STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS
SYDNEY, N.S. — That Jim and Roma Kehoe are being inducted into the Cape Breton Philanthropy Hall of Fame shouldn’t be surprising.
Jim Kehoe is resolute in a sense of duty to give back.
And he’s in awe of his wife Roma’s ability to raise money for an endless slew of causes.
“I said ‘You’re the biggest bum in Cape Breton.’ She’d say, ‘Yeah, but it’s for a good cause.’ She always had her purse full of tickets,” Kehoe says with reverence for Roma, who was diagnosed two years ago with dementia.
“When she had a project, she’d come over (to the office). She never asked for money at home, but she’d come over to the office and she’d always bring somebody with her. So they’d come in and she’d always let the person with her do all the talking. But before they’d leave she would say, ‘Well if you wrote a cheque right now, it’ll save us from coming back.’ And then she would say, ‘Well, now, why don’t you write a cheque for all the companies and that’ll save us a lot of time too.’”
He recounts the story with a chuckle, but also respect for her drive.
“I remember a few days later, probably five or six days later, I get a call from the manager of the building supply,” Kehoe continued. “And he says that Roma was in today looking for a donation for the hospital foundation. …I said (to Roma), ‘I thought you said if we wrote one cheque for everybody?’ ‘… But she said that this is kind of different.
“Go up and ask people for money for donations. … She had a talent for it and she enjoyed doing it too.”
In a conversation with the Cape Breton Post at his office, Kehoe was modest when asked about how much the couple have donated through their various efforts over the decades. It’s well in the millions though.
The Coxheath couple is among those 2023 Cape Breton Business and Philanthropy Hall of Fame inductees being honoured Wednesday with a dinner at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre.
“It’s so important that you can help people who need help,” Kehoe says.
“Because not everyone was lucky enough to be successful, you know, and there’s people that work hard all their lives but … when sickness comes or something comes up, they don’t have the money — not because they didn’t work. It’s because of the fact that it just took all they were making to survive, you know. So that’s important because they probably worked as hard as I did.”
The couple both grew up on Isle Madame, Cape Breton’s south coast and Kehoe said the sense of community and giving was instilled in him by examples at home.
“(My mother), she’d sit down watching TV in the evening and she’d be knitting all the time. And whatever she was making — knit mitts and socks and sweaters and that — she’d be giving them away,” he said.
In business, he has the perspective that if a company donates, the customers are part of that donation and that’s a huge reason to shop and support local.
“And what I believe in is that if I have a business and the business was successful this year and it made some money and then I could make a donation if you supported that business,” he explains.
“People might say to you, ‘Well, I can’t afford to give this year.’ Well, they already gave, if they supported the business and the only reason why I could give is because they supported it.”
And Kehoe said the spirit of generosity is alive and well in the Cape Breton business community.
”I mean, the young people that are in business here, they give back,” he said.
A LIFE OF VOLUNTEERING
Already a member of the hall of fame in the business category, Kehoe is president of the Joneljim Group of Companies based in Sydney which includes construction, development, building supplies, millwork, windows and doors, well drilling, metal fabrication and others.
He also owns and operates Xerox franchises around Atlantic Canada, an assisted living facility in Kentville and a Halifax-based residential construction business.
“With a community approach to their business, Mr. Jim Kehoe and Mrs. Roma Kehoe have generously donated to the Cape Breton community through both financial and volunteer efforts,” the Chamber of Commerce said about the couple.
Organizations that have benefitted include the Cape Breton Regional Hospital Foundation, Cape Breton University and the Hospice Palliative Care Society of Cape Breton.
Kehoe is prominent in non-profit endeavours such as being a founding member of the New Dawn Enterprises and not-for-profit organization BCA Investment Cooperative, which invests in struggling companies, and has served on various volunteer boards.
In 2002, the Order of Nova Scotia inducted him for using his business methods “to develop sustainable long-term social institutions.”
In 2012, he shared his personal story about surviving prostate cancer in order to raise money and awareness about the disease.
Roma Kehoe was one of the founders and a long-term volunteer of the Cape Breton Regional Hospital Foundation’s Festival of the Greens Holiday Gala and she has generously given her time to many other local charities and initiatives, the Chamber of Commerce notes.
Kehoe says he’s never been afraid of taking a risk. A carpenter by trade, he built his first house mortgage free so that if something went sideways in those early days they’d have a paid-off home.
He bought a wood lot at 15.
“It wasn’t much money. Like $300 or $400 you get this woodland,” he said of the acreage.
He earned the money doing odd jobs, such as cutting hay or splitting firewood.
“And so, but you were always out hustling,” he says of his early start.
Kehoe says he and Roma have never looked for the accolades for their philanthropy.
“That’s not why we do it. We do it because there’s a need there and we love our community, you know,” he said.
And he returns to gushing about his wife’s talents at supporting causes.
“We always went to the hockey games. We would have a group of people coming with us and so on and she’d always have the fist full of tickets and she’d be always going around talking to people selling tickets. I said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ …’ She just loved to do it,” Kehoe said
– Barb Sweet is a multimedia journalist with the Cape Breton Post. Follow her on Twitter @BarbSweetTweets.
Credit:Source link
