A month into grieving the deaths of their two children — 6-year-old Addie and 4-year-old Baylor — Lauren and Matt Kirchgessner created a foundation in their memory.
“It gave Matt and I hope. It kept us going,” Lauren Kirchgessner said in a recent interview. “It gave us something to get up for.”
Since then, the foundation has not only given them hope but has donated 100,000 books to students in the Archdiocese of Louisville and Southern Indiana.
The couple formed the Addie & Baylor Kirchgessner Foundation in January of 2021. The children died in a traffic incident in Panama City Beach, Fla., a month before, in December of 2020.
Their nameseake foundation aims to enrich children’s lives through books and storytelling. It has donated books to Norton Children’s Hospital and to public and Catholic schools, including St. Paul School, St. Agnes School and St. Lawrence Preschool and hosted more than two dozen book fairs where students receive free books, according to the foundation’s website.
The foundation has also invested $100,000 in renovating libraries at Notre Dame Academy and St. Lawrence Preschool in the past two years.
The Kirchgessners chose to honor their children with a literacy foundation because the children loved to read and because education is important, said Lauren Kirchgessner, who taught in the Jefferson County Public School system for 18 years.
She noted that the foundation also offers resources for parents.
“We want parents to understand the importance of reading with children,” said Kirchgessner. “I truly believe, to be successful, kids have to be exposed to literacy really early on. It can build really good quality time, too.”
She and her husband read to Addie and Baylor every night. During that time, the children would also talk about their day and about things that might be bothering them, Kirchgessner said.
Sitting in the library at Notre Dame, where Addie was a first-grader, Kirchgessner smiled as she described the children.
Addie was “very theatrical. She was silly. She loved to sing and dance. Everybody loved her. She was caring and fun. Baylor was very bossy. He always wanted things his way. He was all boy — mud, dirt, fire trucks, police cars.
“They fought, but they truly loved each other. I always had snacks in the car when I picked them up from school. Baylor always made sure Addie got her snack first,” she said.
Since its inception four years ago, the foundation has grown and taken up new projects.
It’s now in partnership with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library through the local affiliate — the Imagination Library of Louisville, Inc. A monthly donation from the foundation to the local affiliate allows children between the ages of birth to five years, who are registered, to receive books shipped directly to them free of cost.
The Louisville affiliate “heard we like to get books in the hands of kids,” said Kirchgessner. “We love it when people reach out for books. We love when a school reaches out.”
It’s been four years since the accident and the couple, too, have grown through their grief, they said.
They’re new parents again — to 15-month-old daughter Poppie. Poppie has inherited the same love of books as her siblings and she’s become the foundation’s little “ambassador,”
Their faith has helped them navigate their loss.
“We knew early on we had a choice to be bitter or to be better. It’s a lot easier to be bitter, but we feel good about trying to be better,” Kirchgessner said. “As Catholics, we questioned a lot. ‘Why us?’ The foundation doesn’t help with the ‘why’ but it gives us purpose again.”
To learn more about the Addie & Baylor Kirchgessner Foundation and how to get involved, visit https://www.addieandbaylorfoundation.com/.
To register a child to receive books through the Imagination Library, visit https://imaginationlibrary.com/usa/affiliate/KYJEFFERSON/.
