Kent Youth’s 15-member volunteer Board is made up of Kent and Queen Anne’s residents from a variety of backgrounds, but all with a commitment to provide the best possible services for the at-risk youth of the five-county area the program serves.

Board Officers:

Board President Earl Runde has served on the Board since 2001. He retired from a career in the Maryland Division of Correction where he was a teacher, school principal, facility administrator and assistant warden. He also worked at a halfway house in Baltimore, inspected prisons and detention centers and was a special education teacher.

He has Master’s Degrees in Public Administration from the University of Delaware and Special Education from the George Washington University. His hobbies include golf, swimming, yoga, kayaking and gardening. His goals for the Board are to keep all 10 beds full and adjusting our treatment programs to keep them current with the needs of our residents and the Department of Juvenile Services. Earl will also be working with the Board to update the organization’s website and develop a new mission statement.

Board Vice President Betsy Durham retired from a 25 year career in Nursing, most of which was in various positions at Chester River Hospital Center, to become the Executive Director of The Church Hill Theatre, a nonprofit community theatre in Queen Anne’s County. She enjoyed the mid-life job change and managed the Theatre for six years, helping to assure funding for a major building renovation project and the establishment of the Theatre’s endowment fund.

Betsy now spends her time volunteering for the Chester River Health Foundation Board, The Mainstay and is a member of the President’s Leadership Council at Washington College. She and her husband Dick, live in the country where they labor in copious flower and vegetable gardens, keep 3 aging cats and one crazy dog, and Betsy also manages a small family farm which she owns with her 2 brothers.

Betsy became aware of Kent Youth many years ago through her husband’s involvement with helping the organization become more energy efficient through the installation of their hot water solar system and other energy saving devices and practices.  “I think Kent Youth is an extremely valuable resource in our community. They have a solid track record of helping troubled youths navigate through some difficult times in their lives and giving them the support and skills they need to be productive members of society.  I am delighted to be a part of this organization and hope my talents can be an asset to the organization.”

Board Secretary Carm Bachman, who retired recently after 21 years in the counseling field, has lived in Kent County for almost 20 years, and with her husband Eric, has raised two sons here.  Her practice included marital and family therapy and bereavement counseling. She served as a Family Preservation Counselor at the Department of Social Services.

Carm is also a trained mediator, and recently completed training as a Team Decision-Making Facilitator at the Department of Social Services. In addition she volunteers at Worton Elementary School in pre-kindergarten as a Character Counts coach, and bakes for Hospice’s special events.  Her favorite activities include kayaking, reading, walking her dogs with her husband, ocean swimming and bird-watching, which, she notes, is sometimes in conflict with her love of their three cats.

Board Treasurer Matt Tobriner, a Washington, D.C. native, who has degrees in mechanical and nuclear engineering from Princeton University and the University of California, retired to Chestertown in 1998 from a thirty five year career in research, development, and engineering.  During his professional career he worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and served on the Board of Science Applications International Corp.

He has served as the President of the Lisner Home in Washington for 30 years, which provides housing and nursing care to indigent residents of the District of Columbia.  In Chestertown, he has held various positions with the Prince Theatre Foundation since its founding, is a board member of the River Club, and served as President of Kent Youth, Inc. for several years. A skilled yachtsman and cat lover, with a love for sailing, Matt says he’s had some great ocean-racing experiences on “OPBs”, which he explains translates to Other Peoples’ Boats.

Board Members:

Serving as a Board Member for more than a decade, Lynn Benjamin has been a committed and passionate volunteer for Kent Youth, planning special programs and providing items for the wish lists of the residents of both houses. (Larrabee House, a girls’ residence, closed in 2009).

Lynn majored in marketing and business at Babson College in Massachusetts and spent a number of years in the New England area.   Her tireless involvement with Kent Youth included organizing

and collecting an amazing variety of items and surprises for Kent Youth's successful gala "Dates, Double Dates and HoneyDo's!" Auction which was held in 2008 at the Hotel Imperial.

Lynn says, “Helping to give the children of Kent Youth opportunities they might not have had without the program - opportunities I am blessed to have had - gives me a feeling of great pride to see the achievement of each child.  Kent Youth creates a family to which I am privileged to belong.”

Myra Butler is currently the Director of Kent County Parks and Recreation and a lifelong resident of Kent County.  With over seventeen years of experience in the field of parks and recreation, she is passionate about being a positive influence in the lives of our local youth.  She has served on numerous local boards including the Kent County Local Management Board for Children, Youth, and Families and the Kent County Adolescent Substance Abuse Coalition.  She is a licensed Pool and Spa Operator in the state of Maryland and will obtain her national professional certification for the parks and recreation field in fall, 2011.  In her spare time she enjoys Zumba, reading, and attending youth sporting events such as baseball, softball, basketball, and football. 

A Chestertown resident for more than three decades, LaMonte Cooke is currently Director of Corrections for Queen Anne’s County.  Formerly Chief Deputy with the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, he is Vice-Chairman of the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission.  A Director of the Peoples Bank of Kent County, he is Past President of the Centreville Rotary Club and former vice-president of the Kent County School Board.  In 1995 LaMonte was Acting County Administrator for Queen Anne’s County. A certified adjunct criminal justice instructor, he is a member of the Wor-Wic Community College Criminal Justice Program Advisory Board.

Joan Flaherty has more than 40 years’ experience as a public and private school educator and administrator.  After teaching English in high schools and middle schools in Pennsylvania and Delaware, she joined the faculty of Kent School in 1982.  After first teaching language arts in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades, Joan later joined the school’s administration as Director of Admissions and Marketing, and became interim head of Kent School before retiring in July of 2008.

Connie Godwin most recently retired from a second career, which lasted 20 years, as press secretary to a senior U.S. Senator. Prior to that, while living in Alaska, she was lifestyle editor for Alaska’s largest newspaper for 10 years, the culmination of a news career that began when she was a copyboy at the Washington Post, her first job after college at William and Mary, where her major was supposed to be English.  But, considering the time spent putting the paper together every week, her major was, more truthfully, the college’s newspaper.

In the ‘60s, in the early days of the Job Corps program, she was the Florida State coordinator for the Women’s Job Corps, working with girls at risk to help them find opportunities to further their education and training.  The Women’s Job Corps recruiting, screening, pre-selection and all office work was done by volunteers throughout the nation, not just in Florida.

While locally she wears several hats for volunteer organizations, she’s had the most fun team-teaching a WCALL class on newspapers over the past five years, and giving informal programs on Alaska for community groups.

As Executive Vice-President for Dixon Valve, Bob Grace has had the opportunity to work with many members of our community in the 20 years since coming to Kent County from his home in Baltimore.  For eight years he has worked weekly with the Kent County school system, teaching Character Counts.

With three children of his own, he has coached the youth of Kent County in basketball and soccer for 15 years. And while golf and boating are his major hobbies, he recently received an MBA from the University of Baltimore.

Judy Kohl, is Professor Emerita after 29 years teaching English and Humanities at New York’s Dutchess Community College. She has also taught in and directed a special program at Vassar College for first generation community college students to help explore their opportunities and abilities at four-year competitive schools.  In addition, she has written for many publications, particularly reference works and encyclopedias.

But it wasn’t until she and her husband Ben, a retired Vassar professor, moved to Kent County permanently 11 years ago that she became even busier, taking on a number of responsibilities which leave no empty spaces on her calendar.  Readers of the Kent County News know her as the Betterton columnist, while her neighbors in Betterton also know her as a member of the town’s Community Development Board, and a town election commissioner.

At Washington College, Judy has served on the board of the Academy of Lifelong Learning including seven years as curriculum committee chair.  She is the current chairman of the College’s Friends of Miller Library and secretary-treasurer of the Hedgelawn Foundation, founded by her family to provide assistance to area arts, music, educational and other cultural organizations.

A lay reader at Shrewsbury Parish, she also writes for the church’s newsletter, and recently began contributing to Kent County’s newest publication, Chesapeake Times.  Accompanying Ben on annual trips to Venice, Italy for his research, Judy researches Ezra Pound and other ex-patriots, and says she “polishes her Italian.”

Dan Rugg, a twenty-one year resident of Centreville was elected to the Board in February 2011. He recently retired from his Position as Sailing Master at the US Naval Academy. The primary focus of the job was teaching and training Midshipmen and adult volunteers for the Offshore Cruising Program which utilizes the Navy 44 as the sailing training platform. Dan is a graduate of USNA, served nine years active Commissioned service in five different ships including two Western Pacific deployments in the early 1970s, retiring from the Naval Reserve as a Captain in 1997. With his wife Hallie of 40 years, they have two married children, daughter Frazier and her husband Kevin have two daughters, son Whitney and Kelli live in Newport, RI.

Herb Wilkinson, along with his professional engineering and telecommunications background, brings a wealth of community service experience to the Kent Youth Board.

He is a member of the Financial Development Committee of the Schooner Sultana, which he helped build as a volunteer shipwright and has helped sail as a volunteer crew member.  In addition he has chaired the Finance and Property Committees of his church, as well as a member of its Administrative Board.  An active member of the Chestertown Lions Service Club, Herb is also a volunteer for the Kent County Food Pantry, a volunteer night supervisor for the Kent Emergency Homeless Shelter, and a Board Member of the River Club.

Roberta Lewin

Dean Burt