The Next Generation of You: Kenard Lang

By Jim Gehman

“Basically, we deal with families dealing with cancer,” Lang said. “And we also give out ten $1,000 scholarships to high school kids every year. The group that we aim at is kids with a GPA between a 3.0 and a 2.7 because a lot of time, those are kids that’d be left out on scholarship money. But they still can be very successful. So we aim at those kids and also what’s real big is community service. How often do you give back to the community? Those intangibles fall into whether you get the scholarship money.

“We also take kids from the Girls & Boys Club back-to-school shopping and Christmas shopping (through a partnership with Target). They help by giving us grants for money as far as bringing the kids there to shop. 

“Seventy kids each time. They each get $100 and with that, we try to zone in on two particular areas. We tell them when we go out there just how much money you have. You need to practice doing your addition, your subtraction, your multiplying. And last but not least, we try to implement our caring and sharing. We know you’ve got $100. That doesn’t mean $100 will need to go on you. If you know somebody who you care for, who you love and you’re going to help make a brighter day, I tell them you need to share these things. You shouldn’t think selfish, you should think selfless.

“And also, we feed families on Thanksgiving. I think last year we fed 140 families (in Orlando).”

Lang’s Foundation raises money through donations, the annual banquet when the scholarships are awarded to high school seniors and by holding a golf tournament. This year’s event will be held at the Shingle Creek Golf Club in Orlando on April 14.

It is also funded through grants from PAF. “People just don’t know,” Lang said. “I tell them, ‘You don’t realize, a lot of the reason we are getting to do this is because of the NFLPA. They’ve done tremendous things to help you out.’ Everybody’s grateful and I know I am too, because a lot of stuff that I do, I’d probably say 80 percent, wouldn’t be done if it wasn’t for the PAF.”