After 12 years, Kay Bennett gets ready for life out of public service

The boxes in Supervisor Kay Bennett's office are starting to stack up.

Not that she's in a hurry to fill them, but City Hall secretaries keep bringing them to her anyway. After all, whether she wants to or not, she has to be moved from her office by Jan. 1 to make space for Supervisor-elect Richard Staub.

"I'm avoiding putting closure on all of this," she confessed. "It's going to be really hard. It's bittersweet when you put closure to 12 years of intense involvement."

The walls of Bennett's City Hall office are covered in photos, plaques and framed certificates noting - and joking at - her civic involvement over the years.

She announced in November 1999 that after three successful elections, she decided not to run again for the Ward 4 seat she's represented since 1988. Her accomplishments over the last 12 years range from the creation of the Carson River Advisory Committee to an immense amount of work representing the capital on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

"Someone said, 'If you love what you do, it's not work at all,'" Bennett said. "I love what I did. I have no regrets at all."

To begin with

She was born Kathleen Margaret Mary Cleary in Flatbush, Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 8, 1936, "absolutely Irish, a pedigree," she joked with an Irish lilt in her voice.

The second of three children, she grew up in a "Catholic, parochial environment," eventually attending school to become an executive secretary. She married her first husband in 1957 and the couple moved from New York to California, where they raised five children.

When her youngest son entered the first grade, Bennett started nursing school and spent the next four years "exhausted" as she raised a family and worked to graduate with honors.

"As I was raising my children, I knew that I wanted to do something," she said. "I knew my kids are basically my gift to the world, but it was a time when women were starting to make an investment in themselves. I was 35 and said, 'What do I want to say about myself when I'm 50 or 60? Will I have made a significant contribution? Someone said I would make a terrific nurse. I latched onto that."

She eventually became a surgical nurse, working in operating rooms in the dawn of heart transplant and orthoscopic surgery.

"It was a tremendous amount of work, and I was so tired when I was finished," Bennett said. "It really gave substance to a tremendous strong will, a sense of competition and a desire to have the knowledge and skills to make a difference in a meaningful way. I was really driven to accomplish something, and I loved, loved, loved learning about something I had no history and background in."

She worked as a nurse for 13 years, the profession eventually bringing her to Carson-Tahoe Hospital in 1985 where she was the hospital's surgery manager. In that time she divorced her first husband and married and divorced her second husband.

Carson City

Carson City was a clean slate for Bennett in more ways than one. She met her husband, Hale, a hospital trustee at the time, "on a foggy January night" in 1986 at a hospital party.

"He is just the most special thing that ever happened to me," Bennett said.

They were married in 1987. Shortly after they met, Bennett left the hospital. It was through Hale that Bennett learned about Nevada politics.

"He was an elected official and had done some important things," she said. "It was during the 1987 Legislature I became acquainted with politics in Nevada. It was an amazing experience. I had never encountered legislators who you could have a conversation with like they were your neighbors and friends.

"On the heels of all that, a seat came open on the Board of Supervisors. I knew I needed to go back to work in some capacity, and said, 'Jeepers, let's see what this is all about.'"

Bennett immersed herself in learning about city government, saying her research was "the equivalent of a self-imposed master's degree." She ran against four men and won the 1988 election in the primary, the first person to do so in a Carson City election.

"It was so wild, I didn't understand what it meant," Bennett said. "The day after (the primary), I got up, had my maps out, was fussing that I didn't have signs up. Hale said, 'Kay, you have won.' It didn't register for a couple of days until I would be walking around and people would congratulate me."

Bennett said she walked onto a Board of Supervisors that was dealing with the city being $1 million in debt, a city with demoralized personnel and outdated equipment and a downtown that looked like a disaster area. Financial stabilization was key to getting the city back on its feet, and that meant helping to stabilize the area's economy.

"Marv (Teixeira) and I came on at the same time. We all took on some aspect of turning the city around," Bennett said.

Bennett said she had a hand in the downtown Main Street program, the precursor to the city's downtown redevelopment efforts. From that she's seen downtown blossom.

Bennett also gravitated toward work protecting natural resources during her tenure on the board. She notes one of the highlights of her political career as her work on the TRPA, resulting in 1997's presidential summit and $1 billion of aid to help improve Lake Tahoe's clarity. She also was instrumental in the creation of the Carson River Advisory Committee, an event which she said was one of the most contentious of her tenure.

"I think I'm just naturally drawn to natural resource issues," Bennett said. "I think it must have a lot to do with having been raised in a very urban environment. I just consider it such a privilege to live in this area. I just appreciate the natural resources we have so much. We have the opportunity to protect things why we can. When we protect a natural resource from the aspect of the environment and a natural resource on which we depend, we have protected our future."

Her work on the Carson River helped start the Carson River Subconservancy, the multi-county agency that monitors the Carson River.

Bennett spent several years as a hospital trustee and was a state representative to the American Hospital Association from 1995 to 1999. She's also been a champion of transit, heading the city's Public Transit Advisory Committee since its 1998 inception. She figures she's served on every city board except the Carson City Convention and Visitor's Bureau.

"I've seen a maturing of Carson City from a small town to a small city," Bennett said. "I'm proud of the fact that over and over again, I tried to make the right decisions for Carson City. A lot of things are in place because of me and the other members of the board of supervisors. People will have known I've been here.

"I think what I've learned is that nobody, no one person does it alone," Bennett said "In order to accomplish anything in a community whether it's an elected position or not, it really takes the support of your peers, your community, your staff. It takes your time, commitment and an enormous amount of energy and persistence towards a goal."

Furthermore

While Bennett is leaving her spot on the Board of Supervisors, she isn't settling in for a quiet retirement.

Both she and Hale are licensed pilots and together operate the Silver Springs Airport. Work at the small airport is picking up and taking much of the couple's time.

"I'm going to be heavily involved in developing the airport," she said. "I'll have more personal time with Hale, and I'm going to learn to play golf."

Bennett said the couple hasn't decided whether they will move to Lyon County in their pursuit of development at the airport. And the grandmother of 11 isn't counting herself out of politics just yet.

"I haven't made decisions about my future in politics," she said. "Anybody who runs for public office has to earn the respect of the people they represent. Just because I've been well accepted in Carson City doesn't mean that I'd be accepted in Lyon County. You'd have to start all over again from square one. I couldn't make any commitment or give any indication of what kind of public office I would either seek or be interested in. I'm going to keep all my options open."