PARKVIEW Associate Profiles ASSOCIATES By Dave Baad

K’lyn Tenner came to Parkview a year and a half ago as a server in the dining room, becoming not long afterward our hostess and dining room manager. She had been a part time server in the dining room at Alexis Estates while going to college and also working as a nanny to five kids, ages 13 down to a few months. She became aware of Parkview, which was right down the street from the nanny family.

K’lyn, growing up, became a Level 11 Elite gymnast, the highest level certified by of America . She was in line to compete for a position on the U. S. Olympic team but decided to retire, while in high school, with the next Olympics a good three years in the future. She had got her start as a gymnast at age three when her mother, only 15 when K’lyn was born, placed her at the Kurt Thomas gymnastic school which happened to be next door to the bank where her mother had an entry level job. It was partly seen as day care by her mother, but Thomas, a world champion gymnast in the 1970s, immediately saw promise and was her coach for the next 12 years as she moved up the gymnastic levels, competing and winning medals in competitions in Arizona, California, , St. Lucia and various places in . She has numerous gold medals in the vault, her best event, and is a three time all around gold medal winner. She had a near perfect all around score of 39.6 at an event shortly before she stopped competing.

Because of her mother’s youth and need to work, K’lyn was raised in part by her great grandmother. It was indeed her closeness to her great grandmother and her experience when her great grandmother had to go into a retirement home that led to her desire to work in a senior living facility. K’lyn attended Allen schools. At the 6,000 student Allen high school where only the best can compete in varsity sports, she was one of two to make the volleyball team as a sophomore. Although the team’s shortest player, she was unusually effective at the net because of her jumping ability, cultivated over the years on the vault and in gymnastic free exercise. Kurt Thomas had called her the ‘flying shrimp’ for her unusual elevation and hang time and the name stuck into her volleyball career. K’lyn had a scholarship to play volleyball at Texas A&M Commerce but was hurt badly at the net the second week there and being out for the season lost the scholarship.

K’lyn is close to her mother and has great admiration for the way she has risen over the years to be Head of Collections at the In Touch Credit Union in Plano. K’lyn has two younger sisters, both born before her mother was 20, whom K’lyn has helped raise as "big sister”. One is in high school, the other at Collin College. K’lyn’s name, by the way, was inspired by and is a contraction of a favorite aunt Kacey Lyn.

K’lyn is studying dental hygiene and business administration at Collin College. Her objective is to own her own senior living facility, “to become David at her own place.” She is off to an impressive start at Parkview. As Russell says she is “the face of the dining room.” She is hostess, handles server schedules, keeps track of the residents’ meal counts, oversees the holiday buffets and does the ordering for many of the dining room supplies, including table cloths, napkins, silverware, condiments, coffee, tea and some of the other non perishables. Much responsibility at the age of 22. Not surprisingly, and well deserved, she was Associate of the Year at Parkview for 2018.

July 2019