Charlotte McClanahan

What made you passionate about starting MK Legacy?
Been in the field for a very very long time, and had wanted to start my own organizations once about 1990 but for a variety of personal reasons I wasn’t able to. The more I worked in the field, the more I saw the possibility of doing things differently, more person centered. I thought of doing things my way, of doing things in a way that honored people better. When my husband passed, I knew it was time to realize my dream after all of those years and I wanted to honor my husband’s legacy, he was the one with the passion and I am carrying it through and bringing family with me. I wanted to honor my family and husband. That’s why it’s Legacy. Besides that, I just love people! I love people with developmental disabilities! I really just enjoy spending time with people with disabilities. I have been able to track the thread of where my intro to disabilities came from and it started when I was very young. My grandmother was an amputee, she lost a leg in a farm accident when she was 8 years old. I never thought about her having a disability or not being able to do anything she wanted to be able to do, nothing stopped her. She was a divorcee in a time when being a divorcee was frowned upon, I remember when I was about 6 years old we were out shopping and there was a double amputee gentleman and I wanted to buy pencils from him but she told me “No you don’t, there is nothing stopping him from working, he’s just like me”. That was the first time I was exposed to disability, she made sure I understood abilities and not disabilities. There was a boy down the street and he had down syndrome and he was just another kid in the neighborhood. His family moved him out into the country away from anybody, I didn’t understand it then but I do now, I understand that they were fearful. I hope today that things have changed a little bit and that the community can support people. When I was in high school, Boppa’s foster mother was friends with a lady that had a foster daughter who was “slow”. Something about people with disabilities makes them enjoyable to be around.

Seeing the evolution of this industry, and not from an ivory tower but on the ground, I am not an academic, I took a different path and it has all been in direct service of people, it has served me well for who I am and in my spirit it has served me well. I like to spend time with people of all abilities, it feeds my soul.

What does MK Legacy mean to you? Why is it important?
It means family, it means honoring people. It means doing things right.

What was the most difficult part of the process so far?
Being patient. We want to do things right and that means not taking shortcuts and that means being patient, I want things to go a little faster. We wanna do the right things for the right reasons and because of that it is going to take a little more time.

What has been the most fun?
Getting to hang out with people I love, whether that’s family or not, getting to create my own thing, that creation process is amazing and whatever it becomes is because we created that. The creation process is amazing.

What do you love most about your day to day job?
Service. Really providing excellent service to people. Not just people with disabilities, that includes service to the community, our staff, our host homes.

What does a day in the life look like for you?
Mostly administrative work, most of my days are in the office but I am very intentional about spending time with people in services and touching base with all staff members. I try to be very intentional about spending time with people in the community and building relationships.
What is your priority at the moment? What are you wanting to do/work on moving forward?
My priority has got to be to improve systems. I’m an admin that’s my job. I need to improve quality assurance systems and general admin systems. In doing that I need to make sure those systems include people, and that the systems serve people and not the other way around. Too often people service the system, we need to make sure we are improving the systems all the time but making sure that these systems serve people. The first thing they said in my Management Information Systems class was “the system is supposed to support the people”.

If you could do it (starting MK Legacy or your career path) all over again, would you change anything?
I would start Legacy sooner. I think I could have pulled it off sooner. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to support my husband and his medical concerns, so I played it safe for a long time because of that. It worked out the timing that it needed to though.