Great Dames featured in Giving Tomorrow magazine

To Justify Your Existence
Sharon Kelly Hake left a 30-year career with a Fortune 500 company to start a nonprofit with her daughters ... and finally answer a decades-old question.
BY KAREN MARTIN

In some large families, the middle children can hide if they want to. Not in Sharon Kelly Hake’s family. She was one of seven, smack in the middle, but she still had to face her father’s daily question at the dinner table.
“Children, what did you do today to justify your existence?”
Sharon and her siblings would fidget and squirm. It was a delicate balance. Could you think of an answer fast enough to go first and get it over with? Or do you wait, hoping a brilliant response comes to mind, but risk someone else stealing your thunder?
“Even at a young age we knew that it was an important question,” Sharon says. “My father was teaching us we are here for a purpose. And we’d better figure out what that purpose is.”