Her father, ‘Bud’ Kern, was the biggest influence on her, knew getting things done was more important than recognition
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
Atlantic County Commissioner Maureen Kern was pretty much destined for leadership due to family ties.
The 64-year-old is the daughter of Lawrence “Bud” Kern, whose legacy as a supporter of recreation programs is celebrated by Somers Point’s Lawrence “Bud” Kern Field. She said she was asked to get involved once, then again and again.
Kern, the third of six children, is a 1974 graduate of Mainland Regional High School. She said the culture of the 1970s did not influence her desire to serve the community as much as her father’s involvement.
“My influence was really more about my father, because my father was a huge volunteer,” Kern said.
She noted a story years ago in The Sentinel about her father had a headline that read: “Every city has one — a heck of a guy.”
“I always go by that headline. He just knew how to get guys together and get it done,” she said. “In those days everyone would just do free labor. You knew the electrician, you knew the carpenter, you knew the concrete guy, my dad was a glazier. He was just one of those guys who was able to say ‘Hey, we gotta build another Little League field’ or ‘we will make the car junkyard into a rec area,’ which is what they did do, actually.”
Her father died of a “massive heart attack” at age 52. After his death, a field in the area known colloquially as The Pit was named in his honor.
“He was so young that it was devastating to the community,” Kern said.
Before he passed, Kern said, when the city was getting ready to name the field, “Bud” caught on that they were going to name it after him and he set up a contest for schoolchildren to name the field “and anything that had his name on it he put in the trash.”
“It was very shortly after that that he passed and they named it for my dad,” she said. “He was a very humble guy.”
During high school, Kern was a member of the color guard along with Marie Hayes. At the time, the marching band was winning national titles.
“It was nice, at the time nobody ever traveled out of state but the band did, so me and a girlfriend were like ‘Hey, let’s do this. You get to go somewhere,’ so we ended up doing the color guard part of it,” she said.
Kern enjoyed English class but math, not so much. She said she really liked a teacher named Mr. Philips, who became a family friend, and she “really enjoyed Mr. Slattery’s English classes.”
“Some of the things we had to read you would think would be boring but he really made things come alive. I really enjoyed Mr. Slattery,” she said.
After high school, Kern earned a degree at Atlantic Cape Community College and then went to Montclair State University.
At the time, the job market at home was very poor but things were looking up as casino gaming had recently been approved.
“When they said Atlantic City was dying, Atlantic City died,” Kern said. “We weren’t even permitted to go in there. There were a couple clubs that people would go to but you really didn’t go to Atlantic City for anything.”
Kern returned home after college. Her father was working as a labor supervisor on a casino and she started working at Caesar’s Palace when it opened.
She said the lessons her father instilled in her stuck with here.
“I paid allegiance to that, his legacy,” she said, noting her involvement was somewhat thrust upon her.
“It wasn’t like I was a political science major or anything like that,” she said, noting she served on the city’s recreation board and the school district’s Foundation for Education.
“Then someone says, ‘Why don’t you run for school board? We really need someone,’ so I ran for school board,” Kern said. “Then several years after that someone was like, ‘Why don’t you run for city council. We really could use you on city council,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, God, no. That’s just scary — politics.”
She said there was always someone who was “very good at coercing me so I did that and then again with the freeholder board, it was kind of the same. I just started out volunteering and it just kind of evolved into where I am now.”
Where she is now is chairwoman of the board after first having the distinction of being the first woman ever to be vice chair.
Kern said the culture of times did not influence her directly, but certainly the fight for equal rights for women helped her achieve the leadership role in which she now finds herself.
“My upbringing was about community,” she said. “It wasn’t about politics and the things that were going on. It was not the story that I was like, Hey, let’s go into politics,’ but I love serving the community and being there for people, that’s really what it was about.”
In fact, Kern said, he father pushed back against politicizing the things that he was able to accomplish.
“When he would do things in town he would say, ‘We’re not going to make this about politics,’ so he was always saying it’s about getting things done for the community,” she said.
Kern feels she has carried on her father’s legacy by “working hard and learning things, just being there for people and knowing the right thing to do.”
She said when she started getting involved one man told her to “make the right decisions for the people.”
“That always sticks in my head if there is anything difficult going on: You’re working for the people, you are elected by the people, so make the right decision in your heart, don’t ever be led.”
Like Caren Fitzpatrick, Kern now works promoting Atlantic City as a destination through her position at Tropicana, where she books conventions.
She thinks the casinos “were definitely coming back” after casino gaming in neighboring Pennsylvania took a huge bite out of Atlantic City’s market share. However, like Fitzpatrick, she thinks “development around it didn’t follow as good as it should have.”
“I believe people were really trying to change that but we are 30 years into this and you don’t have that family destination. They keep talking about bringing stuff and every once in a while little things will pop up, but you really need that,” she said, noting air transportation is vital to the industry.
Kern said things were looking up until the coronavirus pandemic hit last spring.
Now, she said, “we’re basically not booking anything. All we did from the beginning is cancel things for a year, year and a half actually. It’s pretty distressing because your fall is a very heavy convention season.
“Spring we were packed but we canceled it all, then we went into canceling the fall. Those are the times that are really strong in the convention business and they bring the business to restaurants and all the other venues. So, if you don’t have conventions, you are running very little occupancy … and not having conventions makes it that much worse.
“It was doing well, and I believe with Hard Rock coming in and Ocean has made a nice asset to the town as well, and then boom,” she said. “But I think we’ll get back. I’m hoping that we start getting more regional meetings because maybe people aren’t going to fly as much. That’s why Atlantic City worked because it’s a regional destination.”
She has worked for Caesars Entertainment, which now has Tropicana, Caesar’s and Harrah’s, booking conventions, corporate meetings and other events for the past 18 years.
“I’ve being doing this for a long time and never been through this,” she said. “We will come out of it. I remember when the casinos were closing on March 16, I said ‘See you in two weeks.’”