Why this Goodwill supervisor in Nashville learns more than he teaches
He kept a smile on his face each time he instructed the same employee: "Pull the clothes with the orange tags off the rack and hang it up over here."
But that employee, Missy Mayes — also smiling — kept reaching for shirts with red tags on them. Her boss, Jonathan Kelsey, gently shook his head, calmly saying, "Look for the orange tags."
On the fifth try, success. Mayes, 54 — a Goodwill employee with developmental disabilities — grabbed a hanger with a shirt with an orange tag on it, moving it to a discard rack.
"Very good," Kelsey said, "you got it."
Mayes beamed, her smile growing a little wider, lighting up the Goodwill store in the Rivergate/Madison area where she has worked since she graduated high school.
It seems like a small win, but it's an important one for the employee and her boss. Often, Goodwill employees with intellectual and developmental disabilities do the same task for years. But Goodwill recently wanted to cross train all its employees, regardless of abilities.
"What I feed on is their excitement to do something new," said Kelsey, 74. "Missy got pumped because she nailed a new skill."
It's the kind of victory that has kept Kelsey coming back to Goodwill for 24 years, helping employees with disabilities for that entire time.
The son of a Gallatin mortician, Kelsey earned two degrees from Tennessee State University before working in schools, at a trucking company and a karate school.
Along the way, he had a church buddy, Joe, from Riverside Nashville Seventh-day Adventist Church off Youngs Lane who got in a bad accident. Joe, paralyzed from the neck down, started using a wheelchair. Kelsey visited at the house a few times before the two friends decided to take a van ride to go have dinner at a Mexican restaurant.
"I’m eating and I noticed he’s just sitting there. Finally, he says, 'Jonathan, you know you’re going to have to feed me, don’t you?'" Kelsey said.
Embarrassed but moved, Kelsey fed his friend.
"I just had this feeling I’d never felt before. It touched me," Kelsey said. "That was the first time I could remember empathizing with a person with disabilities. It changed me."
By happenstance, Kelsey got a job as principal at an alternative high school for kids with behavior and intellectual challenges.
When one of his students got killed in a public housing complex, though, Kesley became disillusioned and hopeless about how his school might improve its students' lives.
He answered an ad for a job at Goodwill.
Soon, without any training or education in working with people with disabilities, Kelsey found himself supervising employees with Down syndrome, autism, visual and mobility issues, intellectual and development disabilities as well as accident and stroke survivors.
"I had to ask, what is a developmental disability?' But I'm a determined person," he said. "If I decide to do something, I'll do it."
Kelsey kept his mind and his heart open on the job, and he learned some tough lessons. One day, he walked in and quickly greeted his team, blowing off one woman who was trying to tell him something.
"Did you hear what she said to you?" a fellow supervisor asked Kelsey. "She said she loves you."
That's when Kelsey learned to be present — really present — with his employees. Over time, he fell in love with them.
"These people are so honest, and if they don’t like you, they don’t pretend they do. They’re sincere. And these people love coming to work," he said. "Never call out sick. It gives them purpose."
Kelsey said has learned to be more patient, to be more sincere and to be grateful for the abilities he has.
"I’m here to make a difference in these people's lives," he said, "and they’re making a difference in my life."
Do you know an incredible person in the Nashville area who's making a big difference in the community? Find Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384,
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Goodwill store supervisor learns more on than he teaches
