Kay Gottschalk named to Bethany Hall of Fame

It could be claimed that Janesville area resident Kay Gottschalk has been making lemonade for 40 years.

 

Although she loves sports and team competition, a medical condition keeps her–literally–on the sidelines. There, her “lemonade” is being a book keeper, something she has been doing for Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato since the fall of 1984. On September 19, she will be one of six inducted into the college’s “Hall of Fame” in recognition of her contributions.

 

Gottschalk, a 1983 graduate of Waldorf-Pemberton High School, was exceedingly active and successful in basketball, volleyball and softball during high school, having been named most valuable player (MVP) in basketball in her sophomore, junior and senior years. For that accomplishment, she was inducted into the JWP hall of fame in 2017.

 

As she graduated, she was offered a scholarship to play both volleyball and basketball at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato. She signed up and selected physical education as her major with the intent of becoming a teacher and a coach.

 

As a freshman at Bethany, she finished 1983 volleyball season with the team’s highest number of blocks and second-highest of “kills.” She helped take the basketball team to the state tournament early in 1984. 

 

When she began to feel some uncharacteristic pain early that spring, she visited the doctor and was informed she has rheumatoid arthritis (RA).  According to the national Rheumatoid Arthritis Foundation website, RA is a disorder which causes the body’s own immune system to attack the linings around joints. The lining becomes painful and swells, sometimes to a point where the joint can barely move. Symptoms often come and go, and affect different joints at different times, although usually symmetrically, for example, both the left and right thumbs. People prone to the disorder often don’t have any symptoms until middle age, but Gottschalk is among those affected relatively early in her life, and so was said to have juvenile RA.

 

“Basically, I live in pain every day,” she describes, mentioning that symptoms have worsened with age.

 

Along with the life-changing diagnosis of RA during college came a piece of advice: “Change your major.” Unwilling to leave her love of sports and fitness completely behind, Gottschalk changed to “therapeutic recreation.”

 

That fall, unwilling to remove volleyball from her life, she moved to the sidelines as a book keeper and was able to continue benefitting from her scholarship.

 

After graduating college, Gottschalk used her therapeutic recreation degree to help with activity departments at a number of elder care facilities, then went on to provide in-home care. She and her husband Gary have been married 28 years.

 

Through it all, including at times when the rheumatoid arthritis has had her on crutches, she has not only continued her role as a book keeper, but expanded it. She keeps books and fills in various roles for volleyball and basketball games at Bethany, the Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton school district, and, beginning about eight years ago, Minnesota State University Mankato.

 

“Part of me wishes I could be on the floor,” she admits, “but I’m also part of the action there at the table.”

 

She says she takes joy in the athletic accomplishment and dedication of the team members; she also jokes that she not only gets one of the best seats in the house, she is paid to sit in it. The fast action can make her job difficult sometimes, though, since she sometimes has her “nose in the book” and misses what’s happening on the floor.

 

“I do my best, though,” she adds. 

 

Thanks to working with three different institutions, Gottschalk says her schedule can get very full at times, typically calling on her to attend about three games a week in the fall and winter seasons. “Bethany is my priority, though,” she adds. “I always say yes to Bethany when I can.”

 

In other seasons of the year, Gottschalk is an enthusiastic gardener raising a wide variety of vegetables and selling them at farmers’ markets. 

 

She is an active member at Trinity Lutheran Church in Janesville where she helps organize the congregation’s share of the community-wide “meals on wheels” program, is a member of two choirs, and the Dorcas Society. She has also been a zone treasurer for the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League (LWML).

 

In her role as director of the Janesville community food shelf, she assists with food distribution there and generally helps when she can–including responding to a recent offer from the Southern Research and Outreach Center (SROC) in Waseca that area food shelves could have all the green beans they chose to pick.

 

Gottschalk says she is grateful to be recognized for her contributions as a book keeper for Bethany, and that she is glad she could maintain a lasting connection to the athletic competitions which have always brought her so much pleasure.