History fascinates Kathleen Heyworth.  For the past year and half, she has conducted research on Camp Butler during the Civil War. “I grew up in this area, and I’m amazed that I had no idea it was a prisoner of war camp and a training camp,” she says.  Now she often finds herself digging in the dirt on a friend’s property near the camp and unearthing treasures.  “I’ve actually found civil war bullets. That’s what got me hooked.  I wanted to know:  Who touched this bullet? Whose button was this?”  She began a collection of civil war photographs and letters that is slowly growing. “I’ve spent a lot of time working on this research; hopefully there might be a book in there someday,” she says.  “There were 200,000 soldiers who went through Camp Butler, so there are 200,000 stories.  I just have to find a few of the really good ones.” 

Interestingly, it’s the human stories developing right now which will represent Heyworth’s own impact on history. That history is being written in the lives on children and families who encounter the Mini O’Beirne Crisis Nursery.  As its Director, Heyworth organizes and oversees the care of children whose lives might be impacted by their parents’ crises.      It’s the type of social service job Heyworth has always felt drawn to. She grew up in Virden, where both her mother’s and father’s parents emigrated from Durham County, England. The families did not know each other, but settled there because of the town’s coal mine. “I loved growing up in a small town,” she says, recalling how she and her friends rode their bikes all around the town.  As an adult, Heyworth continued to ride her bike daily, this time from the Southwest to the Southeast side of Springfield to attend classes at Sangamon State University (now UIS), where she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s in Psychology.  “I loved it.  It was fantastic,” she says. “I love school, and I loved being a student.”  She became a graduate assistant and taught classes as an adjunct assistant professor.

Returning to college was a decision that came relatively late in life.  Heyworth already had a successful career at the Illinois Department of Revenue, where she had earned a series of promotions to more responsible positions and higher paying positions.  “What happened was that as I started getting closer to forty, I thought, ‘Is this really what I want to do?’ Sure, the pay is great and the benefits are great, but I wanted to do something I felt was really rewarding and maybe making a difference.  Part of it, too, was that I had a malignant melanoma when I was thirty. When you have to deal with your own mortality at a young age, you start thinking about what is important, and I decided what was important was to do something I knew I would love. Take a chance, I thought.” She changed her lifestyle; she started running and ran in two marathons, became a vegetarian, and enrolled in classes to pursue a career in social work.  After graduating, Heyworth developed her social services career as a therapist with Lutheran Child and Family Services, Residential Services Supervisor for the Youth Service Bureau, and Assistant and Executive Director of Attention Homes for Youth.

 In 2004, Heyworth came to the Mini O’Beirne Crisis Nursery as its Director.  She leads a team of staff members and volunteers which is surprisingly small, given that the nursery is open twenty-four hours a day.  “We have nine full-time staff, six part-time staff and at least fifteen volunteers who are here regularly,” she says.  Keeping the nursery open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year is an enormous challenge to meet, particularly in a time of unprecedented

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