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A more fitting tribute

Day of Service honors CSUB alumna Wendy Wayne

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 28^th, 2022

CSUB alumna Wendy Wayne devoted her life to community service, teaching in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer, practicing nursing at a safety-net hospital, and expanding childcare options for working mothers like her.

And the list goes on and on (and on).

So after years of honoring recipients of the Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards with a country club dinner, and in the midst of a pandemic, the CSUB Kegley Institute of Ethics staff and board of directors wondered: Is there a better way to celebrate Wayne’s legacy?

That wonder became the first Wendy Wayne Day of Service Saturday.

More than 40 volunteers, including CSUB alumni, staff, students and friends of the university, assembled nearly 900 boxes of food for local food-insecure seniors to be distributed by Community Action Partnership of Kern.

The Day of Service, at the CAPK Senior Food Program warehouse in east Bakersfield, is so much more Wayne’s style than a fancy dinner, said her husband, Gene Tackett, who was there to thank and cheer on the volunteers.

“I think it’s amazing that 10 years after Wendy passed that they still celebrate her essence, her spirit, her joy,” said Tackett, who lost his wife and the mother of their two sons to cancer 10 years ago when she was just 64. “There is no better way to celebrate Wendy than to get 40 people together to volunteer.”

Bakersfield Fire Chief and CSUB alum John Frando (BA Public Administration ’95, MS Administration ’07) moves boxes of food along.

CSUB alumna and master’s student Natalie Velasco earned an honorable mention in the youth category of this year’s Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards.

CSUB Alumni Association board member Amanda Ruiz helps pack boxes.

For more photos from the day, check out our Flickr gallery.

They volunteered for a federally funded CAPK senior food program that provides low-income seniors a 30-pound box of healthy food each month, including milk, cereal, protein, canned goods, fruit and vegetables. It serves about 4,700 seniors in every corner of Kern County plus three towns in Tulare County, according to Maureen Andrew, food sourcer at the CAPK Food Bank.

“It’s huge,” Andrew said when asked to describe the program’s impact on senior food insecurity, a problem on the rise again. “A box of food should last a single person for a whole month.”

CAPK was grateful for the larger-than-usual army of volunteers to tackle so much work in only three hours on a Saturday morning.

Traco Matthews, chief program officer at the anti-poverty agency, called it a fitting tribute to Wayne because it exemplified the kind of community partnerships she formed to combat big societal problems.

Matthews encouraged anyone wanting to be part of the Wendy Wayne Day of Service effort to donate to CAPK in her honor. CAPK especially needs dollars for operations and technology, he said.

“Wendy was the queen of getting things done, of getting incredible partnerships done,” said Matthews, also a 2016 CSUB MBA grad. “Donating in her name would be a great way to help seniors in our community.”

The Kegley Institute of Ethics also accepts donations to support the annual Wendy Wayne Awards and programming in her honor.

Wendy Wayne and her sons, Benji (left) and Larkin pose at her induction into the CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame in 2008. Wayne and Tackett are the first married couple to have both been inducted.

Southern California native Wayne was a UCLA alum and Peace Corps volunteer who moved to Kern County when Tackett was running for Kern County supervisor in the 1970s. After they married, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in nursing from CSUB in 1978 and worked as a nurse at Kern Medical Center while also volunteering to promote child safety seats and expanded childcare options.

Wayne went on to work for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools office and helped create Community Connection for Childcare, which she then ran. She later served as executive director of First 5 Kern, which invests tobacco tax revenue into early childcare and education programs. She was inducted into the CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame in 2008; Tackett was inducted in 2019.

The Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and Adventist Health and organized annually by the Kegley Institute of Ethics, recognize adults and youth whose ethical commitment and actions improve others’ lives.

This year’s adult co-awardees are Jayme Stuart, a child and family services coordinator at the Kern County Network for Children, and Dixie King, co-founder and executive director of Transitional Youth Mobilizing for Change. Both are also CSUB graduates. Stuart earned a sociology degree in 1989 and King a history degree in 1978.

The youth co-awardees are 17-year-old Alex Fan and 18-year-old Neftaly Gonzalez. CSUB alumna Natalie Velasco earned an honorable mention in the youth category. She was a 2021-2022 CSUB Alumni Association scholarship recipient and is about to earn her master’s degree in public administration.

Jayme Stuart, left foreground, is a 2022 Wendy Wayne Ethics Awards recipient. To the right is Kern County Superintendent of Schools and 2021 CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame inductee Mary Barlow. Behind her: Steve Sanders, KCSOS chief of staff and 2002 MPA alum.

Dixie King, third from left, poses with colleagues of her Transitional Youth Mobilizing for Change.

Stuart and King were friends and colleagues of Wayne’s and therefore thrilled the Day of Service tradition started the year they received the awards.

“This is what Wendy would have wanted,” said Stuart, who grew up down the street from Wayne, babysat her sons and worked for her at the Kern County Superintendent of Schools office. “She would have been the one to organize it.”

Stuart went on to describe the many things she learned from Wayne including how to get agencies to collaborate, tackle work in new ways and not give up in the face of resistance to change.

“When you talked to Wendy, she was always present,” Stuart also said. “She really cared about people, and she wasn’t afraid to speak up for what was right.”

King said Wayne inspired her to form Transitional Youth Mobilizing for Change, a nonprofit that empowers teens and young adults to address community needs through education, research and action. Wayne also served on her board.

“Wendy had a love for children and families,” King said. “Her compassion was unlimited and her love unconditional.”

All of the Saturday volunteers who were graduates of CSUB posed for a celebratory group shot.

The Kegley Institute did hold an awards dinner Saturday night. It, too, was more Wayne’s style. There were about 50 invited guests, down from the usual 150, and it was held on the CSUB campus for “conversation and community building,” said Michael Burroughs, Kegley’s director and an associate professor of philosophy.

The Day of Service is expected to be a permanent part of the awards tradition, he said.

“Anybody who talked to or knew Wendy would tell you she wasn’t a formal gala kind of person,” Burroughs said. “She was about community service. It was the work she did and the life she led.”

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Footnotes

Story by Christine Bedell, senior alumni engagement specialist. Photos by Savannah Maldonado of CAPK and E.J. Medellin of CSUB.

FootNotes

Story by Christine Bedell, senior alumni engagement specialist. Photos by Savannah Maldonado of CAPK and E.J. Medellin of CSUB.

© 2026 California State University, Bakersfield

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