Jane Ray Kennedy was born on this day in 1928, in South Carolina, to James Jefferson and Leila Edwards Dickinson Ray.
She graduated from Winthrop College and earned a Masters in Education degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She also took extensive post-graduate training in crisis intervention and management.
Jane worked with the Mecklenburg and Guilford County school systems, and served social service agencies in both communities. She came to Winston-Salem with her family in 1971.
In 1972, she began her 10-year leadership of CONTACT, a 24-hour-a-day telephone counseling ministry. The organization was designed to help people through personal crises by counseling over the telephone or in its office. The Winston-Salem office was one of the first of its kind in the country. Under her leadership, CONTACT grew, handling as many as 22,000 calls a year.
Jane retired from the leadership of CONTACT in 1982 and did private counseling in an office on West Fifth Street, but remained a CONTACT volunteer.
She was a member of Centenary Methodist Church.
Jane was married to Robert C. Kennedy, and she passed away in 1987.
Photo courtesy of Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection.
