dot kannard: kitchen and family mainstay
Fifty years.
That’s five decades, a half-century, nine thousand school days, give or take a few.
All that time, Dot Kannard has held forth in Collegiate’s Lower School cafeteria. She’s not just the senior member of a dedicated staff, though. She’s an institution, an icon, and a legend who’s still going strong even as she approaches her version of retirement.
“I like being with the children,” she said. “The time has really flown.”
When Dot arrived in February 1957, the North Mooreland Road campus was little more than a rural expanse. Over the years, colleagues have come and gone. Children have taken their first tentative steps into kindergarten and in a blink of an eye crossed the bridge, graduated, then returned and enrolled their own kids. Buildings have gone up, served their purpose, and been razed, and new ones -- bigger, fancier, more cutting-edge -- have replaced them.
Dot is part of the landscape that hasn’t changed. That’s a really good thing.
She still pulls her 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift helping with setup, making sandwiches, cutting fruit, preparing desserts, serving as cashier, then assisting with cleanup just as she did all those years ago after Mary French Owen, who ran the cafeteria back then, convinced her to extend a two-week stint to, well, forever.
She’s the same energetic, industrious, caring, helpful, motherly soul she’s always been. She knows most of the children who come her way by name and can remember them years later.
Though life hasn’t always been easy, you’ll never know by being around Dot. The story doesn’t end there. You see, the true measure of Dot Kannard is much, much more than her diligence, her upbeat disposition, her dedication to the children and her colleagues at Collegiate, and her willingness to return next fall and work 20 hours a week.
Instead, her story is her grandsons. When R.T. Taylor was a toddler and his brother Ryan still in diapers, Dot and her husband Arthur, then in their early 40’s, became the boys’ legal guardians, took them into their home, and raised them as their own.
“A lot of friends said I shouldn’t take responsibility,” Dot recalled one recent afternoon, “but I’m glad I did. I don’t regret one minute of it.”
They enrolled them at Collegiate. They attended school programs and athletic events, parents’ nights, conference days, and more travel soccer games than they can count. Their greatest gift, however, was a heavy dose of discipline which the guys didn’t always appreciate when they were young.
When R.T. and Ryan arrived home from school, Dot gave them a snack and sent them to do their homework. The regimen rarely changed. They learned to cook, clean, scrub floors, do their laundry, iron their clothes. They learned to be honest and caring, responsible and industrious. They learned teamwork. They learned that their word must always be good.
“Our grandparents led by example,” said R.T. “The way they live is the way we learned.” R.T. is now 32 and an associate vice-president and member of the public finance team of Davenport & Company LLC. He and his wife Daphne have two children, Brooks, 4 ½, and Parrish, who will be 2 on May 1.
Ryan, 29, owns the Smoothie King in Carytown and has plans to open another in the Village Shopping Center this summer. “Our grandparents taught us never to settle for less than our best,” he said. “That’s what makes you a strong person. “The values we learned from them are what have made us successful.”
Both R.T. and Ryan are well into adulthood, on their own, and successful, grounded young men with lives of their own. They remain close to Dot and Arthur, though, and neither can speak of their grandparents’ love and guidance without a tinge of emotion.
“We’ve reaped the benefits,” said Ryan.“They’re heroes,” added his brother.
