Kurtis has been a constant in Pease Park for two years now and if you have not had the privilege of meeting him in person, we’d like to introduce you to him here.

And, we hope you will join us in celebrating him as our Richard F. Craig Volunteer of the Year award recipient (named after our inaugural honoree in 2021 and Pease Park Conservancy Founder, Richard F. Craig)!

Kurtis has been unhoused for some time now, but if this is all you know about him, there is much more to learn about his impact on the park and our Pease Park Conservancy team.

We met Kurtis and began to know him as he started spending more and more of his days in Pease Park. He was drawn to the park as a place to spend his days for all of the same reasons that many of us love the park - the shade, the nature, the open spaces, the greenery, and the friendly faces and welcoming demeanor of our Pease Park Conservancy Park Operations team.

Our team quickly realized that Kurtis showed immense respect for our beloved greenspace and for our park visitors. He engaged with the occasional passerby with a smile and greeting and often a salute, and was friendly and helpful to our team.

Dalton Smith, Park Operations Coordinator, established a close relationship with Kurtis, and after some time, invited him to join our Pease Corps as a volunteer to serve the park. Through these daily interactions, conversations, and experiences with Kurtis, we came to know him as a capable contributor to the daily successful operations of the park. He has contributed more volunteer hours to Pease Park than any other volunteer in 2022, and we are incredibly grateful for his work.

Kurtis very diligently took on this role as a Conservancy volunteer. Day in and day out, he has helped our Park Operations team with essential maintenance work, such as cleaning up litter, taking the trash to the dumpsters, cleaning the restrooms, and helping to ensure that Kingsbury Commons is clean and well maintained for our community of park visitors.

The relationship our Conservancy team has with Kurtis has grown so that we now think of him as a part of our extended Pease Park Conservancy family and he relies on us for daily companionship and a shared purpose.

It is with mixed feelings that we also want to share that Kurtis has decided to move away from Austin. He feels he might still have connections in his previous home of Lebanon, Pennsylvania and since he lived there for much of his life, he might better be able to navigate the systems and services available to him. His daily presence in the park will be missed and we wish Kurtis a smooth transition as he makes this move.

The Conservancy helped him with a bus plan and passes and Dalton has created a GoFundMe to support Kurtis as he gets started in his new city. If you would like to contribute, you can do so here.