Kay Culbreath Heller

Kay Culbreath Heller

The next best thing to being a student at AHN is to be a teacher! How blessed I was to teach under principals Sisters Elinor Sevigny, Constance Casey, Alice Veronica Cummings, and Anne Celine Turner—all incredibly gifted educators, superb mentors, and caring friends.

From directly participating in Academy life, my respect and admiration for AHN, its Sisters, students, parents and fellow teachers grew and deepened. All of us taught each other. Over the years, I followed the school's growth and changes as a Foundation member and later as the chair of the Board of Trustees. The comprehensive master plan, handsome expansion, and superb educational programs all looked forward while respecting the Academy's lasting mission, spiritual foundations, and longstanding traditions.

When I considered the Sisters' many years in Tampa and their extraordinary contributions, institutions, and spiritual values in a rapidly changing world, I wanted to help this unique legacy continue. Deciding to leave a legacy gift in my will was a heartfelt and joyful decision. In fact, when updating my long-ignored, even forgotten will, I discovered that I had made the same decision more than 30 years before—to name the Academy of the Holy Names as a recipient of a charitable bequest. How reassuring to validate my bequest, if not my memory, so many years later!

Even after years of completing my own projects in Haiti and Washington, D.C., I still feel the charism of the Sisters and AHN. Reading about student mission trips and their service projects today in West Virginia, Mississippi, Ruskin, and the Dominican Republic, I sense the same vibrant outreach and charism. The AHN experience prepared me as well as the current and former students for lives of integrity and service—truly fulfilling its motto of Esse Quam Videri: "To be rather than to seem." Thank you, AHN.

Kay Culbreath Heller taught English at the Boys Academy beginning in 1969. She later taught English, world history and humanities in the high school. Kay has taught at the Haitian American Institute and worked at the Hôpital Bon Samaritain in Limbe, Haiti. She still provides assistance by importing and selling Haitian arts and crafts to benefit schools, hospitals, and orphanages in Haiti, as well as reforestation projects and earthquake relief. Kay is married to Rod Heller and they spend time between Washington, D.C., and Franklin, Tennessee. She also visits family and friends in Tampa frequently. Kay's commitment to the Holy Names Legacy Society will one day allow her longstanding generosity of AHN's Endowment to continue beyond her lifetime.