Via: defendernetwork.com
Ground-breaking, ahead of her time, consummate professional, the first African American woman to grace the cover of Playboy, the first woman to join the staff of CBS Sports’ “NFL Today,” the first Black Miss Ohio.
She was also only one of only a handful of black actresses to consistently get work in the 70s. The list of accomplishments and accolades for the legendary Jayne Kennedy is as long as your arm, but the list falls short of measuring her true impact on society as it is today.
Seriously, how many firsts can a woman have? Though certain aspects of her career had been cut short by endometriosis, a debilitating and painful disease, Kennedy’s recent absence from the limelight has been mostly due to her being a full time parent to daughters Savannah, Kopper and Zaire. Savannah is working behind the scenes at FOX, Kopper is a senior at Pepperdine and a Magic Johnson Foundation Taylor Michaels Scholar. Her kids have certainly taken to picking up the torch! Now that Zaire is 2 years away from graduating high school Kennedy tells EURweb.com’s Lee Bailey that she’s planning on doing on a thing or two as soon as the nest empties out completely.
“I’ve been working on a couple of projects,” said Kennedy. “I have a movie script in development called ‘Maggie and Jeanette.’ It started with the profile of Jeanette Rankin, who was the first woman voted into the United States Congress and was an advocate for peace. She voted against World War 1 and World War 2. She was blasphemed and kicked out of Congress, but she didn’t stop. So, her life is just an amazing story. It started with writing about that, but I wanted to make it more contemporary and have it be more about what vets are going through today. So we had this idea to also incorporate the peace movement with not only Jeanette’s story, but some of the problems that the returning vets are facing when returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
That’s a golden idea if we’ve ever heard one. Timely and relevant as well.
“A lot of it deals with the medical issues,” continued Kennedy. “We have an antiquated system. Some of the vets that did not return from previous wars are now returning thanks to modern technology and kevlar. Now that the numbers are so great we don’t have facilities to deal with the numbers. We don’t have services to deal with the mental problems … PTSD and all of that. So, a lot of that is incorporated into the story as well.
Eurweb.com
