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Former educator Steve Kinard dies at 58

The former director of Withlacoochee Technical Institute was found dead Friday. Friends remember a generous man who was always in good spirits.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT
Published January 6, 2007

INVERNESS - Steve Kinard, the former director of the Withlacoochee Technical Institute, was found dead in his Inverness home early Friday Jan. 5, 2007.

He was 58.

The cause and manner of death were not released pending an autopsy scheduled for Sunday in Leesburg.

Mr. Kinard had a 30-year career with Citrus public schools. It ended in controversy as he lost his beloved director's job in 2000 after a series of policy and rule violations. He retired from the district in 2002.

But it was Mr. Kinard, the caring educator, whom friends reflected on Friday as word of his death spread.

"We lost a great one today, I can assure you of that," said Rick Darby, assistant principal at Citrus High School and a friend to Mr. Kinard for nearly 30 years. "And a lot of kids are hurting today."

Darby said Mr. Kinard was always helping students and was generous with his friends.

"I can't tell you the times I've seen him just reach into his pocket and hand kids money," he said. "He'd hand them a couple of dollars and say, 'Make me proud.' "

"It was a pleasure to know him," said Ed Murphy, a longtime school administrator who recently came out of retirement to run the district's Horizon program at WTI.

"He was always in good spirits, and if you weren't in good spirits he would make sure that you were," Murphy said.

Mr. Kinard's passion was vocational education, said Murphy, who knew him more than two decades.

"The man lived and breathed vocational education," Murphy said. "Without stepping on any toes, I'd have to say that he was one of the best vocational administrators at that center that this district ever had."

Originally from Bushnell, Mr. Kinard attended St. Petersburg Junior College and the University of Florida, where he earned his degree in agriculture education.

He began working as an agriculture teacher at Citrus High School in 1970. He served as WTI director from 1985 through 2000.

Superintendent Sandra "Sam" Himmel, who attended Citrus High when Mr. Kinard taught there, said she could still see him standing in the doorway of the old school telling students they couldn't enter until 8:30 a.m. "whether there were tornado warnings or not," Himmel recalled.

"I used to tease him and remind him of leaning on that front door," she said.

"Steve was a good person. With everything that he went through at WTI, it was like his goodness was his fault," Himmel said. "He was great with the kids, and the kids really respected him."

Mr. Kinard's tenure at WTI was marred by continuing policy violations detailed in a series of stories in the Citrus Times in 1997 and 1998.

An investigation by the newspaper showed that he had used the school's auto shops for inexpensive vehicle repairs for himself and his friends and numerous rules were violated in the process. He was reprimanded and ordered to make changes.

A year later, new problems in the shops were revealed when the Times reported that many of the jobs done there were done off the books using cash transactions.

Mr. Kinard was suspended for 20 days without pay.

While Mr. Kinard has been gone from the directorship for a half dozen years and retired since 2002, he was a frequent visitor at WTI, according to the current director, C. Andrew Buchanan.

"He was in just before the holidays," he said. "He's in here fairly frequently, has lunch in the cafeteria and shoots the breeze with the old timers."

Darby said Mr. Kinard was like family.

"I'll never forget him. That's for sure," he said.

Information about arrangements was not immediately available.

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at 564-3621 or behrendt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 5, 2007, 19:48:26]