Luke Kline, a youth winner of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, helps out every Thursday at the Wapak Loaves and Fishes Christian ministry that distributes food to needy residents. Kline is also active in Boy Scouts and is working to complete his Eagle Scout badge work.
J Swygart | The Lima News
WAPAKONETA — Not unlike the eight other local winners this year of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, Lucas Kline is not one to seek the spotlight. He is humble, reserved, a little bashful and reluctant to talk about his accomplishments.
Asked how he feels about accolades he’s received since being named as this year’s only youth winner of a Jefferson Award, Kline downplayed all the fuss.
“I’m just a kid. I just want to help people,” he said.
That, in a nutshell, is Luke Kline.
The 16-year-old junior at Wapakoneta High School was nominated for the Jefferson Award primarily for his volunteer work with Wapak Loaves and Fishes, a Christian ministry dedicated to feeding hungry Auglaize County residents. Kline is also active in the Boy Scouts of America and is currently working to earn his Eagle Scout badge, scouting’s highest honor, by improving the public running and hiking trails in the Ferald Ritchie Nature Preserve near Wapak High School.
He’s a member of the Wapak High School band and works part-time at CJ’s Pizza and volunteers at numerous events in and around Wapakoneta.
Brenda Shoffstall is a co-coordinator of Loaves and Fishes fellowship, a tax-exempt organization that has been providing free meals weekly to the community through support from local churches, organizations and community members since 1999 at First English Lutheran Church in Wapakoneta. She said that rain or shine, every Thursday at 4 p.m. Kline is at the church assisting with the weekly distribution of free food to needy residents of the Wapakoneta community.
“I’ve had Luke in my Sunday School youth group and he’s helped out during the food distribution every week since the beginning,” she said. “He does whatever is asked of him and he never fails to greet our patrons with a ‘How are you? or “How is your day?’”
Kline said he became active with the Loaves and Fishes ministry “because I needed some community service hours for Boy Scouting. I’ve been a member here (at First English Lutheran Church) all my life and I just felt it was a calling from God, in a way. I like giving back to my community; I like challenging myself.”
Shoffstall said Kline is invaluable to the ministry.
“If we could clone Luke Kline our world would be so much better off,” she said. “He deserves this award. He’s just wonderful.”
Kline credits his mother and step-father, Jenny and Jason Grundey, for instilling in him the sense of helping and community that have shaped his life.
Luke lost his own father, Jason Kline, a math teacher and assistant principal at Wapakoneta High School, to cancer when he was 3 years old. Every day at school Luke sees his father’s sayings etched on the high school walls.
“I’ve heard nothing but positive things about him and I just want to live up to his legacy and the memory he left behind,” he said.
Kline said he hopes to become a history teacher someday. In what little free time he has, he enjoys hiking, kayaking and “hanging out with friends.”
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