Young Citizen of Year pleased, surprised by honor
By Jeff Gallatin
Bay Village
Published Feb. 1, 2005

Bay Middle School student Kelsey Brax didn’t cut any corners in her efforts to aid children with an unusual medical problem, so the city community council tapped her as its’ 2006 Citizen of the Year.

Kelsey Brax

“I was really surprised to get such a great honor,” Brax, 13, said. “It’s a great achievement and kind of puts me in awe. There’s no way I could have gotten it without a lot of help from my friends and many other people.”

Council officials said she received the award for organizing a hair cut-a-thon which benefited Wigs for Kids, a non-profit group that provides human hair wigs to children with severe hair loss due to medical issues. With the help of the Mio Spazio Salon in Bay Village, she also collected donations from area businesses, organized a silent auction and coordinated the efforts of 20 volunteers and five musical groups at the event, which generated 108 feet of hair and $1,600 from the hundreds who attended.

Kelsey’s mother, Debbie, said she and her husband Russ, are both extremely proud of their busy daughter.

“It’s wonderful because she and all her friends and other people in the community helped her get it done, but it’s something we honestly never even thought Kelsey would get because she’s so young compared to most award winners in something like this,” Mrs. Brax said.

  Kelsey admits she didn’t think someone her age would get this kind of award either.

“It’s not something you think of getting when you get into something like this, especially when you are younger like me,” Kelsey said.

A straight-A student at Bay Middle School who takes part in soccer, track, cross country and the ski club, Kelsey said part of her inspiration comes from someone even younger than she is – her 8-year-old cousin, Elizabeth Gilbert.

“She has alopecia (a disease which causes hair to fall out and often begins in childhood) and I’ve always wanted to do something which could help her,” Kelsey said. “This project is something which could help her and a lot of others who have problems.”

Kelsey has always been supportive of Elizabeth, Mrs. Brax said.

“We’d get together with them and visit, and Kelsey would feel terrible for Elizabeth because she would have lost some more hair and say she just wanted to do something,” Mrs. Brax said.

Once the project got rolling, Kelsey said skills she learned from academics and her sports activities helped her keep it going.

“You learn organization to keep several different things going on, and you also have to have teamwork to get it all done and work together,” Kelsey said.

That teamwork and organization was a key to holding the project together, even in the final stages.

“Kelsey and her friends deserve all the credit in the world for having that carnival and keeping things going on in the different parts of the cut-a-thon,” her mother said. “It was a downpour that day, and those kids just kept it going despite it all.”

With high achieving brothers who have earned high honors in the Boy Scouts and athletics, and  other people in the family always busy with some project, Kelsey is a typical member of the family.

“I suppose you could say that she even takes after my mother who was a 4-H leader,” Mrs. Brax said. “She’s always been interested in people and her community.”