 |
 |
KEENAN'S
KIDS FOUNDATION
GEORGIA
BAR JOURNAL PROFILE
APRIL 1998
Don C. Keenan is an Atlanta attorney who grew up in Newbern, NC.,
a small town where the lawyers were the most respected people in the
community. He saw lawyers take the lead in public service and social
change. This had a great impact on him as a child and made him want
“to be a lawyer because of the good things he saw them do”. Mr. Keenan
represents children in automobile, professional negligence, and product
liability cases. From this personal injury practice, he has learned
many lawyers lack the expertise to adequately represent children in
such cases.
In response, three years ago he set aside funds and staff for the
Keenan’s Kids Foundation. Originally, the Foundation collected from
the firm’s case preparations the names of people who had done outstanding
work with children - individuals such as the lady in the hospital
who painted murals on the walls or a special education teacher who
went out of his way to help children. For the past three years, the
Foundation has made cash awards; however, this year the Foundation
will host a banquet to honor these outstanding community servants.
The firm has a full-time staff person who coordinates the Foundation’s
programs, and it is hiring another 40-hour per week employee to work
on the projects. Last year, the Foundation decided to engage in several
new projects, and community response to one project, a clothing drive,
has been overwhelming. The Foundation has now collected over 10,000
items, and Mr. Keenan explains the clothing drive has “branched out
way beyond lawyers, and we’re now receiving clothes from as far away
as Cedartown to the north, Madison to the east, and Columbus to the
south. The more clothes we received -- the more these seemed to be
a need out there”.
Mr. Keenan points out that all of the firm’s staff assists in the
community service efforts of the Foundation. When the phones were
ringing off the hook with people wanting to donate clothes, everyone
helped out, including the firm’s seven lawyers. In addition, for the
past 14 years the law office has been making and delivering between
200 and 300 sandwiches on a weekly basis to The Open Door Community,
a homeless shelter on Ponce De Leon Avenue.
Mr. Keenan also noticed that too little emphasis is given in law schools
to arguing damages in child injury cases. To stimulate interest in
this issue last year, he created a law student closing argument competition
and awarded cash prizes to the winners.
In addition, the Foundation’s Air Bag Awareness Program addresses
the great dangers children face from these devices through education
materials for parents and adults with child passengers.
In May, the Foundation is sponsoring a two-day legal seminar for over
200 lawyers on the representation of children. The seminar will include
sessions on: 1) recognizing certain cases they may have overlooked;
2) choosing proper expert witnesses; 3) preparing presentations of
damages; and 4) making effective closing arguments. When speaking
of the satisfaction he receives from helping others, Mr. Keenan says
there is not one project he can point to where Foundation volunteers
“have not reaped a thousand times more benefits from just feeling
good than [they’ve] given to anybody. All you have to do is put a
brand new coat on a homeless kid who has never had a brand new anything,
and if that doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, nothing is going to”.
He says that too often these days we look for something that will
make a major change in society, and if that is not possible, we do
not want to be involved. People often ask him why he makes 100 bologna
and cheese sandwiches each week for the homeless. They say that this
is not doing anything to end hunger in society. Undaunted, Mr. Keenan
responds, “We’re not curing hunger that way, but we’re making some
change. We’re putting food in somebody’s stomach. It’s sort of like
throwing rocks in the lake. One little ripple is not much, but if
you get everybody down there throwing rocks, sooner or later you’ll
have a tidal wave going on. If you ever stop to think that all you
are is a little ripple, then you would never do anything. We keep
focused on the fact that it’s affecting somebody!”
Back to Keenan's Kids Foundation
|
|
|
