School principal retires, Celina Record

Celina Middle School principal reflects on decades-long career Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com May 20, 2016 When Lew Kennedy began working in 1983 as a newly minted junior high school teacher and coach, he had big plans. “I was gonna change the world,” recalled Kennedy, who for two years has been principal at Celina Middle School, of his early days as an educator. “I jumped right in there, and reality hits you in the face pretty quick,” he said. After his first day at Reed Junior High School in Duncanville, where he taught Texas history and coached the football and basketball teams, he said he went home and told his wife, Terri, “`I’ve got a lot to learn.” More than three decades later, Kennedy said, “I’ve been learning ever since.” Nevertheless, he said he is ready to retire next month. Kennedy’s lengthy career took him to schools throughout North Texas. Following a two-year stint in Duncanville, he landed a position with Prosper ISD, where for five years he coached all of the junior high school sports teams while heading up the high school boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, the boys’ baseball and tennis teams and assisting with the track team. Kennedy was also assistant coach of Prosper’s varsity football team during the first year that the state instituted the No Pass No Play rule, which prevents students with failing course grades from participating in extracurricular activities. That year, “We ended up with a couple of injuries and a couple of (academic) failures and we had to drop the football season,” he said, but not before the team took the field for a scrimmage game against Celina High School. “We got beat 63 to nothing at halftime,” when Prosper’s team decided to quit the game, he said. “It was ugly.” Kennedy then went to Grand Prairie High School, where he served for more than four years as assistant varsity basketball and baseball coach, before he and his family moved to West Texas when he was recruited to become the head varsity baseball coach at Midland High School. Two years into that stint, he received a call from the athletic director at Highland Park High School, who offered Kennedy a head varsity baseball coach position. “It felt like this was coming home,” Kennedy said of signing on with the school district where his father had been an elementary school coach for 34 years. Under Kennedy’s decade-long watch, Highland Park’s baseball team finished second at the 1997 state championships and clinched the title the following year. (The team landed in third place in 2002.) “We had some great years and were blessed with a ton of talent,” he said, including Chris Young who pitches for the Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Clayton Kershaw. “They made a good coach out of me.” This year is Kennedy’s 10th with Celina ISD, where he made the move to school administration when he was hired in 2006 as assistant principal of Celina High School. The following year, however, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Despite seeking treatment for several months at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, he said he did not miss a single day of work. Kennedy eventually moved to Celina Intermediate School, where he served as the dean of students and assistant principal under former principal Starlynn Wells, who is now Celina ISD’s director of elementary education. “I can’t say enough about what he does for students as far as building relationships with them. That is definitely his strong suit,” Wells said of Kennedy, calling him her “rock” when they worked together at the school. “I could always just count on him.” Following Wells’ departure from the intermediate school, Kennedy served as its principal for two years before transferring to the middle school two years ago. However, while working on campus last summer, he experienced a transient ischemic attack, also called a TIA, which is characterized by temporary symptoms similar to a stroke. Kennedy, 57, said such a health scare “does make you pause a little bit” and played a role in his decision to retire. “I was very apprehensive to begin with but the closer it gets, the more excited I get,” he said, adding that he and his wife, the testing coordinator at Celina High School, plan to travel when their schedule allows and visit their three grown sons who live out of state. Reflecting on his career, Kennedy said he has no regrets. “It’s been a good ride (with) a lot of ups and down, especially in the coaching life,” he said. “It’s been worth it just to see some of the kids improve. That’s the reason you’re in it.”