Kathy Foster and Tom Wenham, both former mayors of Wellington and members of the inaugural Wellington Village Council, will soon have their names added to the Wellington Founder’s Plaque — a special honor reserved for those instrumental in making Wellington the community it is today.
Foster and Wenham are integral parts of village history and, for many residents, household names. They have held a variety of leadership roles since their arrival here, both in elected and volunteer capacities, improving their neighbors’ lives and setting the bar high for like-minded community activists.
The current council voted to add Foster’s name to the plaque on Tuesday, March 10.
Foster moved to Wellington with her husband and two young sons in 1979 because the boys, Jeremiah and Christian, were experiencing health issues up north. In 1980, she organized other mothers to go to the Palm Beach County School Board to ask for schools to be built in Wellington and, as a result, Wellington Elementary School opened in January 1981.
“That’s when I learned that people could make a difference,” Foster said.
Yet 15 months after relocating to Wellington, Christian passed away from spinal meningitis, turning her life upside down. “Everything I thought I knew was up for analysis,” she recalled.
As Foster started to find her “ground legs” again, little Adam Walsh went missing from Fort Lauderdale. When police discovered his body, beheaded, it hit her hard.
“I wrote to his parents, John and Reve, that my son died in my arms, loved and cared for,” she said. “It was hard to imagine what they were going through. A year and a half later, when they started the Adam Walsh Children’s Fund, I offered to help them with fundraisers.”
For the next 20 years, working with the Walshes gave Foster a focus to help other children in Christian’s memory. She also put her design degree to work by opening K. Foster Designs in the Town Square shopping center in 1983. A nearby restauranteur, Dennis Witkowski, wanted to start a chamber of commerce, and Foster was in.
It was a short leap from that first business-related involvement to government.
“In 1989, it was mandated that elections for the Acme Improvement District board [Wellington’s pre-incorporation government] be opened to residents. Until then, the board was comprised of real estate developers, major utility companies and law firms who do land development — there was no local representation.”
There were also no women.
“Father Walter Dockerill [pastor of St. Rita Catholic Church] and Buz Spooner [principal of Wellington Elementary School] talked me into running,” Foster recalled. “They wanted a representative who had young children to maintain a hometown feel centered on faith and families.”
Foster was convinced. “When I spoke, I said I lived here, worked here, owned a business here and had a fair understanding of what the people who lived here wanted. I also said I had no outside agenda — and no experience— but promised a common-sense approach,” Foster said. “I also thought it was important to have a balance of representation from men and women because we think differently.”
Foster was the only woman in 23 candidates and won with 48 percent of the vote. She was elected president of the Acme board in 1992.
“That’s when we started to pursue whether incorporation was a good idea for us,” Foster said. “At the time, Palm Beach County was receiving $7 million in taxes from the Wellington area and investing less than $700,000 back into our community. It was all going east of I-95. We also wanted self-rule. We wanted parks and certain amenities that we couldn’t create because we had limited authority — the widening of Forest Hill Blvd., for example. A committee was formed with Ken Adams, Mark Miles, Dick Palenschat and others to explore the ramifications of incorporation.”
The measure failed the first time it was proposed, but it was modified and passed in 1995 — by just 121 votes.
“We officially became the Village of Wellington on Dec. 31, 1995,” Foster said. “In March of 1996, elections were held for first council. Mike McDonough, Paul Adams, Tom Wenham, Carmine Priore and myself were elected, and again I won with a majority of the vote. So, based on number of votes, I became mayor.”
Foster stayed in elected office until 2000, when she left to become executive director of the Adam Walsh Children’s Fund. When the organization merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and moved to Washington, D.C., Foster stayed in Wellington, going on to become executive director of Junior Achievement, founding Wellington Cares, which helps seniors age in place, and, at age 65, adopting her grandson Jack when his parents were unable to care for him.
“When we moved here in 1979, no one could have envisioned what a wonderful community Wellington would become,” she marveled. “It’s so diverse in its population, international in its flavor, thanks to the horse industry. Every school is an A-rated school, and there are wonderful sports programs for our youth, but that’s thanks to the hard work and investment of time and energy of young families who have moved here and given that to this village. For me, it has been a privilege and a joy to have had a small hand in making Wellington what it is today.”
The council added Wenham’s name to the plaque on Tuesday, Feb. 25.
Also a member of the inaugural council, Wenham became the village’s appointed mayor in 2000, and when the charter was changed to call for a directly elected mayor, he put his name on the ballot, becoming Wellington’s first elected mayor.
“I didn’t want him to run. He ran anyway,” Wenham’s wife Regis recalled. “Tom worked as assistant property appraiser for Palm Beach County, so he’d always been around town. He has always been involved in government no matter where we lived. He has worked for municipalities of different sizes. I guess it was inevitable.”
Wenham was on the board of the community activist group Residents of Wellington (ROW) early on and became its president in 1988, taking over from Dick Nethercote.
“From there, I was appointed to chair a committee of the Acme Improvement District, the Utility Review Committee, where residents would come to us with whatever problem they were having, and we would try to solve it for them,” he said.
That interaction with members of the community, that ability to help, made Wenham want to do more. In 1994, he ran for a seat on the Acme board and was elected. He also became involved with the quest for incorporation.
“A big part of the reason incorporation passed that second time was that Wycliffe opted out,” Regis explained. “If they had stayed in, and their votes against incorporation had been counted, it would have failed again.”
By 2000, Wenham was serving as mayor of Wellington, holding that position until 2008. Since then, he has remained active in the community. He is currently chair of the Wellington Community Foundation and sits on the village’s Architectural Review Board.
Yet, he was surprised when he heard that his name would be added to the Founder’s Plaque.
“I was speechless when they made the motion to discuss it,” Wenham said. “Regis was there with me, and we both shed a tear. We are 39-year residents of this community but that they were going to bring my name up? I hadn’t even thought about it. I was greatly and pleasantly surprised.”
A veteran of the Korean War, Wenham has always taken his role as a citizen quite seriously.
“It’s quite an honor to be recognized by your hometown,” Wenham said. “I’ve always said that everybody has to give something back to their country and their community. You can’t just keep taking, you’ve got to give something back. It’s why I first joined ROW. What greater honor could be bestowed upon a resident of Wellington than to be considered a founder of the community? To my mind, it’s the premier community in the county and in the state. I’m proud of it. I’m proud of those who have served on our councils, and I’m proud of the staff.”
The Founder’s Plaque is on display in the lobby of the Wellington Municipal Complex at 12300 W. Forest Hill Blvd.