Diane Kuhn Jenkins

She spent her entire professional life helping the poor. Most of her career was at the Fairfax County Department of Housing as a manager of Public Housing properties where she sought to improve lives by providing training of tenants to aid in the job search.

One such training project of hers is the pre-apprentice program now taken up this Fall by Britepaths where she volunteered after her retirement. Memorializing Diane by a donation “Donate 4 Diane” to Britepaths would be a way she would want to be remembered.

Another project of hers was to provide for the youth in tenants’ families the opportunity of work experience with summer internships within the Department of Housing, even within her own office. With interest she often followed the educational careers of her protégés even years later.

Diane fed the poor and assisted families in need as President of a chapter of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society for two terms.

Diane also taught water aerobics for over a decade as a way to help alleviate pain for those with physical issues. This she continued to do right up until a month before she passed even while suffering from the bile duct cancer that took her and a year and a half of chemo treatment that made her very weak.

She believed that a beautiful world was possible. Her faith in people’s ability to achieve, one that required a community of all peoples, races, genders, and beliefs equally treated, that was the basis of her spirit.

Never give up, never surrender was the credo of her own life and for those she counseled or led. And that’s how she met her cancer head on.

She once told someone “Do not cry for me”. Her way was to act positively. Solve. Face forward. Face fears.

To properly remember her is to go and do likewise.