The Jewish Communtiy Center will honor long-time volunteer Sally Slabotsky with its Community SuperStar award at the KC SuperStar competition on Sunday, Aug. 28, at Johnson County Community College.
Slabotsky has served as a leader at the Jewish Community Center for more than five decades, serving on virtually every committee the JCC has ever had. She is the second winner of the award. Last year it was presented to Ellen Kort, a former executive director of the JCC and current executive director of the Jewish Heritage Foundation.
“Sally has inspired other women and has set an example for all volunteers,” said Tammy Ruder, KC SuperStar’s executive producer. “She is always thinking about what is in the best interest of the Center and its members. She truly embraces the idea of giving back to her community.”
Slabotsky learned last winter that the JCC planned to honor her at this event during a lunch meeting with then-JCC President Bob Grant, Executive Director Jacob Schreiber and Kort.
“I was overcome with emotion. First I cried and then I was excited about it,” Slabotsky said last week.
She has been a member of the JCC all of her life. Now 82 years old, she first remembers taking part in JCC activities when she was 8. At that time she enrolled in the Jewish Folk Studies program at the JCC after she was not allowed to study at Talmud Torah because she was a girl.
“Five years later the Forward newspaper came and took a picture of the five graduates, and I was one,” Slabotsky said.
Slabotsky first joined the JCC board of directors in 1960, but prior to that she said she was very active when the JCC was located at 1600 Linwood.
“Mr. (Isadore) Bierfeld (then president of the JCC) told me at the time, ‘I’m so sorry. You’re doing such a good job, but you can never serve on the board because you’re a woman,’ ” she said. “Little did he know that eventually I would become president.”
Slabotsky is one of only four women who has served as a JCC board president. The first woman president was Evelyn Wasserstrom. Jeannette Wishna and Rhonda Eigenberg are the other two women who have held the position.
According to Slabotsky, the best way to describe the JCC is “perfection.”
“It is an umbrella institution that welcomes everyone. That I would say is a favorite thing for me due to the fact that you can find friends of a different faith and just a variety of things to do. Consequently it became a terrific spot for my children growing us as well as for my husband and myself for entertainment, recreation and physical activity,” she said.
She has friends and family coming in from Arizona, Colorado, California, Michigan and New York to help her celebrate this honor.
“It is so nice to be loved as well as remembered,” she said.