She leans forward in a zebra-print chair, looking thoughtfully out the window of a sunny dining room. Her expression is calm as she searches for the right words to relay an important childhood memory.
In an instant, she turns her head, and her calm reflection gives way to a smile.
Carol Journagan smiles with her whole body.
And, it doesn’t take much to evoke a grin of pure delight from the 60-year-old Blue Springs woman. This time it was the memory of what she saw looking out the door of her childhood home.
“We had a yard that was slanted toward the street. The next door neighbor taught me all my acrobatics. Her name was Kathy, and I named my daughter after her,” Carol said. “When I looked out my front door I would imagine tumbling. A front yard that was full of possibilities.”
More often than not Carol’s larger-than-life smile is accompanied by infectious laughter. She admits she loves to laugh, and like her smile, her laughter takes over her entire being.
If Carol puts out there that she has every reason to be happy, that’s because she does.
Carol hasn’t let anything stand in the way of her happiness – not the expectations of a daughter growing up in the shadows of a famous father or the heartbreak of a mother realizing her child has a drug problem.
“You cannot keep her down,” her husband Jeff Journagan said. “Optimism rules.”
She’s a woman who celebrates all the joys of being a woman, her “feminine I am,” and a woman of means who knows an important element of happiness is giving to others. That’s exactly what she’s spent the last decade and more doing – giving to others to make her chosen community a better place to live.
“It tapped into my value system,” Carol said of Blue Springs. “It feels good here.”
Inherited imagination
Carol dreams big. In her mind everything is possible.
That mindset was nurtured in Carol and her five siblings from their father, Stanley Durwood, founder of the American Multiplex Cinemas, in their Shawnee, Kan., home.
“He created a whale of a backyard at our house,” Carol said.
The yard, as Carol remembers, had everything she and her siblings could have wanted – a bike rack for all the neighborhood children to use, a drinking fountain, a sandbox. The detached garage was a backboard for tennis.
“It was a great outlet,” Carol said.
In that backyard, which Carol duplicated in her first home, Durwood taught Carol, his oldest child, to play every sport and how to ride a bike.
Stanley Durwood was a great storyteller.
“He would tell about business deals in such a romantic style,” Carol said. “He loved the art of the deal.”
But it wasn’t all fun all the time. Carol took 12 years of classic piano and knew her parents expected her to develop a practical skill she could use as an adult. But the headmaster at the girls’ school she attended pointedly told Carol “they don’t make schools for girls like you.”
Carol admits she didn’t do well in school, and she didn’t know how to study. That first year out of high school was devastating for her.
So her parents made a decision for her – she would attend the Kansas City Business College for 12 months.
“I would learn a marketable skill,” Carol said. “It was wonderful, and I could do that. I felt good about myself.”
There, Carol learned how to type and how to take shorthand. She was trained to be a secretary. She found people she could communicate with and laugh with. She found value in herself and she found love.
Carol met Jeff at school, but it wasn’t until several years later that they married. Their lives took them away from each other and into marriages with other people.
“She was probably the right one the first time around,” Jeff said. “We just kind of drifted away and missed the chance.”
Carol and Jeff ran into each other in Westport after her marriage of 11 years ended. The couple reconnected and married. They’ve been married now for almost 19 years.
Because Carol’s children, Bo and Kate, were younger and easier to move than his, Carol agreed to make Blue Springs her home – a decision she’s never regretted.
The protective ‘Mama bear’
Jumping up from the glass table, Carol plants her feet on the hardwood floor, puts her arms up in the air and shapes her hands in claw-like fashion.
A woman who, normally, talks with her hands, Carol prefers to show versus tell. She offers a small growl to emphasize her point – the day she turned into a mama bear and made a hard decision for the betterment of her family.
She could feel her son slipping away from her and into a drug habit. Reading every day about different options, Carol said she spent a year coming up with a plan B for him.
“I didn’t want to lose him,” Carol said. “I’m the mom, it’s my job. I was the mom who jumped in front of the speeding train.”
Carol found a school for Bo in Idaho. She woke him up one morning and sent him half way across the country with two escorts from the school.
For Carol, the decision to send her only son away to school was the best thing she could have done for her family.
“It was such a dark chapter,” Carol said. “But we all got the phoenix out of it.”
During his two and a half years at the school, Bo learned leadership and the differences between want and need.
Carol knew she made the right decision when she and Jeff got to visit for the first time. She describes a scene of pulling up to the school and seeing Bo standing up on a wall, waiting. When he saw his mother, Carol recalls, he jumped down and greeted her.
“When I first got to see him, it must have been a two-minute hug,” Carol said, tears brimming her eyes.
The end result of Bo’s two and a half years at the school was a stronger family who used a possible negative experience as a reason to draw them closer to one another.
In the fairy godmother business
Before finding the school in Idaho, Carol tried to utilize local resources, but didn’t get the results she hoped for.
“It lit her fires for the Youth Outreach Unit and the work she did there,” Jeff said. “She saw it as an opportunity to make a difference.”
When Carol’s father died in 1999, she inherited a large sum of money and had to pay a one-time estate tax. To decrease the tax liability, she had the option to direct where a portion of the money would go, so she picked the CYOU, an organization that in the beginning focused on working with at-risk youth. After that, she and Jeff continued to find ways to give to their community.
“I felt like all of a sudden I was in the fairy godmother business,” Carol said. “I wanted to focus on Blue Springs. If I can give to Blue Springs, we can solve all the problems and create a sense of energy.”
In helping the CYOU, Carol found an energy for Blue Springs that has been unrivaled. She joined the Eastland Community Foundation, an organization that works to raise money for scholarships and grants in Eastern Jackson County communities.
She was also invited to join Out of the Blue into the Future, a group of volunteers focused on developing a vision for Blue Springs. The group was responsible for creating such initiatives as Career Central and a program that has become her pride and joy – Dental for Kids.
Mayor Carson Ross has known Carol and Jeff for several years, dating back to his years as a Missouri state representative. Now, as mayor, Ross says it’s important in any community to have dedicated citizens.
“Anyone involved in a charitable organization just adds to the image of the community as a caring, giving community. Carol is just a good reflection of this city,” Ross said. “She just has a passion for this community. And she doesn’t want any fanfare.”
With more than a decade of service to her community, Ross said Carol’s philanthropic reputation precedes her.
“When people think of Carol, they think of philanthropy,” Ross said. “She is not only willing to give of herself, but she’s willing to give of her means. And that reputation has gotten out there that she cares.”
Her efforts to make Blue Springs a place where residents can live “healthy, safe and well-balanced lives” led to Carol’s being named the Blue Springs Citizen of the Year in 2003 by the Blue Springs Chamber of Commerce.
The honor is one Jeff agrees is well deserved.
“She’s so community oriented,” Jeff said. “She is Mrs. Blue Springs.”
StandUp for change
As Carol started making her own niche in Blue Springs, she started putting a lot of her energy into Dental for Kids, a program that works with local dentists to help children who may not, otherwise, have dental care.
“Every story is a miracle,” Carol said.
Since its inception in 2003, Dental for Kids has helped more than 450 Blue Springs children ages 3 to 19, which equals about 900 hours donated by dentists all over Eastern Jackson County. All this spells out to more than $273,776 in donated services.
Originally formed under the Blue Springs WellLink umbrella (another product of Out of the Blue), Dental for Kids moved under StandUp Blue Springs when StandUp and WellLink merged.
StandUp Blue Springs formed as a grassroots effort to ecourage community involvement in 2005 (it’s predecessor WellLink formed in 2002). The goal of founders Carol and longtime friend Dave Wright was to give citizens another option to get involved and give back to the community.
“To me, Carol is the epitome of a true servant leader to the community. Carol has no agenda except doing what’s best for the community,” Wright said. “To work along side Carol is a pure joy.”
Wright and Journagan met while working on Out of the Blue and decided over lunch one day to form StandUp, an organization that quickly garnered a lot of attention. Community activists from all corners of Blue Springs came together to endorse Wright and Carol’s vision.
In it’s infancy, StandUp offered half-day seminars, visioning days in which participants were encouraged to dream big.
“It’s a great vehicle,” Journagan said. “It’s promoting high energy and pride in the city, a connectedness… ‘Yes we can, yes we can.’”
For Journagan, StandUp Blue Springs is an organization about solutions. When someone sees a problem in the community or a need, StandUp is a place he or she can go to find an answer. And StandUp has found a lot of answers so far. Dental for Kids is the flagship program, but the program has also fostered projects like the unleashed dog park and the disc golf course.
The organization encourages citizens to StandUp and Vote and StandUp and Volunteer, too. StandUp volunteers have also spearheaded initiatives like StandUp to Domestic Violence and StandUp Safe, which Carol said are currently on hiatus until StandUp can become a financially self-sustaining organization.
And to accomplish that goal, Carol and the StandUp board brought in executive director Monica Meeks, who is working on securing grant funds to keep the organization afloat. Currently, it’s funded in large part by private donations.
“We want to be one of the leading nonprofits, where people want to spend their time and resources,” Meeks said.
Being a part of building an organization from the ground up is rewarding for Meeks.
So is working with Carol.
“She’s a big-picture thinker,” Meeks said. “She has a vision for Blue Springs, and my job as executive director is to execute that vision.”
The yin to her yang
The phrase “big picture thinker” may be an understatement for Carol, who grew up seeing her family revolutionize the movie watching industry.
The family business started with Carol’s grandfather who sensed the days of vaudeville were numbered and eventually got into the movie theater business in 1920. Carol’s father took that family business and turned it into what is now AMC Theaters.
“It’s a real gift,” Carol says of her childhood. “But it’s a lot easier being Carol Journagan in Blue Springs than Carol Durwood in Kansas City. I have my own identity. It’s simple, and it’s mine.”
Part of that identity includes her relationship with Jeff. If Carol’s a big dreamer, then Jeff is the one who keeps her grounded.
It comes naturally to him – that’s what he does for a living. Jeff owns Schult Industries, a manufacturing company in Blue Springs.
“I’m not the creative type, and she has the ideas, which is just fantastic,” Jeff said. “I am used to anticipating the problems. It makes for a nice balance.”
Carol agrees, too. She admits sometimes she needs that voice of reason.
And who better than her husband?
“A nation could be built out of four Jeffs,” Carol quipped. “He could be one of the four pillars. He has strong ethics and stands up for what he believes in.”
For Jeff, seeing so many of his wife’s visions come to fruition is exciting – especially the success of Dental for Kids.
“It strums my heart when I think of so many kids who wouldn’t have dental care without (Dental for Kids),” Jeff said. “She’s always been the sweetest kindest person I’ve ever met. She truly cares about people.”
