their day brighter, and there’s nothing more that I could love than that. When I think about a legacy, I want my kids one day to look back and say, “You remember that stupid smile thing Mom had in her glove box?” That’s what I want to be a legacy right there – little things.
Toni: This is why I love doing the interview, because the question, everybody goes to legacy thinking about after they’re gone, and actually, it’s about a living legacy, and you just gave a wonderful example of a living legacy. Thank you so much for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Wendy: Thank you for having me. I’m grateful to be here.
