Meet Our Members:
Aimee Krivan & Sharon Smeenk are volunteers & fast friends
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The volunteers that play together, stay together: In addition to their work for manatees, Sharon Smeenk (front) and Aimee Krivan (back) enjoy Pilates classes and other activities.
(Photo courtesy of Sharon Smeenk.)
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It was Earth Day 2002, and Save the Manatee Club needed volunteers to staff an education table at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Always a busy time for environmental organizations, volunteers are at a premium for Earth Day events. And that’s how Aimee Krivan and Sharon Smeenk found themselves teamed up to cover the event for an entire day. The two women had never met, but they hit it off right away.
“We exchanged e-mail addresses that day and within a couple of weeks, we met to go biking and then for happy hour,” says Sharon. “We just clicked,” adds Aimee. “We enjoy a lot of the same activities, and so we started coordinating other adventures together.”
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Aimee (far left) has been a longtime volunteer
for the Club. (Photo courtesy of SMC.)
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A newcomer to Florida, Sharon and her husband had just moved to the state from St. Louis, MO, and she started volunteering as a way to meet people and learn about the new environment. “We wanted to be where it’s warm,” she says. “Manatees were new, exotic, and amazing, and I thought it was cool to be in a place that had them.”
Aimee, on the other hand, has lived in Florida since she was six months old (“I’m almost native”), and she has been in love with manatees for as long as she can remember. A longtime SMC volunteer, although she has lived outside the state several times, she “always returns to the manatees.”
In addition to other interests, Aimee and Sharon both share a fierce desire to help protect the environment. “I look around and see so much development. It’s disheartening, and volunteering is something that I can do to help,” says Sharon.
“Manatees need all the help they can get,” notes Aimee. “I’m not afraid to talk about manatees in front of people who don’t feel the same, but I do it nicely and with tact. And Sharon and I are approachable. We make people feel comfortable. After all, how can you not love manatees? They make volunteering easy.”
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(l-r) Sharon and Aimee help out at the SMC office by filling manatee education packets for students.
(Photo by Nancy Sadusky, SMC.)
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Besides staffing event tables, Aimee and Sharon also help out with office work at the Club. They find that working together on volunteer projects gives them time to chat and catch up. “People don’t realize that volunteering doesn’t have to be a large amount of time,” says Sharon. “Even if you can only give a couple of hours, every little bit helps.”
Asked to describe what she likes best about Sharon, Aimee says: “There’s so many good things. Sharon’s a loyal, caring friend. She’s very supportive.” And Sharon observes: “Aimee is full of life and energy and optimism. She’s nice to be around.”
“It’s funny,” says Sharon, “because when I got the e-mail saying I was scheduled to volunteer all day with Aimee Krivan at the Earth Day event, my husband said as a joke, ‘What do you think about this Aimee Krivan person? What if she’s really weird?’ And I said, ‘Hey, for all you know, we could become great friends!’”
“Save the Manatee Club brought us together,” says Aimee.
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Whiskers is the manatee adopted by Aimee Krivan. Whiskers is a male manatee. He lives in the wild and visits the warm waters of Blue Spring State Park in the winter. Born to Dana, another Blue Spring manatee, in 1996, Whiskers is an exceptionally curious manatee. He started hanging out with the guys and venturing away from his mother at a very young age.
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Lily (at right) is the manatee adopted by Sharon Smeenk and her husband Vic . Lily is also a Blue Spring manatee, and she has been visiting the park since 1974. The mother of 10 calves, Lily is also a great-grandmother and has several great-grandcalves. In addition to her own family, Lily has been known to act as a surrogate mother to orphaned calves at the spring.
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Look Mom, I'm On the Web Site!
If you are an SMC member and want to be featured on the "Meet A Member" page of our web site and in our e-newsletter, please send us a photo and tell us something about you, what you like about manatees, who your adopted manatee is, and why you became a member of Save the Manatee Club. Send an e-mail to education@savethemanatee.org. If we feature you at the web site, you’ll receive a manatee-related gift.
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