At Hephzibah’s 2022 Heart of Gold Ball, Keith Elkins will be honored with the first Hephzibah Hero Award.
The Hephzibah Hero Award is granted to a prior resident of Hephzibah Home who personally exemplifies the core values of Hephzibah — commitment to children and families, respect, inclusion, honesty and integrity, accountability, learning and improvement, innovation, and stability.
Keith, who celebrated his 90th birthday recently, came to Hephzibah Home with his sister Muriel in October 1933, one day after his 4th birthday. ”My parents were among the casualties of the Depression,” Keith says. ”They couldn`t keep the family together, so my sister and I lived at Hephzibah for three years until they decided to make another go of it.”
Keith believes his years at Hephzibah were the happiest of his childhood and they continue to affect his life. “Well into adulthood I treasure the gift that Hephzibah gave me – the gift of hope,” Keith says.
He believes that Hephzibah equipped him to live a decent and orderly life. “It shaped me well into my adulthood far more than I realized,” he once wrote.
A Buffalo resident, Keith retired in his 60s from Empire State College as a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor. He taught psychology for 43 years. In his 70s he founded Brainstormers, a non-profit group of older actors who dramatize and discuss with seniors’ issues of concern. In his 80s he authored a novel, The Old Guy Goes.
He credits the sense of fairness and justice he learned at Hephzibah with influencing his volunteer work. For close to six years, he served as a member of New York State’s Surrogate Decision Making Committee, which makes serious medical decisions for those who cannot make them for themselves and have no one to do it for them.
Keith Elkins with his daughter Julie at the 2007 Hephzibah Home Reunion.
His proudest achievement is not what he’s done professionally, but what he had done personally – broken the chain of family dysfunction and helped raise a healthy daughter in a secure and caring home. “I was able to do my part in creating a family for her to grow up healthier and provide the safety, security, stability, caring, consistency and fairness that I found only at Hephzibah as a child myself,” he once wrote.
A long-time friend of Hephzibah, Keith wrote and published “Hephzibah’s Children 1930-2000”, a history of Hephzibah Children’s Association as seen through the eyes of former residents. In 2007 Keith founded Hephzibah’s first-ever homecoming which brought former residents together to visit and reminisce. In 2008 he was recognized with the Heart of the Home award for these projects.