A KAV by any Other Name

When you first meet Elizabethtown College Trustee Terry Koons ’70 and his wife Carol Ann ’71, you can’t help but be struck by the depth of their passion for each other, for their family, and for their alma mater. That passion for Elizabethtown College now will be reflected on campus with a new name for an old space.
The Koons family, which includes Terry’s parents C. Glenn and Lorraine Koons, has agreed to name the Event Space located on the first floor of the recently renovated Brossman Commons.
Beginning in August 2009, this large multi-purpose room, used by students, faculty and the administration for a variety of events—from the Annual Scholarship Luncheon, to late-night movies and dances during S.W.E.E.T. Weekends, to stellar performances by the College’s musical groups—will be known as the Koons Activity Venue, or the KAV (pronounced “cave”).
It seems fitting that the Koons family would name a place where dances take place.
“Saturday night dances were held in the gym of the old Student Center when we were students,” Carol Ann recalls. “And Terry and I met at one of those dances near the beginning of my freshman year—November 1968.”
By the following May, the two were “pinned” and in love. Terry lived in Ober, and Carol Ann lived in Myer. He was a junior, and she was a freshman. But Carol Ann accelerated her studies by going to school in the summers so she could graduate soon after Terry. They were married in June 1970.
“We got married in the chapel of Rider Hall,” Terry remembers. “It was a small wedding with good friends.” Rider Hall, a well-known building on campus, was torn down after closing in 1989. “But we do have a brick from the building,” Carol Ann says.
Since their graduations, Terry and Carol Ann have remained close to the College.
Both believe the best parts of their years at Elizabethtown were the friendships they made and meeting each other—“that was the very best thing,” Terry adds. College friends kept them connected, and it helped to be within driving distance so they could attend an occasional soccer game.
And they always had the example of Terry’s parents before them. Terry says his parents are members of the Church of the Brethren and always supported the College. As a child, he attended youth events on campus. Terry and Carol Ann also are members of the Church of the Brethren, and the couple says his parents taught them about the importance of giving back.
In 1998, Wayne Nicarry asked Terry to become a member of the Board of Trustees. By then, Terry had joined the family business in Chambersburg, Pa. He helped to guide its growth from a corner grocery store in the 1970s to a larger, well-known specialty market called The Butcher Shoppe. He retired in 2006.
On the Board of Trustees, Terry has been involved with the Student Affairs and Trusteeship committees. He currently serves as the chairman of the Building and Grounds Committee, which was charged with overseeing the project to construct the new Athletics complex on campus. Incidentally, Terry was the first one to suggest “The Jay Walk” as a name for the project.
While it’s not hard to support Elizabethtown College, Terry says that it was a tough decision to agree to the publicity that came with naming the KAV. This family, with its Church of the Brethren roots, isn’t in the habit of doing things just to get noticed—that’s not the way things are done.
“It was a stretch to have our name attached to anything,” he says. “This is hard for us, and we aren’t doing it for the publicity.” Then he slowly smiles and quietly adds, “You know, the space really did need a name.”