This election season, drivers have, as always, been audience to an exhausting amount of campaign yard signs, posters, and bulletin boards. One in particular, however, bears a name that, to many students of Noblesville High School, rings rather familiar.

Luke Kenley has been representing the 20th District of the state of Indiana as a state senator since 1992 and before that was occupied both as a judge and as the businessman behind Kenley’s Markets. But the Kenley name is most familiar around the halls of NHS as belonging to creative writing teacher Bill Kenley, who knows Senator Luke Kenley by a different name entirely: Dad.

“I had a sense that he had a role in the community that other people saw as important,” Bill said.

In Bill Kenley’s youth, his father served as a judge for the city of Noblesville, a position that at times resulted in uncomfortable situations for his son.

“I had friends whose dads got in trouble, and they had to go see him. And that was weird, on a sense.”

But even still, Bill and his family supported his father through his run for state senate, which has led him to serve five terms in the state of Indiana.

On a sunny day his office on Washington Street in Indianapolis, Senator Kenley sits behind the desk that, if his current re-election campaign is successful, he’ll be sitting behind for a sixth term this coming May.

“I think what you learn is that if you want to continue to do this job and you’re willing to serve the public, what you need to do is you need to listen to the people, and you need to satisfy the issues that they think are important,” Kenley said.

Given that his son has pursued a career in education, Senator Kenley has made ensuring that communities are content with the educational system a top priority.

“It’s always good to have Bill around to talk to because he’s a real teacher in a real classroom. He deals with real students, and he knows what students are focused on,” Kenley said. “Sometimes in the statehouse you can get these big ideas about education and where these things are going and what we need to be doing, but they don’t really correlate with how the student is reacting to these situations. So he’s kind of a balancing post for me and helps me see what the situation is out in the real world.”

Being a teacher, Bill Kenley is faced with the consequences of his father’s policies on a regular basis, which has become a potential point of contention between the father and son. His response to those decisions has played an integral part in the nature of their relationship. Bill recognizes this, and has ensured throughout his life that family comes first.

“I don’t get into teacher politics that much. I think maybe the reason I don’t get into the politics so much is that I see the potential for real conflict. I’m choosing the father-son relationship here.”