The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

Christian Kennedy grew up in the Coulee, went to the big city of Las Vegas, and returned last year with his wife Sara to settle down and help take over the family business.

Having graduated in 2002, Kennedy met his wife at Eastern Washington University, and from there they migrated to Las Vegas, Nevada where they found work within Clark County School District, the fifth largest school district in the nation, where Christian worked in information technology as a programmer. Sara taught English for 13 years in that district and in charter schools.

The pair also spent time in the Tri-Cities, Washington area, from where Sara originally comes.

Moving to Electric City in June of 2019, Sara, having earned a masters degree in school administration in 2015 from the University of Phoenix, now works as the dean of students at Lake Roosevelt Junior/Senior High School. Christian works at Foisy & Kennedy, in the insurance part of the business, alongside his father, Jerry Kennedy.

"Insurance is a brand new thing for me," Christian said. "So far good. ... I'm still learning a lot, that's the big thing."

Christian Kennedy said that experiencing a big city was positive and something everyone should experience, describing Las Vegas as having a transient nature to it, with people from the East Coast of the United States, from the West Coast, and from all over the world, creating a very diverse atmosphere.

Although they miss having things open 24 hours a day, and having more restaurants, such as Korean barbecues and their favorite Mediteranean restaurant, Christian said they were ready to leave Las Vegas.

"We spent enough time there; we were ready to return to the Northwest," he said.

Despite the little bit of culture shock leaving the big city, living the small town lifestyle is part of what drew them to the Coulee, as well as being close to family in the Northwest.

"We really like living in the area," Christian said.

"I have loved our life since moving to the Coulee," Sara Kennedy said. "Since Chris grew up here, the transition has been really easy because we already have lots of friends and family in town. I love that in small towns everything centers around community. We spend our weekends out on the boat with a big group or watching football with a bunch of friends at our house."

She added that working at the school and getting to know students and their families in and out of the school is another plus to life here, and that a neighborly quality is also a big plus to life in the Coulee.

"A couple weeks ago we had a huge windstorm that knocked down a part of our backyard fence and we had some neighbors that took damage," she said. "I loved that in the morning after the storm neighbors were outside helping each other clean up, you don't see that type of camaraderie in a big city."