It’s 4:45 a.m. Tuesday morning, and Kim Daggy begins her day.
Her first move is to go to the gym, then come home to feed her two dogs, Bandit and Bella. Daggy calls herself a mother of five, counting her three children and two dogs in the same breath, but as her kids no longer live at home, her two dogs get all of her attention.
As a huge coffee lover, the next thing on Daggy’s agenda is to make her first, and quite likely not her last, cup of black Highlander Grogg, half decaf coffee before heading into Oxford. The city is only a 15 minute drive from her home in Liberty, Indiana, so she typically arrives at the Enjoy Oxford office at 8:40 a.m.
The office, tucked between Blue Mango Tobacco and Vape shop and Left Field Tavern, comes to life when Daggy enters the small workplace. She is warmly greeted by the two other women at Enjoy Oxford, Marina Young and Sally Roi, before settling into her morning’s work.
At this rate, it’s nearly 10 a.m., and Daggy is already three cups of coffee and a full scroll of emails into her morning. As much passion as she has for the job, the work can’t all be fun.
“That’s the worst part of my job, is keeping up with emails,” Daggy said.
With the holiday season rapidly approaching, her emails are mainly focused on the upcoming Holiday Festival Dec. 7, which begins at the Oxford Community Arts Center and continues into the Uptown Parks. The day before hosts the annual Holiday Walk, put on by the Oxford Chamber of Commerce.
For many members of the community, including Mayor William Snavely, this event is a town favorite, so it’s important for Daggy and her team to do it right, every year.
“The horse-drawn carriage that went around the parks … I think that’s probably my favorite part of it,” Snavely said. “Enjoy Oxford just does such a great job.”
Beyond the Holiday Festival, Daggy said it’s time to start thinking about next year’s budget and planning, as she moves into her afternoon. Between events Enjoy Oxford assists with, like the Chocolate Meltdown in January, and the events it puts on, everything is carefully planned months in advance. Even though it’s only November, events into the early summer are already being thought out.
“And then there’s all the regular stuff,” Daggy said. “Monthly newsletters, communicating with our business community, keeping all of our stuff up to date and current in print and digital platforms…”
Daggy has been working for Enjoy Oxford since 2012, after working for two years as a paraprofessional at College Corner Union Elementary School. She started as an administrative assistant and worked up to be executive director in 2019.
Daggy’s sister, Judie Persinger, attended Miami University for her undergraduate degree, while she went to Ball State University and graduated with a degree in exercise science and kinesiology.
“[Judie] is my only sibling, and we’re very close,” Daggy said. “I’ve been coming here because she went to Miami, graduated, married someone locally and never left. I wanted to move down to be closer to her.”
Her personal and familial ties to the town is one of the main reasons she decided to return to Oxford in 2010, as well as her desire to be directly involved in a tight knit community.
“I have pictures of my kids in the fountains in diapers,” Daggy said.
Since then, Daggy has spent the last 12 years planning events to contribute to Oxford’s “hallmarky” charm, and said she enjoys the creativity put into each event.
“It’s a labor of love,” Daggy said. “The music festival is my favorite because we get to help curate who plays, but it is a sudoku mess in trying to get it to fall all together, between placing sponsors with genres that they like, providing a variety to the community, working with an unknown budget … It’s a constant moving target.”
Snavely, who attends nearly every event put on by Enjoy Oxford and has worked with Daggy in the past, said she is the perfect fit for the job.
“She does a great job,” Snavely said. “Working with Daggy is easy and fun, [and] she’s very good at what she does.”
It’s nearly 5:30 p.m., and both Young and Roi are packing up for the day, followed by Daggy. Bandit and Bella are waiting for her at home, and after a long day of planning Oxford’s next fun event, Daggy is ready to sit on the couch, with one dog on each side of her, and call it a day.
Until tomorrow.
