Community Connections Center volunteer Jane Budde is pictured with one of her students, Ava Frazier, a Lawrence High sophomore. Budde, a retired Lawrence teacher, helped establish a sewing program at the center and teaches not only students like Ava how to sew, but also other educators at the center.

Jane Budde is lots of things to plenty of people: dedicated, skilled, connected, generous, committed, versatile and on and on seemingly everywhere in town, from neighborhood to church or anywhere else her focused and infectious smile takes her.

For 16-year-old Ava Frazier, working the foot pedal at an electric sewing machine, Mrs. Budde is simply everything.

“She’s got patience,” Ava says, pressing seams on a quilt she’s making with Budde’s assistance. “She’s really good at sewing. She got me started.”

This is no small matter, and that’s part of why it’s no surprise that Budde — a retired teacher — is the first honoree of the Only in Lawrence Learning Award.

Budde’s affable drive, you see, led to the founding of a sewing program two years ago at the Lawrence school district’s Community Connections Center, a site where about 50 students with special needs receive vocational training. The place already had a coffee shop that serves hot joe, a laundry that cleans towels for the district’s two high schools, and a clothing room that provides donated items — jackets, tops, Tommy Hilfiger jeans — at no charge to students from families who might not otherwise be able to afford them.

The sewing program is new, started after Budde had stopped by one day to donate some winter hats and mittens that she’d knitted at home. Someone had noted how wonderful it would be to do sewing at the center.

“Well,” Budde had said back then, “you guys will need some machines.”

Soon Budde had pleasantly pestered personnel at the district office to come up with a sewing machine (they did), and had checked in with area businesses to secure donations (getting a second machine from Bob’s Bernina, plus plenty of fabric and materials from Jane Bateman Interiors, Stitch-On Needwork Shop and elsewhere).

“She has a lot of spunk,” says Katie Fabac, a job coach at the center.

The sewing program has grown by 150 percent during the past year, thanks to Budde’s attention, persistence and teaching abilities.

Budde not only has helped teach five students how to sew, but she’s also trained the center’s educators — paras, social workers, everyone — in the intricacies of threading needles, operating machines and assembling quilts, potholders, placemats, coasters, blankets and other items that eventually are sold at the center, 2600 W. 25th St.

The Force, it seems, is with her.

“Jane was Obi-Wan Kenobi,” says Llara Baska, the center’s work experience coordinator, comparing her effective training techniques to those of the Jedi master. “None of us really knew how to sew very well. We never would have done this is had she not volunteered. She got us all inspired.”

Budde brushes off her efforts as no big deal, and she means it. She helped start the program by spending two hours a week at the center and now she only drops by occasionally, knowing that the students are in capable hands.

Having spent 12 years teaching political science and economics to seniors at Lawrence High School before retiring in 2001, she’s kept herself busy by handling various volunteer stints around the district. Among them: helping out in the library at Sunflower School and reading with a book club at Broken Arrow School.

“It’s not a big chunk of my life,” says Budde, who now reads an hour a week to two youngsters at Quail Run School. “An hour a week? If you spend an hour a week with a kid, imagine what that does. It’s amazing what your reach is.”

Earlier this month at the Community Connections Center, Ava welcomed the opportunity to be at the receiving end of one of Budde’s hour-long volunteer sessions. The LHS sophomore proudly sewed straight lines, pressed crisp seams and assembled pieces of their 180-piece quilt.

Budde rested her hand on Ava’s shoulder while the sewing machine whirred through stops and starts, stitching 4-by-4-inch squares of cotton together.

“Remember when you couldn’t even sew a straight seam?” Budde asks, more of a compliment than a question.

“Yeah,” Ava says, continuing her work. The connection is so smooth and true that she could be mistaken for closing a threaded zipper.

“Perfect,” Budde says. “Perfect!”