Colorado City resident Kyla Kahrs has been recognized as an Outstanding Junior in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) organization. This award recognizes outstanding service by a DAR member, age 18 through 35, who has been elected or appointed as Chapter Outstanding Junior by their respective chapters.
Outstanding Juniors are recognized at the chapter, state, and national levels and all state winners automatically compete in the National contest.
Junior Members hold full membership and may serve as chairmen or officers at the chapter, state, and national levels. Juniors often serve as pages at state meetings and Continental Congress. This provides unique opportunities to meet and network. Junior members accomplish much, from youth community service to outreach to veterans, and provide energy and fresh ideas for the future of DAR.
The Outstanding Junior Member Contest began in 1963 to recognize young women who have truly promoted the aims and purposes of the national DAR society, as well as participating in community activities. DAR is a non-profit group of women who are directly descended from a Revolutionary War Patriot. The Patriot may have been any individual who supported our country's fight for freedom during The American Revolution. The Revolution began in 1775 with the "shot heard round the world" which was fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775, and lasted eight and a half years.
Kahrs was a past chapter historian and vice-regent of the Arkansas Valley chapter and is the current Regent of the Cheyenne Mountain chapter. She ran the State Junior Shoppe and was also awarded the Outstanding Junior award in 2018. Kahrs is proud to say that during the five years she was in charge of the Junior Shoppe they won an award for the most innovative project. Kahrs used her Cricut machine to personalize projects to be sold to fund scholarships. She also headed a custom ink T-shirt project that raised nearly $1000, the highest amount raised in the state in 2020 for the Helen Pouch Memorial Fund. Kahrs will be attending the DAR Continental Conference from June 29 to July 3. She will find out in the next month if she is a National Finalist. On June 30 DAR gives out awards and scholarships. At that time, the National Outstanding Junior and National Runnerup will be announced. Kahrs shared, “I would love to be a national finalist, but I know my chances are not great because I joined the organization late in life compared to many of the ladies. It will be fun; it is the closest I will ever be to a beauty pageant, and I don’t have to appear in a bathing suit or win a talent contest to do it.”
Kahrs currently teaches middle school special education at the Colorado Destinations Career Academy. She is finishing her twelfth year of teaching, six of which were with Pueblo School District 70, where among other things, she ran the Colorado City/Rye 70 Online site. The 2005 Rye High School graduate earned her bachelor's from Colorado State University in English with an emphasis in secondary education in 2008. She got her first Master's in Education from CSU-Pueblo in 2014, and her second Master's of Science in 2019 from Fort Hays State University.