NNI Volunteers of the Month - September, 2009
Louis and Ometa Kadera
If anyone doubts how immigration has enriched America, keep reading. Early in the 20th Century, Fabian and Agnes Kadera migrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia. Their families somehow landed in the Midwest, where Fabian and Agnes met, married, and settled in Britt, Iowa. There, in 1927, the first of 3 sons, Louis, was born. One son died in infancy. One son served in the Marines in World War II and later worked for the State Department. Louis served in the Navy in World War II and the Korean War, and worked until retirement at Sears.
Louis finished high school in 1944 and came to Kansas City to go to Central Radio and Television School. He met Ometa Siegelin who—lucky for the Northland—convinced Louis to stay in Kansas City. Married in 1948, the Kaderas produced a son John, who lives in Iowa and daughter Paula Kadera Boyle, who lives in the Little Village neighborhood.
Ometa Kadera was born in Rockville, Indiana in 1928, but moved with her parents to Kansas City in 1929. She graduated from Westport High School in 1945 and worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and Panhandle Eastern Pipeline as secretary. She was later a secretary for the North Kansas City School District. Louis, after retiring from Sears, became a bus driver for the school district. “I had the best route in the district: the special needs children,” Louis says proudly. He also was a bus driver trainer for the district.
In the post-war years, Louis and Ometa moved to a small house on Pursell Road where they helped form the City of Gladstone. Louis began a 30-year stint as a scoutmaster and, in the mid-1990s, Louis and Ometa helped establish the hugely successful mentoring movement called YouthFriends for North Kansas City School District. The Kadera YouthFriends team served North Kansas City High School, Antioch Middle School and Oak Park High School, helping students with math, reading, or whatever the teacher wanted them to do, which sometimes included acting as chaperones on field trips.
When the Kaderas became senior citizens a few years ago, they focused their YouthFriends activity on Oak Park High School. For the Kaderas, the “friends” part of YouthFriends persisted past the youth stage. One of their students got married and the Kaderas went to the wedding. When the couple had a baby of their own, the Kaderas found themselves in the babysitting mode on occasion. Another of their students passed away and Louis took on the sad duty of pallbearer. Many new friendships grew from the YouthFriends experience.
Louis and Ometa are also active with the VFW and spend many hours volunteering there. Ometa takes the products of her craft work to hospitalized veterans. Louis is Past Commander of Gladstone VFW Post 10906 and Ometa is Past President of the Ladies Auxiliary. Louis is also part of a team that assists with military funerals. He has assisted at more than one thousand. The Kaderas are modest about their tireless efforts in the service of others. “Volunteering makes a person feel good. Helping others is a privilege. The friends we have made mean so much to us. We will continue to volunteer as long as our health lets us. But we are now 81 and 82, so who knows how long that will be.” Whether that time is 5 years or 25 years, the Kaderas have already set a gold standard for volunteering that will last for a long, long time.
