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Community advocate Janice Witt remembered as Reola Grant Center founder in Kansas City, Kansas

Janice Witt, a longtime Kansas City, Kansas community activist and political candidate, has died at 59. Along with her husband, Ron Witt, she helped lead community efforts focused on meeting local needs, including through a family life development center that served residents with a food pantry.

Volunteers prepare food pantry donations outside a neighborhood community center while others grieve and look ahead.

The Witts formally opened the Reola Grant Center for Family Life Development in 2009, naming it after Witt’s late mother. The center provided food pantry services, with the couple frequently covering some of the center’s costs themselves. Witt also repeatedly raised concerns about increasing demand for that kind of help, including speaking about the need before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2023.

Witt ran unsuccessfully four times for Kansas City, Kansas mayor. Ron Witt is now working toward re-opening the center on property he owns near the couple’s home. The Reola Grant Center closed last year after a tax issue affecting the property owner. Donations can be made to the center at any Country Club Bank location.

KMBC 9 reports Witt died from stress-related complications and that she died on Father’s Day, the same date her mother Reola Grant died in 2009.