Click here to subscribe today or Login.
“I love my job. I love to think, ‘I just made her fairy tale come true,’ ” said Kathi Bankes, who considers the chance to help a couple plan a wedding one of the most enjoyable aspects of working as director of catering and events for Metz Culinary Creations.
“With any wedding, for any bride, you are creating the dream she’s had since she was old enough to know what a wedding is,” Bankes said, remembering one of the most unusual venues she’s transformed in time for a wedding reception was the hangar at the Wyoming Valley Airport.
The airport usually doesn’t see a lot of banquets, but she and her staff brought in their own stoves and made sure everything was in place for “a beautiful sit-down dinner.”
Bankes knew the bride and groom planned to arrive via helicopter. What she didn’t expect was to see birds flying around inside the hangar before the festivities.
“I think they were robins,” Bankes said, remembering she coped by scattering crackers to distract the birds away from the tables.
Hitting upon such a creative solution gives her satisfaction; so does working as part of the Metz team, which she has done for 13 years — starting as a bar manager at T.G.I. Friday’s and progressing to general manager at Lucky’s Sporthouse and sales manager at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
“I don’t think there’s any other industry where co-workers are so willing to help each other out. We’re a team,” she said, adding modestly. “Honestly I don’t feel like a Distinctive Woman. I’m just part of a team.”
She’s also an enthusiastic volunteer — an avocation she began as a 12-year-old eager to serve as a camp counselor.
“I told the priest in charge I really wanted to do it, and I was used to younger children because I had brothers and sisters,” she said. “When I told my mother, she said, ‘As long as you understand, you’re a volunteer and that means you don’t get paid’ and I said, ‘I don’t care; I want to do it anyway.’”
Bankes eventually started working for pay in the food service industry.
”I spent two years as a car hop,” she said.
“Not on roller skates,” she clarified with a laugh.
After she graduated from Carbondale Area High School, Bankes didn’t immediately seek post-secondary education. Years later she was a single mom, working as a secretary during the day, when she decided to study tourism and hospitality at a vocational-technical school in the evening.
“I decided, I had to get a better grip on life,” she said.
No matter what else she was doing, she said, she always had an extra job as a server or tending bar in the food service industry, where it feels like “I can get paid to socialize, and your co-workers become your family.”
Speaking of family, Bankes was mother to three children, ages 12, 8 and 2, when she suffered a stroke at age 32.
“I had to get well,” she said, remembering how she worked through rehab, learned to speak again and eventually became a spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign.
She’s also chairman of the board of directors of the Wyoming Valley Chapter of the Red Cross and serves on the boards of Northeast Sight Services and the YMCA. She’s active in a golf tournament that supports Dinners For Kids, a program for which Metz supplies meals to children in need in the Back Mountain area — “I’m so glad to work for such a generous company,” she said — while Ollie’s Restaurant does the same on the West Side.
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), which pairs caring adults with Luzerne County children in foster care, is also close to her heart; she serves on a committee to help the organization.
“This is where we live,” she said firmly. “We need to take care of the people in our community because if we don’t, who will?”
“Believe me, when you get done volunteering you have the best feeling,” said Bankes, who frequently encourages young people to volunteer.
Bankes, 65, lives in Exeter with her husband, Dave. She has three grown children: John Baldino, married to his wife Rachael; Shauna Turlip, married to her husband, Mike, and Kelsey Tyson, married to her wife, Marin. Bankes also has four grandchildren.
To reader more Distinctive Women stories, click here.
