Submitted photo Jenah Shank performs at Pink Out Mahoning Valley Music Festival on Oct. 3, 2024. Shank runs the festival to raise awareness of breast cancer and to celebrate life.

Jenah Shank learned to act with the “heart of a servant” from her parents, Elmer and Ginny Ross, while growing up in Chippewa Township, Pa., As the youngest of nine children, Shank said, “I was raised serving,” noting that, in addition to their own children, her parents “took in over 55 foster children.” Shank said that her parents were foster parents long before there were “official foster parent programs.” Her father was a minister, and children were sometimes “just dropped off” when a family either could not care for them or did not want them. Shank said if her parents heard of someone who needed a home, “they took them in.”

Shank graduated from Beaver Falls High School in 1983, and, with concentrations in journalism, history and political science, she earned her bachelor’s degree from Penn State in 1986. She earned her masters’ degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1989. Shank and her husband, Ron, currently live in Austintown with their blended family of three girls, one boy and six grandchildren.

From 2009 to 2018, Shank worked between The Vindicator in Youngstown and the Tribune Chronicle in Warren, “as a stringer, a correspondent, a reporter, an editor,” she said, laughing. “I did lots of jobs at the papers.”

She is the director of the Trumbull County Educational Service Center.

Ron was a truck driver for 28 years and said, “I helped the pastors at the services at the Truckers Ministry in Girard.”

He and Shank met through those services where she sang her compositions. Shank said she does not like to speak in public, though, she noted, “I have shared testimony but mostly, I am happy composing songs and singing them at services.”

She said she wrote her first song around 12 years old and hasn’t stopped since. She writes the music and lyrics and “plays the guitar, mostly, and the keyboard.” She performs for the Truckers 4 Jesus Truck Stop Ministry as well as at several nonprofit venues.

Shank helps others in diverse ways. She spent some time in Arizona on a Native American Reservation doing mission work and while she was there she “learned the Native American language, ‘Dine’ (Navajo).” In celebrating Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be canonized by the Catholic Church, Shank performed at St. Patrick Church in Youngstown, singing “The Lord’s Prayer” in “Dine.” Through her music and the sales of her albums, Shank has helped to raise money to send Native American children to Bible camps.

In 1993, Shank and Sheila Kroll-Dickinson teamed up to launch Pink Out Mahoning Valley, a breast cancer survivor gathering to raise awareness. Last Sunday, she appeared at the third Pink Out Mahoning Valley music festival and celebration last at the Austintown Township Park.

Shank said all the performers at the festival donate their time and talent to the event. She was quick to note that “this is a celebration, a service for cancer patients, not a fundraiser. We invite survivors of breast cancer, or any other cancer to come and celebrate.”

Shank explained that Pink Out Mahoning Valley is an event to “bring joy” to survivors and to remember those who have passed away.

Survivors are recognized at the event and people who have lost family to cancer are also recognized. She said it is important that “not everything has to be about raising money. This is a party to celebrate and give thanks.”

A talent for writing music and a love for sharing her sound is a gift that Shank gives enthusiastically. She has released an updated album of her “New Road” song collection. “With ‘New Road 2025,’ we set out to enhance the sound and freshen things up a little bit,” Shank explained.

It is obvious that Ron and Jenah Shank care deeply about their faith and about sharing their talents with others. They have taken to heart the Biblical call to service, as is stated in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”