Photo courtesy of Jennifer Paepcke
Jennifer Paepcke, a new member of the Hoover Parks and Recreation Board, with her husband, John, and children, Jack and Julia.
Jennifer Paepcke has spent many a day and night at the ballparks in Hoover.
She coached her daughter, Julia, for many years in softball and was there to support her son, Jack, in baseball and football games and practices.
So when she heard there would soon be an opening on the Hoover Parks and Recreation Board due to Jeremy Vice being appointed to the Hoover school board, it piqued her interest. Paepcke, who has lived in Hoover’s Trace Crossings community for 14 years, was chosen to replace Vice on the park board for the final three and a half months of his six-year term.
She officially joined the board on June 10 and will continue in that role until at least Sept. 30, when that term ends. She’ll likely be reappointed for a full six-year term at that point.
She’s excited about it and, with her children growing up and venturing their own ways, she felt the timing was right, she said.
“This is an opportunity that I can give back to something that I’m passionate about, and that I’ve actually participated in,” Paepcke said. “I know how important it is to maintain these parks for families and to also attract other people into the area because we have such incredible parks.”
She and her husband, John, also like to go hiking and enjoy the outdoors, so Hoover’s offerings in that realm fit well for her as well, she said.
Additionally, in a former job running a cluster of radio stations in the Birmingham area for Crawford Broadcasting Co., Paepcke had worked with Parks and Recreation Director Erin Colbaugh in putting on Hoover’s first Fourth of July fireworks show at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, she said. Colbaugh was the city’s events coordinator at the time, and they worked well together, she said.
Paepcke said one of her goals as a park board member is to make sure that money is spent wisely and that parks are well maintained, safe and up to date.
There also is a huge population in western Hoover that would love to have a big green space like Veterans Park closer to the west side of Hoover, Paepcke said. Of course, the city’s budget has limits, so budgets are always an issue, she said.
A survey of residents in 2023 identified a skate park as the No. 1 desired amenity in city parks. Paepcke said funding is a major issue. Birmingham has a beautiful skate park, but the maintenance is expensive, she said.
Paepcke grew up in LaGrange, Georgia, and graduated from Columbus State University in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in health science. She thought she wanted to go into pharmaceutical sales, but getting into that industry was difficult, she said.
She got a job at a radio station in Columbus and fell in love with the radio industry, she said. She and her husband moved to Hoover in 2002, then to Helena in 2003 but came back to Hoover in 2011, she said.
Paepcke spent 13 years with Crawford Broadcasting Co., serving as national sales manager and later overseeing three stations in Birmingham. She has spent the past nine years with Salem Media as a national media strategist. She also serves on the boards for First Priority of Alabama and the Brock’s Gap Swim Club and previously was very involved with the Trace Crossings Elementary PTA.
