In losing her daughter and her job, Jane Kaylor found what she called her “life’s work.”
Now she’s readying to leave that work behind. After more than 32 years as president/CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater Chattanooga, Kaylor is scheduled to retire in 2022 – likely during the year’s second quarter and certainly with mixed emotions.
“I’m looking forward to not having all the responsibility,” she said, “but it will be hard.”
That’s a feeling with which Kaylor is all too familiar. When leukemia claimed her 9-year-old daughter, Lori, in 1984, she joined – and later became president of – the Chattanooga-area chapter of Candlelighters, a support group for children with cancer.
That association led to a seat on the first area Ronald McDonald House Charities board. The board was looking for a CEO when Kaylor, who’d worked at TVA for a decade, was laid off in early 1989.