2013 grad known for compassion, determination
By Vicky Wedig
EDITOR
Graduation times three will be the case in the Kort house this year.
All three of Chad and Kathy Kort’s children – Ashley, Alyssa and Alexandra Kort – will graduate.
Ashley Kort received her master’s degree in speech pathology from Rush University in Chicago on May 23; Alyssa Kort received her bachelor’s degree from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., on May 18, and Alex Kort will graduate from Delavan-Darien High School.
Alex Kort is this year’s Delavan Enterprise Outstanding Senior. She was selected from among five candidates for her balance of academics, volunteerism, school and community activities, athletics and work.
Alex is the daughter of Chad Kort, a general surgeon at Aurora Lakeland Medical Center in Elkhorn, and Kathy Kort, a home health nurse for Aurora Health Care.
Like her parents and sisters, Alex Kort plans to pursue a career in the health field. She will attend Marquette University next year with a double major of biology and Spanish.
“I want to be a doctor,” Kort said.
She said she chose Spanish as a second major to make herself more marketable in the medical field.
“The demand for people to know Spanish is getting greater every year,” Kort said.
Kort said living in Delavan with a 30-percent Hispanic population and attending Delavan-Darien High School influenced her decision to pursue Spanish. Kort said she is unsure where she will attend medical school but might return to Delavan where her family lives to practice medicine and wants to be able to speak directly to Spanish-speaking patients.
“How am I supposed to build a relationship with them if I can’t even talk to them myself?” she said.
Academically, Kort has a 4.41 grade-point average, has been on the high honor roll all four years of high school and is an Academic Award and Top Ten Award recipient. But, Kort said, her achievements are not effortless.
“I’m not a genius,” she said. “I work really hard for my grades.”
Chad and Kathy Kort say their youngest daughter is very determined and holds herself to high standards.
“She’s very determined to not only just get As but to learn and to give a good representation of herself when she does a project or takes a test,” Chad Kort said. “To be satisfied, she has to feel like she’s given it her best effort.”
Alex Kort showed the same determination on the volleyball court as she did in the classroom, her father said. Despite three surgeries – two rotator cuff and an ACL repair – and a stress fracture, Alex Kort played club volleyball and was on the D-DHS volleyball team for four years.
“Alex is a really determined young lady,” Kathy Kort said. “She’s a kid who has high standards for herself and for other people, and yet she very much looks out for the underdog.”
Chad and Kathy Kort recalled different occasions when their daughter stuck up for people less fortunate.
At a busy volleyball tournament earlier this year, a janitor with some apparent mental deficiencies was outside a women’s bathroom waiting to restock the toilet tissue. Chad Kort said women were yelling at the man because they were out of toilet paper and he wasn’t going into the restroom. Alex intervened and told the women to use another restroom temporarily so the man could do his job, and she then took the brunt of their complaining.
“That’s Alex,” he said. “She doesn’t show a lot of compassion to a bully, but she shows a lot of compassion to someone being bullied.”
Kathy Kort said when Alex was younger, about 10 or 11 years old, the family occasionally traveled to Chicago where they encountered beggars and homeless people.
“Alex would just cry,” she said.
Because the experience was so upsetting for Alex, the family stopped going to the city but wanted to return, so they began packing sack lunches and handing them out.
“It was a good reminder for all of us to be aware of those around us who need help,” Kathy Kort said.
Alex Kort said she is ready to spread her wings and define herself as she begins college and believes attending Delavan-Darien High School has prepared her for that. After attending Delavan Christian School through eighth-grade, Alex chose the public school for high school.
“I’m so happy I decided to go to Delavan,” she said. “I really feel like I’ve grown up being at Delavan.”
Alex said her parents aren’t ready for her to go, but Chad and Kathy Kort say she will be closer at Marquette than their other daughters were at college in Michigan, and they expect to see her frequently.
“We’ve had our 18 years to train them and teach them and encourage them,” Kathy Kort said. “It’s exciting to see them moving on.”
