Everyone Needs a Kenny

By Calvert F Cazier, PhD, MPH | December 14, 2021

Kenny was loved and admired by all of us in the neighborhood. He lived next door to me, and our houses were so close that as a teenager I could and would jump from my roof onto his roof and run around a bit before jumping back onto my own and climbing down.

Neither Kenny nor my dad knew about these adventures (my dad found out many years after I left the home) but both would have been upset if they had known. Kenny would probably have reprimanded me with patience and a warning about how dangerous this activity was and if I kept doing it he would have gotten upset. Thank goodness I never was caught.

Kenny loved sports. Most of my friends and I played in a competitive church league and he would frequently be there to watch us and cheer us on. Sometimes after a loss his words could be cutting and sharp. I remember one night game when I was playing first base. A pop-up foul ball was hit to me, and I had an easy out, but lost the ball in the lights and dropped it. This batter eventually drove in the winning run. We lost and no one in the ballpark felt worse than me. My teammates didn’t say one word about the mistake or costing them the game, but Kenny came up to me and said, “You lost the game for your team!” I still feel the devastation from that stinging remark.

Later Kenny became my explore scout leader (for boys 14-18) and we enjoyed many fun as well as educational activities. I have two poignant memories of activities he took us on.

The first was a snowshoe hike where we planned to hike up the canyon to a cabin belonging to an uncle of one of the boys. When we were younger, our scoutmaster took us hiking to this cabin a few times during the winter and we had a lot of fun.

On this trip, however, neither Kenny nor any of the other leaders had been there so we were dependent on one of the older scouts who knew the way to get us there safely. After hiking for a few hours, we knew we were lost and to complicate things one scout had worn the wrong kind of boots and got snow packed down into them. He kept falling so frequently that we finally stopped and took off his boots. His feet were frozen and we worried about frost bite.

We knew my friend was in danger. We looked around and saw a cabin close by. We hiked to it, broke in, and spent the night. My friend’s feet were saved. Later we found the owner of the cabin and paid for the damage we caused.

The second poignant memory I have of Kenny involved a trip to the gymnasium under the guise of playing some basketball. When we arrived, Kenny told me to hop on the chin-up bar and do six pullups. He knew as well as I did that I had completed all the requirements for my Eagle Scout Award when I was 14 years old, except for those six pullups. At the time of this activity, I was nearly 18, the deadline for earning an Eagle.

I had been doing pushups before bed for some time and had developed a little more arm muscle. I hopped up on the bar and did the six pullups, but before I jumped off, I asked Kenny if he was sure I only needed to do six. He assured me that was all I needed so I jumped down and then he looked in the handbook and said, “Oops! I’m sorry! You were supposed to do seven. Get up there and do it again!”

I turned to him and said, “Damn you, Kenny!” and then I walked away and went to play basketball with my friends. Kenny laughed and followed me. I never checked the scout handbook, so I don’t know if it was really six or seven and Kenny never gave it away.

Kenny was a mixture of frustration and a great friend and leader in my life. He helped me more than he frustrated me and for that I will always be grateful. He taught me that things don’t always go the way we want them to go, but when things don’t go as expected we need to pick ourselves up and move forward with our life. I learned that he thought enough of me to not let me give up on myself and that I really had some potential.

A real person, an imperfect, frustrating, and remarkable man who loved us and we loved him, that’s who Kenny was.