SHARMIN FAIRBANKS MCKENNY

Sharmin’s roots were in the soil. Like her ancestors, she began her life on a traditional family farm with all the animals, crops, barns, and muddy roads. She was part of a progressive middle-class family who enjoyed experiencing the past through traditional activities like: butchering, preserving, sewing, and making cider.

Life on the farm was far from typical. She had pets of all kinds, including a monkey, Tiki. They owned an airplane and had a short grass landing strip on the farm. Though Sharmin remained on the farm through high school, life took off quickly. She soloed in the airplane, before she got her driver’s license.

Sharmin’s father was a founder of the National Farmers Organization and lobbyist for the rights of the family farmer in Washington, D.C.m her mother was the farmer. Her father immersed his children in politics and the working of our government at a very young age.

One of thirty-five students in her class at a rural high school, Sharmin graduated as valedictorian. Three years later, she completed a B.S. N. degree, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Missouri, School of Nursing. She turned in her Master’s thesis in nursing at the University of Kansas the day her son was born.

Sharmin’s nursing career started in a large general hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. It soared to new heights after five years when she helped initiate the sixth civilian air transport system in the United States. St. Joseph Hospital Life Flight transported critically ill or injured patients by helicopter from scenes of accidents and small rural hospitals to level one facilities.

Ten years and two children later, Sharmin and her husband agreed she should stay home to raise and enhance the education of their children. When Aaron and Macy were assigned to find at least three generations of ancestors, it was a great project for a mother’s help. They traced 13 generations of Fairbanks in North America and more in Europe. The children developed an appreciation for their past. Their mother could not put the project down and continued to study the genealogy and stories of the family.

Currently, Sharmin is a Board of Director of The Fairbanks Family of America which operates the Fairbanks House Museum in Dedham, MA. She’s a member of Gulf Coast Writers Association and Historical Fiction Writer’s Society, the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Dedham and Lancaster Massachusetts Historical Societies.

Sharmin participates in her community as division chairperson of the Neighborhood Watch program and was one of the founders of their community women’s club. She speaks at functions, writes for the community newspaper and historical societies, leads numerous interest groups, and participates in a book club.

Ms. McKenny was keynote speaker a the 122st National FairbanksReunion in 2023 and has presented at various women’s groups about orchids. She was featured on Wink TV in her role as the Orchid Lady with her “orphan orchid project.” In 2021, Sharmin was invited to a radio interview about her English ancestors at the “Phoenix” station in Halifax, England. She placed in the National Daughter’s of the American Revolution, American History Contest for Literature - Historical Fiction with “Soles of War.”Ms. Fairbanks writes for the Homestead Courier Newsletter of The Fairbanks House Museum, has a monthly blog at www.fairbankshistory.com and a Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/FairbanksHistory/. Sharmin published in the Muskingum County Chapter of the Ohio Historical Society newsletter and the Wisconsin Historical Society Museum asked her to write articles to accompany the 1640’s matchlock gun that belonged to her 12 great-grandfather that is in their repository.

When not living in the 1600s with her ancestors, Sharmin golfs, hikes, bikes, paints and maintains a healthy lifestyle. Sharmin is known as the Orchid Lady in her community for putting over 300 “orphaned orchids” on the trees on their golf course. She occasionally finds time to paint and walk the beaches, but often enjoys the Florida sunset. She finds joy in her lifelong love of reading. She particularly enjoys historical, historical fiction and women’s biographies. However, she enjoys all genres. When she was young, she read the dictionary and encyclopedia when snow bound on the farm and couldn’t get to a library or bookmobile.

Her love of her life is her husband, John, and her two grown children. She will have no grandchildren, so the book she writes is for all those she believes to be her grandchildren who want a story of their history and that of this nation in which they call their home. She hopes they will find themselves in their past.