By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
“Bring back the wave.”
That may sound like a line from a 1960s Beach Boys song, but it is actually a phrase with much deeper meaning. It serves as a reminder to avoid a genuine tragedy, such as what happened more than three years ago to a rural family.
Last week we met Denee and Jess Cupp, owners of MKC’s Kitchen LLC. Jess and Denee met and were married in Texas. Jess visited Kansas to help his parents after they bought a place near Ness City where they were raising pheasants as game birds.
“When I got out here, I realized I really enjoyed being in the country,” Cupp said “We felt this would be the best place to raise our kids, so we moved here.”
The Cupps bought an old farmhouse, remodeled it, and that is where their kids grew up.
Their daughter, Kenzee, grew up cooking with her father and loved preparing food for people. She dreamed of going to culinary school and becoming a farm-to-table chef. After high school, she was attending culinary school in Hays when tragedy struck.
On March 1, 2021, Kenzee was weeks away from graduating at the top of her culinary school class and was driving home from Hays. As she was crossing Highway 4, a distracted driver in a fully loaded truck came through the stop sign and smashed into her car. She was killed on impact.
“The commercial operator was using What’s App on his phone, talking to his passenger, and finishing his lunch while driving,” Denee Cupp said. “He claimed he never saw the flashing red lights or the stop sign when he barreled through the intersection.”
“Kenzee was known for not using her phone while driving and always kept it in the same spot,” Cupp said. “That’s where it was found after the collision.”
In March 2022, the Cupp family started MKC’s Kitchen in honor of their daughter. This licensed commercial kitchen is located on the Cupp family farm near the rural community of Bazine, population 282 people. Now, that’s rural.
MKC Rub and Kenzee’s Everything Sauce are the company’s lead products. They are available at regional stores and through the website at www.mkckitchen.com.
The Cupps wanted to do more to prevent such tragedies. They started a non-profit organization called Kenzee Cares to prevent distracted driving. A portion of the proceeds from sales of MKC’s Kitchen products is donated to Kenzee Cares.
One project of Kenzee Cares is called Bless A Meal, through which home-cooked food is provided to a family.
Kenzee Cares has a few key messages One is: “Nothing on your cell phone is worth someone’s life.”
Another: “Heads up, phones down” while driving.
Another message has to do with the time-honored but disappearing practice of getting a friendly wave from other drivers as one meets them.
“We loved how almost everyone waved or nodded when you passed them driving down the road,” Cupp said. “Now, we mostly only see the tops of people’s heads as we pass them.”
These days, “you have to drive very defensively and hope you don’t get hit by someone looking down at their phone,” she added.
The Cupps wish to restore that practice of drivers giving a friendly wave rather than looking at messages on their cell phones while driving. “Bring Back the Wave” is their slogan for this initiative.
“We want to educate and bring awareness of the distraction of cell phones while driving,” Cupp said. “So many lives have been taken from families that are changed forever because someone was checking their phone. We want to prevent this heartbreak and devastation from happening to other families.”
For more information, go to www.kenzeecares.org.
“Bring back the wave.” No, it’s not a Beach Boys song; it’s a call for drivers to give an alert and friendly wave to each other rather than being distracted by messages on their cell phones.
We commend Denee and Jess Cupp for making a difference by encouraging safe and undistracted driving. I hope their message will start a wave of change.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at https://www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles/. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
