The Real Mrs. Semler

In recent years, she has helped Richard with his home-remodeling business in Kansas City, running errands and sometimes pitching in with a paintbrush.

But, Wells says, Semler always put her work on hold if a family member needed help. When their aunt was sick, Semler took care of her. For the final six years of her life, Semler's mother moved from De Soto to live with her oldest daughter in Kansas City.

Semler is also known as a caretaker on the blocks west of North Kansas City Hospital. There, the River Forest neighborhood of modest, 1960s-era homes is blanketed with mature trees. Since the early 1980s, the Semlers have lived in a small three-bedroom house fronted by a knee-high forest of roses and shrubs. Semler says that as she got to know many of her neighbors through her husband's business, it seemed natural to help organize a block watch and get the area designated as a neighborhood association. Semler is still the president of the River Forest Neighborhood Association and the point person for regular block parties, such as one in September that included a visit from the fire department with a fire engine for the kids.

"It gives you a purpose," Semler says of her organizing efforts.

She still has time for her garden, though. Her front yard features nearly 200 varieties of roses. Out back, where her property dives down to meet the road, she has landscaped the slope with small trees and flowers that creep up trellises.

In 2002, the yard was home to two scarecrows — "Franny" and "Ricky" — that, as the summer progressed, moved from the edge of the garden closer and closer together until they walked hand-in-hand up the hill. This year, Semler has incorporated a school theme: A handful of mannequins surround a blackboard chalked with "Students + Teachers + Parents = Education."

She emphasizes that she's not a master gardener, a title reserved for those who have finished a distinct set of classes. She doesn't like her sister bragging about how bright she is, either. So when Funkhouser asked her to serve on the Parks and Recreation Board of Commissioners, she says she was shocked.

"I'm just an ordinary person," she says. "It's usually society people, somebody who's probably got a lot more money than I did. At first, my thought was, I just couldn't see myself there."

After a personal meeting with Funkhouser, she sent the mayor an e-mail on June 4.

"You can not know how honored I felt to know that you considered me to be on the Parks Commission," she wrote.

"As I often [do]," she continued, "I have listed the pro's and con's [sic]."

Semler told Funkhouser that she'd printed out a list of the parks and was amazed at the number of green spaces in Kansas City. The problem, she noted, was that people didn't even know about some of the parks — even when they lived right next to them. She suggested that the parks needed to be categorized and assessed by an independent group such as the Kessler Society (a private organization that raises funds and promotes preservation of the city's parks and boulevards) or an ad hoc committee of community stakeholders.

"Parks such as the one near us that people do not know about and can not find should be sold or at least 'found.'... One good park is better than three inferior and rundown or unused parks," she wrote.

Once the numbers are whittled down or the resources better understood, she suggested, the city could do a better job of engaging children. In many schools, she explained, students are required to complete community service — a perfect opportunity to get them into the parks. Perhaps the department could even create "Kansas City's Young Park Rangers," she suggested. She knew from working with Northland students during a planting event that kids get a kick out of getting their hands dirty.

"Although they teased me about being Martha Stewart when we braided the old daffodils and grilled me about what wild thing I would be doing that night, we both had a good time," she wrote.

Semler says she was always active in the Parent Teacher Association when her daughter was in school, and she still has a keen interest in helping kids grow up to be "good citizens." One of her ideas for the parks board, for instance, is to create more interaction between children and senior citizens at local community centers.

Despite her excitement at the idea of engaging kids in the city's green spaces, she told the mayor that she had plenty on her plate already.

"The other projects that I am involved in deserve my attention," she wrote. "And Richard and I are sort of the go-to people in the neighborhood when people need help."

She also noted that her husband had been ill. He needed her support, she wrote. "Family trumps everything else," she wrote in closing.

Semler says her first thought was to decline Funkhouser's offer.

"But then I thought, I can help some kids in this town," she says. "In this position, the parks and city work together, and parts of the city need a little leg up, too."