Nancy Simons in her many years in east Kansas City’s Blue Valley Neighborhood has shown a knack for rallying people to help lift her community up. Whether it was helping get the Police Athletic League off the ground, or getting uniforms for some of the many sports teams she coached over the years, she’s always looking after kids.

Now the community matchmaker has done it again.

For some five years now, KSHB-41’s anchor, Kevin Holmes, has carried on his own mission, “Gift of Sole,” helping the station raise funds to put children in very nice sneakers.

And Simons has had a long relationship with LINC’s Caring Communities program at Trailwoods Elementary School in the Kansas City Public Schools.

As a community organizer, and as a grandparent whose six grandchildren all went through the LINC program, Simons knows about the families at Trailwoods and their needs and hopes and dreams. She was sure Holmes would love to support these kids.

Holmes walks into gyms like here at Trailwoods, he said, and he remembers his childhood growing up on the South Side of Chicago — those years when he, like many of his schoolmates, couldn’t always have good shoes.

“And that was the Michael Jordan Era,” Holmes said, recalling those years when the Chicago Bulls’ NBA star was spawning championships and the phenomenon of his “Air Jordan” Nike shoes. Those who couldn’t get good shoes often felt shamed.

“I don’t want anyone to go through that,” he said.

Once Simons was able to tell Holmes about Trailwoods and the neighborhood and the kids, Holmes was sold and he and KSHB-41 colleagues came with 115 shoes, carefully matched size by size to each of the children.

Before the children were ushered in, LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Mayra Hernandez delivered a stack of hand-made thank you cards that the LINC children had made for Holmes and the Gift of Sole.

He would carry those cards with him. And later that evening, the 10 p.m. news shared the story, showing the footage of Holmes meeting with the children, capturing their delight as the each received a box and ran back to their spot on the floor where they opened it and saw the new pair of sneakers. And not just any sneakers, but sleek, brand-name sneakers.

And Holmes, as the evening news anchor, introduced the piece himself. And when the camera returned to him, he held up that stack of thank you cards for everyone to see.

“A special, special thanks to the kids,” he said. “They all made hand-made thank you cards. This was so awesome it almost brought me to tears.”

“I am just forever, forever grateful,” he said, “for the kids there.”

It is a spirit of gratitude that carries on at LINC, Trailwoods and the neighborhood Simons loves — and the kids.