[title subtitle=”words: Liesel Schmidt
image courtesy:Carrie Jernigan and ABC Studios”][/title]
“Be nice and kind.”
For River Valley attorney Carrie Jernigan and her family, those aren’t just words they say to one another—they’re words they strive to live by. But what do they mean? To the Jernigans, those words mean looking beyond yourself and your own needs to watch out for the needs of others and to consider their feelings in all that you do. It’s a great principle to uphold, a great philosophy to emulate.
Unfortunately, that niceness and kindness is often seen as archaic and old-fashioned; but to hear Carrie explain what drives that way of life, one can only be inspired to mirror them, to be the very best versions of ourselves as we encounter others and, perhaps, make an impact on their lives even by the smallest measure in a positive way.
“It started because when my kids would get out of the car for school, I would always tell them things like, ‘Make a new friend;’ ‘Be kind to everyone;’ ‘Don’t leave people out at recess;’ ‘Sit by someone who doesn’t have anyone by them at lunch.’ My son was barely three years old when he finally said to me as one of the girls was getting out of the car, ‘Mom, why don’t you just say, “Be nice and kind”?’ We all laughed because he was so little, but it was so true,” Carrie explains. “All of those things I was trying to tell them could be summed up in that one little statement. That turned into our family motto; and now, we always say, ‘Be nice and kind.’ I just think those two simple, four-letter words embody everything we all need to be.”
Recently, that Jernigan family motto came into play in a big way, reaching their community in a far greater capacity than they might have ever imagined and capturing the attention—and the hearts—of people on a national level.
It started simply enough, almost as an off-handed joke, when nine-year-old Harper expressed to her mother the desire to buy a pair of shoes for a classmate. It was a sweet idea, something that one wouldn’t expect to hear from a typical fourth grader. But for the Jernigans, it was just one more example of being nice and kind. Sweet as it was, however, there was just one problem: Harper didn’t know the boy’s shoe size. “I made a joke about buying the entire store so that it wouldn’t be an issue,” Carrie recalls, her thick Southern accent making the telling of the tale all the more charming. Little did she know that, in making that joke, she would be foreshadowing the future.
Carrie had the unexpected opportunity to do just that—to buy the store—when a local PayLess Shoe Source went out of business and the entire store went up for sale. Still stocked with 1,500 pairs of children’s shoes, the now-defunct store was the perfect solution to taking her daughter’s idea of buying shoes for a classmate and executing it in a much bigger way. “My daughter’s act of kindness really challenged me to do more,” Carrie says.
It also set the ball in motion for a community-wide initiative that gained traction on social media and, from there, an invitation to make an appearance on GMA’s Strahan and Sara. And rightly so, as the Jernigans’ idea to hold an event last month to offer the 1,500 pairs ofshoes to kids in the area in need of those new kicks for the school year ahead was amped up to a whole new level by others who wanted to get in on the giving action. Local merchants and businesses joined in, offering haircuts, dental exams, eye exams, and even school supplies. The Jernigans took the first step, and they inspired a stampede. Clearly, one person being nice and kind has the potential to start something amazing.
“While not everyone has the chance to go buy 1,500 pairs of shoes, just being nice and kind is all people really need. If you’re following that simple principle, everything else just falls into place,” Carrie says.
As a busy career woman, a wife, and a mother of three, the thirty-seven-year-old attorney could easily claim that too much is already on her plate to take on organizing something as big as the River Valley Kickstart, the name officially given the event. But Carrie saw the broader picture, recognizing the importance of stopping to do something that would make such an impact on the children of her community and—hopefully, by extension—impact the lives of others who heard the story.
Thanks to local and national media outlets who picked up the story and Strahan and Sara, who flew Carrie and Harper to their set in New York City to film a segment about their plans for River Valley Kickstart, their story would be heard by far more than they could have imagined when they bought out the inventory of that PayLess, giving that humble family motto airtime that proves just how powerful it is.
“It was a surreal experience,” Carrie says of their time on the show. “Everyone was so incredibly kind, and it was so neat to have celebrities come up to Harper and me to tell us they had heard our story.”
Surreal as that was, it became even more surreal when it was announced that they were being given, in partnership with Staples, $30,000 worth of school supplies to give away at their event. “I was in shock. The emotion I felt was indescribable, because I knew that that money would help so many kids in my community,” she recalls.
For the Jernigans, the whole idea is bigger than just giving away pairs of shoes. It’s about what those shoes represent and the way that they can actually set up a child for success and give them confidence. “We just want every child in our area to have a new pair of shoes and socks to start back to school. When you feel good, I think you are better equipped to learn, enjoy school, and have a great experience. Oftentimes, clothes are gifted to people, but shoes are forgotten. When Harper talked about giving her classmate a pair of shoes, I had this vision of all the kids in our area being able to walk into school on the first day with new shoes.”
Clearly, the vision had the potential to come true, as Carrie’s initial 1,500 pairs of shoes grew in number, as did the donations of goods and services that would make River Valley Kickstart an event for the books. Given the community response, Carrie has high hopes that this will be the first of many Kickstarts to come…And who knows? Maybe it will inspire Kickstarts across the nation as people adopt that motto for their own lives to “Be nice and kind.”
