On Friday, Oct. 22, the King’s Academy held a special dedication ceremony to rename the TKA Café as the Smith Family Café in recognition of a transformative gift from Jan Smith, a TKA grandparent. The gift will benefit students, and strengthen facilities and programs throughout the school’s campus.
The ceremony included special messages by TKA Board Chair Steve Rasmussen, TKA President Randy Martin, Vice President Dr. Douglas Raines, and students Ryan Cavanagh and Bree Taylor. The Smith Family Junior Conservatory students and dancers performed a special rendition of “Be Our Guest,” and lower elementary students paraded through the café and sang special songs. The ceremony was followed by a catered lunch and featured entertainment by the Annie Matot Jazz Quintet, under the direction of Wes Lowe.
During the ceremony, Martin announced that the Frank DiMino Student Union, currently under construction and set to open in the fall of 2022, will include the Smith Family Bistro, also named in recognition of Smith’s generosity. Both the Smith Family Café and the Smith Family Bistro will serve the same great culinary favorites while creating a more vibrant community within the school family. These two restaurant spaces will make food service faster and will provide additional indoor dining space for the rapidly expanding student body.
“Over the past decade, the school’s library, science center, clinic, conservatory and now café have been changed for the better because of Jan Smith,” Martin said. “When Ms. Smith put the Smith family name on a new science laboratory, Jan helped students learn better each period of the academic day. Next, Jan renamed the Smith Family Conservatory of the Arts and elevated the learning experience for hundreds of fine arts students from elementary to high school, almost half of the student body. And with the renaming of the Smith Family Café, Ms. Smith has covered all the bases, impacting every TKA student, faculty and staff member on a daily basis.”
Smith’s service and generosity are reflected throughout the school’s campus. Her contributions include serving as grandparent chair of the Page Center’s “Take A Seat Campaign,” volunteering with the school’s “Friends of the Library,” working on the committee to remodel the Rosemary Beaumont Library and school’s clinic, as well as underwriting the Smith Family Laboratory in the Boswell Center for Science & Technology and endowing the Smith Family Conservatory of the Arts.
