Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — Kathleen Moore’s impact on children in Calhoun County was deep and powerful.

Following her death in September and a funeral mass to celebrate her multi-faceted life, her family, friends, and colleagues came together to host the inaugural Kathleen Moore Memorial Family Day at Riverside Elementary School on July 26. Plans are already underway for a similar event next year.

“Her life was bigger than us just going to a funeral,” says Kathy Szenda-Wilson, one of the event organizers. “Kathleen was a really, really dear friend of mine in the last six to eight years of her life.”

Those involved in the planning chose the school as the event location because of Moore’s many years serving on the Lakeview School’s Board of Education. Her obituary says, “For 16 years, beginning in 2003, she held leadership positions. A member of the Lakeview Board of Education since 2003, Moore spent 16 years in leadership positions, including serving as President from 2008 to 2017. This local involvement led to the Michigan Association of School Boards (MASB) where she served on the Board of Directors and was President from July 2023 to July 2024. In August of that year, she received MASB’s highest award for an individual board member, the President’s Award of Recognition, for completing a minimum of 1,383 education credits.”

Moore juggled her involvement at the local level while raising six children with her husband, Kevin, says Lissa Layman, one of the couple’s daughters. Layman and her husband are International Teachers who left at the end of July to teach in Abu Dhabi.

“She didn’t just go, ‘OK, I’m a stay-at-home.' She saw that she could continue to raise us, but also get involved with the local school board and serve as president of the Michigan Association of School Boards. She showed us all how to turn your love and passion into making a difference in the world.”

An award has been established in her honor at Lakeview High School called the “Perseverance Award.” It is the first athletic award at the school honoring a woman, Szenda-Wilson says.

Growing up, Layman says she and her siblings didn’t fully understand the impact of their Mom’s work.

Peter Moore, Kathleen Moore's sonPeter Moore, the family’s second youngest, says the number of people coming and going from the Saturday event “speaks to the impact my Mom had. The people that are here are all people she was close to and worked with. It’s fun to see.”

Moore says early on he didn’t realize the many ways that she touched so many lives and the love people had for her.

“When we would go to the grocery store, it would take about two seconds before she ran into someone she knew,” he says. “When she got sick and everybody was reaching out and there to support her, it became pretty clear how big of an impact she had.”

Prior to her health issues, Moore’s career took her in a new direction when she joined Community Action Agency as a Human Resource Assistant in 2009. Two years later, she went to work as a Family Coach and later Special Projects Coordinator with the Calhoun Intermediate School District. (CISD). This is where she found her true passion, her obituary says.

Khim Lian joined the CISD at the same time Moore did. They were part of a trio of Family Coaches who worked within the ISD’s Early Childhood Connections program. Lian was at the July 26 event staffing an activity area for children.

“She is my best friend,” Lian says of Moore, who was a Certified Professional Coach.
A native of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, Lian speaks English as a second language and credits Moore with helping her navigate the intricacies of her job.

Khim Lian“She’s a coach. She helped me a lot as a second-language person. Anytime I needed information, she was there,” Lian says.

Szenda-Wilson, Co-Executive Director of Pulse, first met Moore when they did some coaching together.

“We bonded over having both losing our mothers,” she says. “When I learned she had six kids, I said, ‘Who has six kids?'”

Always putting the community’s children first

A breast cancer survivor who was later diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, Moore would make frequent visits to Szenda-Wilson’s home, where she would sit in the same chair in an enclosed porch, and the two would have meaningful conversations.

“She would always bring me something like cookies or flowers,” Szenda-Wilson says.

In 2019, Moore took on the position of Executive Director for Battle Creek Shared Services Alliance, a job she held until 2023, when the organization stopped operating.

“She left the ISD to do work at Shared Services, where she was so passionate about making sure people had what they need to do their work well,” Szenda-Wilson says. “She was supporting adults with their work with children.”

Kim Spivey, owner of Kim’s Kiddie Corner Childcare, says Moore was instrumental in helping her to obtain grants for her business and ensured that all childcare workers and business owners had access to information and opportunities to improve the childcare and Early Childhood Education landscape.

“She worked very hard to include everyone through a lens of diversity to ensure that there would be diversity in the childcare field,” Spivey says. “She was involved in the community where people needed to hear about childcare.”

In the more than 10 years that the two women had known each other, Spivey says Moore was a passionate advocate for children and the professionals who looked after them and educated them.

Kim Spivey“She was a voice for the children, and in turn, that meant she was a voice for providers because we take care of the children, and she was a big voice,” Spivey says. “She knew where the shortages were and what needed to be done. She encouraged me when the need was there for providers.”

Layman says her mother came at the world and her work through a world lens. Moore developed a love for travel after her study abroad time at Kalamazoo College took her to France.

“She had a very worldly perspective,” Layman says. “She visited my husband and I when we lived in Kuwait and Beijing. It was wonderful for me because she was someone who loved to travel and see the world. She brought a perspective for her work back to Battle Creek.”

“Living abroad and interacting with different cultures and working in education was something we could connect on and talk about.”

Layman says she was in awe, watching her mother get involved in something she was so passionate about.

“As someone in my 30s at the time watching her in her 50s get into something that was the passion of her life was really inspiring. She would say that raising her kids was her greatest life’s work, but getting back into the workforce and having an impact on more children all over was so important to her.”

A woman of deep faith, Moore's legacy is love, says Szenda-Wilson.

“She loved her family fiercely. She talked to all six of her kids constantly and was always available to them. She had a world map on the wall at her house, and there were little marks on the map of people praying for her all over the world. She traveled the world and showed her kids that the world is bigger than Battle Creek.”

Layman says she hopes people will continue to love and lift others up as her mother did.

“Her involvement in education is because of how much she loved people and wanted to lift them up and find their path in life. I hope people will find small ways to continue that.”

As a way to honor Moore and continue her work, a fund has been established through the Battle Creek Community Foundation titled the Kathleen Moore Fund for Early Childhood Education. Donations are being accepted.