Mason First Presbyterian Church
Mason First Presbyterian Church
Mason First Presbyterian Church | Staff

Getting to Know Kacey Torrey

by Margaret Doolittle
February 2009




Kacey Torrey is a staff member who helps make things go smoothly in her two positions at Mason First Presbyterian. On Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings Kacey supervises our youngest children in the nursery. Kacey says she likes getting to know new families on a more personal level. You’ll also often find her working as a web designer, consulting with Pastor Bill Pinches on innovative ideas for the church’s new website - MasonPresbyterian.org. Kacey designed the site, with his input, and says she enjoys web design and working with Pastor Bill so much that she wishes it could become her fulltime job! She likes meeting the challenges that occur and using her creativity in this way. The challenges of Kacey’s dual positions include having too little space for childcare in the nursery and not having as much time as she’d like to work on our website.

Although Kacey joined our staff as a childcare provider in the spring of 2005 and became our official web designer in 2008, her history with our church goes back much further. She was seven months old when she first came through our church door with her parents, Dave and Mary Torrey, and older brothers, T.J. and Frank.

Kacey was involved with church activities – especially Youth Group - all through high school. She and her good friend, Anne Schrock, were instrumental in getting the support necessary to refurbish the present Youth Group room. Kacey and Anne were Camp Greenwood campers every summer, too, and still share great memories of sleeping in Quonset huts, singing silly songs around the campfire and playing junkanoo games there. They also traveled on mission trips to Kentucky, one made especially memorable after they shared a sinking twin bed because they were both too scared to sleep on the top bunk with the spiders and mice!

A present mission of Kacey’s is the Yarners Club she established and now chairs at our church. The group gets together twice a month to knit and crochet for charity. The club donates handcrafted items to area groups that serve those in need and works with the Women’s Association to sell items during Mason’s Down Home Days event. Money earned by the Yarners has helped support Camp Greenwood and added to our church’s stained glass window fund.

Kacey, with her teacher’s degree earned at Northern Michigan University, discovered it’s in helping others learn that she’s found a special passion: "I’ve been tutoring since about 10th grade – National Honors Society hours, private, homebound and Upward Bound tutoring, and in the math lab at NMU. I most frequently tutor in math. In one of my tutoring experiences I helped a 10-year-old girl from Thailand learn English. Neither of us could speak the other’s language, but we still managed to communicate enough to get started. It also helped that she was a bright girl!"

Kacey is currently working at North Aurelius elementary as an EI classroom aide. She enjoys it, but is looking for a different way to work with young people and the community... something stimulating that will allow her to use her creativity. "I LOVE math! she says. "I do it for fun sometimes. I love sharing 'secrets' with students who are struggling, and watching their faces light up as they suddenly understand something in math. Just for fun, I plan to retake my Axiomatic Geometry class (on DVD) so I can enjoy it all again.

During and after college, Kacey widened her horizons in a variety of ways. She’s studied photography and art, as well as education, and has worked as a waitress, a graphic artist in a screen printing shop, an office assistant, and an accountant; at a drugstore, in a movie theater, as a substitute teacher, and for a warehouse retail chain; and lived in Marquette, Rapid River, Cadillac, Negaunee and Dollar Bay. From those experiences, says Kacey, "I’ve discovered jobs I don’t like and places I don’t want to live!"

But high on Kacey’s list of things she especially enjoys, besides math, are animals of all kinds, tracing family genealogy, learning the Vietnamese language... and using her hands to knit, crochet, make cards and scrapbooks, photograph animals and nature scenes, expand her computer horizons, and work word, number and logic puzzles. Hopes for the future include adopting children and adding to her family of beloved cats and dogs.

We’re all glad that Kacey Torrey returned to her hometown of Mason and to our church, and we celebrate Kacey’s wonderful mix of eclectic talents that enhances our staff and our congregation!
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©2011 Mason First Presbyterian Church                  phone:  (517) 676-9333                 fax:  (517) 676-9403                 info@MasonPresbyterian.org

Web  Supervisor: Rev. Bill Pinches                   Web Master: Sheren Wright                  Web Designer: Kacey Torrey