Volume 5, Issue 2 - May 2005

Meet Kay Fritzsche: Our Volunteer of the Quarter
by Nancy LaRoche

It was one of those happy coincidences. Kay Fritzsche had just gotten back from a 13-month long road trip with her husband and daughter and wasn’t working at the time. I had just taken early retirement. She called, offering to help with office work.

Keeping a full-time job and managing the chapter had left me in a morass of disastrously unorganized paper . . . and an unorganized me. One of the many boxes sitting around the house was marked “DO IMMEDIATELY!” and three other boxes sat on top of it marked the same way! The first day that Kay came to help, I stood in the middle of the living/dining room area turning slowly in a circle at a loss. I could think of nothing I could give her to do. That’s how disorganized I was.

Finally, I found a pile of 20 or so sheets of paper, and asked her to alphabetize them, which she did in a matter of seconds, of course.

“Kay, I’m sorry, I just can’t think of anything else. I need to start sorting these boxes . . .” I lamely apologized.

“No problem,” Kay said brightly. “I’ll be back next week.”

“I doubt it,” I thought to myself. “She must think I’m a total airhead.”

But the next week, there she was on my doorstep, ready to dig into whatever I could give her to do. Every week from then on, she showed up. It seemed like nothing was going to deter her.

And that’s how Kay started to get the chapter organized. Flip forward a few years. Kay is now akin to the “executive secretary” who actually runs the business for the executive who thinks she does. Kay manages the office, keeping neat files. She plans events like the Spring Fling and Bunny Boutique, finding volunteers to work all of the areas. She sets up booths for myriads of purposes. She got us invited to Tagawa Garden’s “Grey Kitty’s Birthday” for the first time, and now we’re invited twice a year. There, we become better known, get adoptions from people who see us there, and make money as well.

It is Kay who invented the recipe for the “bunny biscuits” that all of our rabbits are so fond of. Kay makes the wonderful gift baskets and gift plates and invents new toys for our bunns. She created the All About Me “baby book” for our rabbits. She is the editor of the Bunny Runner newsletter. In fact, there is little that goes on in the chapter that Kay doesn’t have a hand in. And, of course, she has been a board member and secretary of the board for some years now.

Perhaps the three traits I cherish most in Kay are her efficiency, her creative thinking, and her cheerfulness. When I’m ready to throw something across the room, Kay says something funny and laughs, bursting my balloon of frustration and getting me back on track. When I see a mountain of work, Kay whips it out in a few hours. When I see a dead end, Kay comes up with a dozen possibilities.

Kay, I can’t begin to thank you for what you’ve done for me, personally, and for the chapter. You’re the best!

Because there are so many highly deserving volunteers to be acknowledged, we plan to recognize one volunteer every quarter.