Virginia Kerst, a long-time Covington community advocate and benefactor known for her beautification and preservation efforts, passed away on Tuesday after a long battle with cancer.
“I always like to tell people, she’s the kind of person [that] when she moved to Covington, she came here because she loved the small city feel,” said Tracy Geglein. “But also the fact that she could do something to make a difference.”
Geglein is Kerst’s niece and admirer, who lovingly calls Kerst by a diminutive of her first name, “Gigi.”
“Gigi was a connector,” Geglein said. “If she found out that you had a talent or a skill or the means, she would connect you with a person that you could help or that could help you… She was the one behind the scenes, helping things happen.”
Kerst was born in 1943 in Winter Haven, Florida and moved to Covington in 1989. Her husband, Harry Kerst, had died in 1984, and Geglein said that Kerst fell in love with the city’s cultural life, especially the Baker Hunt Art and Cultural Center, after she moved to the city.
“Every garden on Baker Hunt’s grounds has been touched by Virginia,” said Historic Licking Riverside Civic Association President Patrick Hughes, who said he really got to know Kerst after volunteering with her at George Rogers Clark Park.
“She managed our volunteer gardeners on campus,” said Karen Etling, Baker Hunt’s executive director, “and she made sure that the campus always looked beautiful.”
Many of Kerst’s civic efforts focused around beautification and preservation of the historic buildings in the city. She was often not the public face of these initiatives, preferring to work behind the scenes with volunteer labor, one-on-one advocacy and even money.
“She fell in love with Covington and with Licking Riverside and became a huge advocate for preservation and beautification in the neighborhood,” said long-time friend and Licking Riverside resident Gina Estes.
“She wasn’t at all comfortable speaking in public,” Estes added. “She didn’t want to be that person out front or get any attention for whatever might be going on. She was worried about the outcome.”
Her efforts were frequently lauded by community and civic organizations. She won awards from the Center for Great Neighborhoods of Covington in 2005, 2014 and 2021. Her work at George Rogers Clark Park won her the Friends of Covington Award in 2020, and everyone from the Kentucky General Assembly to Northern Kentucky University have recognized her for other community involvement over the years.
In spite of the furtive nature of her advocacy, she had no problems standing up for the things she cared about.
“It was funny. When I first met Virginia, I wasn’t sure that she liked me,” Hughes said. “… She didn’t embrace you right away.”
One instance in particular stood out. In 2006, a developer had identified several historical properties in Roebling Point it wanted to demolish and replace.
“Their plan was to tear down all those buildings,… put underground parking in and then build buildings up top that looked historic but weren’t historic,” said Lisa Sauer.
Sauer was Kerst’s neighbor and friend who worked with her at Progress with Preservation, a group dedicated to preserving and restoring historical buildings in Covington. Kerst was instrumental in its founding, Sauer said, even if Sauer was the one who did most of the talking.
“We split our roles,” Sauer said, “and Virginia contacted a lot of people in the community, got 100 people to come to a meeting that I then ran, which was to get people together on coming up with a proposal for why this should not happen and what the value of these historic buildings are in Covington.”
Sauer, Kerst and the rest then appealed to the city and got historic preservation zoning on the area so that the developer wouldn’t tear the buildings down. Arguably, much of Covington’s focus on historic preservation is attributable to Kerst’s–and people like Kerst’s–efforts.
Sauer listed off some of their other accomplishments.
“We did a prioritization of all the buildings in Covington to save and made the city aware and also the Catalytic Fund [of Northern Kentucky] aware of those buildings,” Sauer said. “Actually, if you look at them over time, those are the ones that have been restored… We did a historic window study about the value of historic windows.”
In fact, the impacts of Kert’s efforts can felt in all of the quality-of-life improvements throughout Licking Riverside.
“We got historic-look street lamps put in the neighborhood in certain places,” Sauer said. “We did a pot program where there would be flowerpots on the corners of streets. We rebuilt the stone wall at 4th and Garrard that wraps the corner there. We put a historic-look street sign there to make it a safer area. We changed the street signs in the neighborhood to look more historic.”
They also did a lot of work George Rogers Clark Park, including the addition of railings and repairs to the fountain. Kerst invariably led and coordinated the volunteer efforts.
She did all of this work “quietly without seeking praise, without even seeking acknowledgment,” Hughes said.
Geglein and others attested to Kerst’s reluctance to draw attention to herself and how she didn’t like people belaboring her accomplishments.
To that end, an open house memorial, rather than a conventional funeral, in Kerst’s honor will take place on Saturday, Dec. 16 at the Baker Hunt Art and Cultural Center on Greenup Street from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The family asks that people consider donating to the Baker Hunt beautification and gardening initiatives, instead of bringing flowers. Donation cards will be available at the open house.
People can also donate to the Historic Licking Riverside Civic Association Fund, administered through Horizon Community Funds, which will fund more beautification initiatives in the Licking Riverside neighborhood and for which Kerst provided the initial $20,000 seed donation.
“I think as people talk after we’ve lost her, there’s so much that all of us are going to learn that she had wonderful impact [on],” Estes said.
UPDATE: Horizon Community Funds renamed the Historic Licking Riverside Civic Association Fund shortly after this article’s initial publication. In addition, there were some factual errors related to the work Kerst led in George Rogers Clark Park in the original version. Relevant lines for both points have been updated. –LINK NKY editorial, Dec. 1, 2023