Ken and Paula Covert
Session 2
March 30, 2026
Table of Contents
A Lesson in Discipline and Grace
I guess the one thing I wanted to cover was a very large lesson in discipline that I went through with my dad. It also tells you what kind of father I had — the kind of father I hope to be and try to be.
Back when I was probably about eight years old, my dad had the house done enough that we were living in the downstairs area. The upstairs area wasn’t finished, and he had wood stacked outside for putting up the walls, which were going to be us boys’ bedrooms. We had been given strict instructions: do not play on that wood. It was just stacked up and laying there.
Anyway, my brothers — Dan, Bob — and I were out playing, and we ended up playing on that wood. I think Dad was at work, but when he got home, he heard about it. We knew it was not going to go over well. I remember we were standing in the living room and Dad made a comment. He said, “You boys knew I told you to stay off of that, right?” And we said, “Yes.”
The Punishment
Dad stood up and pulled off his belt. That was the first time he had ever done that. For all three of us, it was like, “Oh my, this is not going to be good.” He motioned for Bob first, since he was older. He took the belt and he doubled it, then bent us over his knees. When you double a belt, it snaps. It sounded probably worse than it was, but I just remember the sound. Bob had a better way of dealing with pain — that was just his way — but when it was my turn, I tried to get my hand back there, to no avail. Slap, slap, slap. We each got three and then were sent to our rooms.
We sat there with the door closed. I was crying and upset. Then we started thinking about how we were going to run away from home. We were planning where we were going to go and what we were going to do. We started gathering clothes and things, thinking we would get out of Stalag 17 and be free. We were quite serious in our plans.
The Reconciliation
Then there was a slight knock on the door. My dad walked in with a small bag of hard candy. He said, “Boys, I need to talk to you,” and he sat down. He said, “Now you understand why I did what I did. You know you did wrong. You know that is an important part of the house — part of what I work for to make this place better.” He said, “I don’t like doing that. This is not what I like doing, but you do understand that, and promise you’ll not do that again.”
We each got a piece of candy. Talk about feeling bad! Here we were, bad-mouthing Dad and ready to run away from home, and here he comes in. We understood it and we got it. We were rewarded for being able to take the punishment we so richly deserved.
The Epiphany
Just a few days ago, it occurred to me: God the Father feels the same way toward us. He manufactures our life and gives us all these blessings, and then we throw them away. Sometimes He must be saying, “My gosh, folks, after all I’ve done for you…” and still, in spite of all that, He showers us with more blessings.
I understand why my dad did it and why our Father God does it. I try to keep that in mind when I’m disciplining my own children — which, again, no parent ever likes doing. Children don’t always remember the lesson at the time, but as I’ve gotten older, I understand God in His wisdom and mercy has that for everybody.
It was a life lesson I’ll never, ever forget. I thought much more of my dad as I got older because of it. When Dad passed, I wanted to give that lesson or that witness at his funeral. I just couldn’t do it without crying, so I didn’t do it. I sorely regret not being able to do that then, but I’m doing it now, so I feel better about it.
That was my dad. As I got older, there was nothing I couldn’t talk to him about. We talked politics — you name it, we could talk about it. I was blessed in that regard. I hope my boys and my daughter understand we can do that at any time on any subject. That was my important message. Believe it or not, after 60 years, I didn’t realize until a few weeks ago the link between my dad’s wisdom and God’s wisdom. I want to make sure I get that out in the history books. There you go — my epiphany.
Homestead and the Changing Landscape
Ken: So, there you go — my epiphany. What was the other thing we were going to get into? Well, I did bring a picture of the house, my “basement house.” This is what it would look like, except our house had what they called black tar paper back then, and the stairwell was in the center. Ours was a 26-by-26-foot basement. This picture is actually in California of all places, but the dimensions were the same. Dad eventually built the upstairs stairwell right over top of the basement one, but that wasn’t built until he had the upstairs done. That house is still standing today and being remodeled. Nobody in the family lives in it now. My brother Bob talked about buying it before he passed, but he ended up with a different house. It’s been remodeled a couple of times; it doesn’t even look close to what it did because the owner refinished the basement and redid the top. But that 26-by-26 base is still there after 70-some odd years. I still check on it on Google Earth every once in a while just to make sure it’s there.
It’s amazing to think of all that work Dad did on the weekends. I had forgotten where I put this picture; I had to keep the whole article. Since I don’t have Word, I had to import the article into my email program to save it. I finally figured that out at eight o’clock last night. I sent this to my brother, Dan and I need to send it to Larry, to see if they have any questions.
We had one acre. If I ever can, I need to bring my laptop to our “Over 60” group and hotspot it to my phone so I can show you on Google Earth where I grew up. It’s a lot different now because, as I mentioned, it’s in a geologically glacial outwash area. Because of that, the area is just sand and gravel for Lord knows how many feet deep. It has been strip-mined for sand and gravel for probably 60 years to provide cement for Northeast Ohio. So much of that valley is a lake now. The places where we used to wander by the creek are now underwater. It’s kind of sad, but kind of neat, too. The water level for the well we had in the house — it had a well in the same place back when it was a basement — was in this corner. Dad had to replace the pump once and the foot valve, and he put it a little deeper.
Paternal Influence and the Jeep Community
Shirley: Was your dad a carpenter?
Ken: No, he had no carpentry training at all. He was more of a welder. He just picked it up as he went. He fixed his own cars, too. I got so used to seeing things fixed with wire and pliers on cars that it drove me nuts. I think that’s one reason why I didn’t want to be an engineer when I went to college; I just didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I wish my stubbornness hadn’t stopped me, as I probably would have been okay at it. Dad told me for a long time, “You’re going to go to college. Don’t get into what I do for a living; that’s hard work.” I do a lot of that work on my own now only because he had the insight to teach me. I’m thankful my oldest son has that aptitude. Kev is a natural engineer; he’ll figure out how to fix anything. He has Dad’s mentality for that. It just comes naturally to him.
Shirley: Does he enjoy it?
Ken: Oh yeah. He’s got a Jeep and a good group of Christian people that he trail rides with. They tear stuff up and then they fix it on their own. They go to Little River Canyon.
Shirley: Paula didn’t go with you on the trip where you actually crossed the river a couple of times.
Ken: Yeah, we’ve been together on a couple of runs. She doesn’t like it when the Jeep is at an angle like this — that’s an accident waiting to happen, and it’s not fun. The first time, she got real nervous. I told her, “I think you’d better get out; I’m afraid this thing’s going to roll. I don’t want you in here if I roll this.” I actually slid down the hill once.
Shirley: I went a couple of times with Christie and Kevin, and I was like, “This is not my cup of tea.”
Ken: No, that’s just the way she is.
Paula: They don’t realize when they’re driving how hard it is to sit in that Jeep trying to keep yourself stabilized. You only have a little strap on your shoulder harness, and that’s it.
Paula: Our grandson, Dana — this is nothing compared to what he does.
Ken: Yeah, Kevin’s constantly looking for the “mild” trail so we’ll go, because he wants us to meet his group of Jeepers. I went with him to a trail ride in Northwest Alabama. I rode in the passenger side with Kev and had a blast. It’s an amazing group. We went places my Jeep won’t go because it’s not set up for it.
Shirley: It’s scary.
Ken: Well, to me, it is a thrill. When you get a “butt pucker” from where you’re at, that’s the adrenaline rush. Then when you’re done, you go, “Oh, thank goodness.”
Shirley: I guess it’s kind of like a river. If some of the Jeeps don’t go in the right place, they get stuck. Kevin always leads because he has more experience, but if someone wayward does something else, they get stuck. I think they get washed out of the creek every time they go.
Ken: They are always pulling each other out. They have a great group; as soon as someone gets stuck, everyone stops and hops out like ants. You carry a lot of recovery gear.
Shirley: Christie and Kevin just got back from taking Clayton out; it was his birthday yesterday. They went somewhere in Georgia where he has a dirt bike and they do jumps.
Ken: Yeah.
Shirley: Well, guess where Kevin spent his day? At the ortho in Huntsville. He could have broken it, but it’s just dislocated.
Ken: Look at Mike Shaw.
Shirley: What did he do?
Ken: He broke his leg last year. He dirt bikes down at Stony Lonesome. Kevin and Mike have been there a few times, and Kevin’s oldest son was there with his girlfriend. Mike is the grandfather of our youngest racer’s family. He races with his wife, Steph, and Damian. He’s really into that; they are a very good family. And this is our daughter; she’s the oldest.
Paula: Caleb is in Georgia, y’all. Are you going to put a lot of this in the book?
Ken: We could do this every Christmas.
Shirley: We could send a card.
Ken: We don’t have to explain it to everybody; they can just look. But it’s the same thing with the Jeep — you’re basically in a cage with the roll bar, and everything is pretty stiff. Kev’s invested in a five-point harness now. Ours are only three-point, just like regular seat belts, but he’s gone to five-point, which really keeps you in there. I had a nasty habit of not buckling up at first, and Kev told me, “Wait a minute. What happens if this thing breaks loose? You fall out and this Jeep is on the run, so you could get somebody hurt besides yourself.” When he put it that way, I started buckling up. I make sure everything is tight from then on. Usually, I stay home with the grandkids. One of them being autistic, he doesn’t like the confusion and the noise. And Josie just didn’t like the dust and the dirt. They’re old enough now — she’s 13 and he’s 18 — but it’s a good excuse for me to stay home with them. I think it’s great being able to take a vehicle where you normally wouldn’t take it and meet all those people out there.
Shirley: Oh, okay. So you should put some of those photos on here.
Ken: Well, I told Kevin to put the one with the Jeeper right there at your feet. That’s his daughter. It won’t go any bigger; I don’t know how to get it bigger.
Genealogy and Family Mysteries
Ken: I planned on bringing the collage that Paula put together. It has a picture of us on our first date. I’ll bring it next time. It shows us at Virginia Kendall Park. This one here is Damian and Jo; she’s the oldest.
Wallace: You know, if you want to email them to me, I can look at them.
Ken: We’ve got pictures.
Shirley: Are we going to get some of Paula’s story? I know she said she didn’t have many memories from when she was young.
Paula: I don’t have them.
Shirley: But you remember when you got a little older, don’t you? Well, when you met him.
Paula: Oh yeah, yeah.
Paula: I mean, he didn’t give me a whole lot. I know I didn’t write a lot in the book.
Paula: I didn’t write a lot in the book because I don’t have that many memories. I don’t have pictures of when I was a kid. I had one baby picture — no, no baby pictures, and no young kid pictures. She’s supposed to be making us CDs to send.
Paula: Our computers don’t take CDs anymore.
Ken: So I won’t do it again. She may put them on a thumb drive; that’s what she does. Some of her family issues involve her mom.
Paula: She was essentially adopted — well, not really adopted, she was just given to a family to live with. This was when she was ten years old. Her mom wasn’t married; her father was a soldier and left for the war. They never got married before he went, and he never made it back. She doesn’t even know who he is. She tried tracing it but couldn’t find anything, so it stopped there. She’s traced as far as she can go.
Shirley: That’s your mom?
Paula: She can’t trace anything about my mom’s side. Regarding my dad, she has his history because his relatives still live in Ohio. So, I have no memories until I was in maybe sixth or seventh grade. I have a picture here and there in my mind, and that’s it.
Paula: A lot of strange things happen.
Ken: The problem comes in with things like World War II. Apparently, he was a good-looking guy, and he spent a lot of time in Europe. There were always hints that he had a girlfriend in France somewhere. There would be arguments between Mom and Dad whenever that came up. Both being German, we always had beer at the house. We used to go out on Fridays, on paydays; they’d go to a bar and we’d go with them. It was typical in Ohio for families to go; the kids would play and it was normal. I still have a beer once a week as a treat. It’s like my ancestral requirement. Anyway, every once in a while they’d have an argument, and my older sister is in that one picture.
Shirley: Okay, right here.
Ken: Yeah, and I need to make sure I get that back, or you can take a picture of it.
Shirley: He will scan it.
Ken: Okay, anyway, that’s Genny. I don’t know if her legal name was Virginia; I think it was just Genny. But that was always something used to crank Mom up. They never called her Virginia; it was just Jenny. Unfortunately, Genny passed away from an aneurysm. I think it came from a car wreck she was in with her then-husband. That was just another bad thing; she had a rough life and a divorce.
Shirley: Which ones are still living?
Ken: These two have passed: Bob and Jenny. Larry is still alive, living in Austin, Texas. Nancy is still alive; she lives in Alliance, Ohio. Dan lives in New Mexico part-time and sometimes in Florida. I’m losing track of where he’s at because his wife’s family lived in the Tampa Bay area. Her father was alive then, but now he’s moving around near his kids. He has a son in Arizona and another son, Tim, who is talking about moving to Oregon or Colorado. I think Debbie is in Colorado. I’m losing track because they are all moving.
Shirley: Now, you said this was you right here?
Ken: That’s me. Yeah, this brother has passed away. I got that backward — that’s me. When you said that before, I thought, “That’s me.” Next to Larry, the oldest.
Shirley: And this is the one who passed away?
Ken: Yeah, he was a Marine. We’re all still kicking.
Shirley: Still kicking.
Ken: Yeah. When we were all alive and got together, Paula can tell you, the family was just laughs. Nothing but laughs until our sides hurt. I feel that way when we get together with Pat and Nancy.
Shirley: That’s how our family is; there are four of us. I’m the baby, my sister is the oldest, and the two brothers are in between. When we get together, it’s fun.
Early Life and Heritage
Ken: We always had fun. Mom played women’s volleyball back in the ’50s.
Shirley: Really?
Ken: She was short, only 5’3″ or 5’5″.
Shirley: I bet she was fast, wasn’t she?
Ken: I don’t know. But my brother Larry held the high school 100-yard dash record for about a year. One day on our property, they measured off 50 yards. Dad never played much softball, but Mom always did. We finally baited Dad into racing Larry. Since Larry held that record, we had them race off. Dad beat my brother in the 50-yard dash. We thought, “Nah, Dad, you just started early.” Larry said, “No, I didn’t.” So they did it again, and Dad still beat him. It was unbelievable. We had a different thought about how fast Dad was because when he was younger, maybe nine or so, he had hernia problems and couldn’t do much in athletics. Back then, that was tough to get over. So we kidded him about that.
We were all pretty good runners and loved athletics. Bob and I both tried sophomore football, but we were just too small. At the high school we went to, the kids were just too big. One of our star players was Dan Dierdorf; he’s a professional — he’s old now, but he was a huge tackle. He was a good kid and an honor student, too, which is why he went to Michigan. We just loved sports, whether it was softball in the side yard or whatever. We broke a few windows, that kind of thing. We fought amongst each other a lot. I don’t know what our sisters did because there weren’t many girls in the neighborhood. There was only one neighbor girl, Gerry Rhoads, who went to school with me. She’s passed away now.
Shirley: Well, tell us your view of when you met.
Paula: We met because my brother knew Ken all through high school. My brother had a sister, and I had a good friend. We were in some classes together.
Paula: The year we were graduating, my girlfriend threw me a birthday party. I didn’t date; I was in the band and just did band stuff. I didn’t drive until I was 17. She invited Ken to come.
Ken: Your brother did.
Paula: Yeah, okay. Well, that’s what I meant. That weekend, we went walking in Virginia Kendall Park, which is outside between Akron and Canton. We started dating, and that was it.
Shirley: So, it was love at first sight?
Paula: I guess so. We just started dating. It was comfortable. He was going to college, so we had that summer, and then he was away at school.
Shirley: And you had just graduated from high school. He’s two years older?
Paula: I’m two years younger than Ken — well, a year and a year. We just kept dating. A year later we were engaged, and the year after that we were married.
Wallace: What about this German heritage? How did that come about?
Ken: Well, my mom is from a family that started with 13 kids. I can’t remember how many passed while Mom was alive, but her dad was a Meyerholtz and her mom was a Layman. They had 13 kids, which wasn’t unusual back then, and everyone was raised on farms in the Toledo and Bowling Green areas. His dad moved to Bakersfield after he was born, but I don’t know if he started on a farm in Pennsylvania. When they moved to Bakersfield, his dad was a blacksmith. They worked in the oil fields as pipefitters and welders. Then he became a mechanic. I inherited some paperwork when Dad passed and found out why my grandfather left Bakersfield for Ohio: he left a ton of bills. I have them all, and it’s thousands of dollars in unpaid bills for car parts and so forth.
Wallace: I mean, this is part of life.
Ken: I have no idea how my grandfather got into dairy farming, but that’s what he did. When I was a kid, I helped on the farm for a few weeks during the summer. All of his milk was Grade B; it was all hand-milked, so it went to cheese. I helped milk cows for a while and remember my forearms aching so bad. Doing that twice a day, seven days a week — I was happy to go home! He had an old ’23 Chevy pickup. He lived way off the road on a dirt path. You’d put two days’ worth of milk into old-fashioned milk cans, load them up, and drive them to a gas station a couple of miles away. You’d get a receipt for it. That gas station was like something out of The Waltons; everyone met and talked there. It was a neat place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
Wallace: Your mother’s name was Meyerholtz?
Ken: Meyerholtz. H-O-L-T-Z.
Ken: They traced her lineage back to Germany. My sisters sent me an email with pictures and names of everybody, and I put it in the book. My daughter sent me this book, and I was able to put a lot of stuff in there — like who was president when I was born and the price of groceries. I didn’t remember all that; I had to look it up.
Paula: All I remember is gas being 33 cents a gallon.
Paula: When I learned to drive, I had a Corvair and I could fill it up for three dollars. Three dollars went a long way back then.
Early Jobs and Childhood Memories
Ken: Yeah, you know what my first job was? I worked at a golf course, of course. I was a custodian, so to speak — cleaning urinals and sweeping floors. That’s how I learned to play golf. I inherited that from my brother, Bob, who worked there before he got a job at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant where Dad had a part-time job.
Shirley: Did you ever live on a farm?
Paula: No, I don’t remember the first house I lived in, but when I was six, we moved to a place where we had three acres. It was on Middlebranch Road, about two miles from him. That’s what I remember. My girlfriend and I did nothing but walk; we walked everywhere.
We were never at the house. My sister, brother, and I did not play together — they stayed in the house and read, and I was outside. We were always out walking. We went into the cow pastures and walked with the cows. We had a goat farm behind us and a Shetland pony that ran about, and we were always down with the goats.
The Meyerholtz Family
Ken: Mom’s dad was Harmon. I forgot — it’s amazing, he was just a really small guy. My grandmother, my mom’s mom, was a really large woman compared to my grandfather. But he had a beer for breakfast every morning. I don’t know how you do that every morning.
His father was Edwin D. Meyerholtz, and his father before him was George Meyerholtz. Being German, they probably didn’t have water to drink, so they drank beer. Mom’s name was Irene Elizabeth Meyerholtz. I thought she was born in Woodville, but according to the records, she was born in Luckey, which is just outside of Woodville.
Paula: Yes, yeah.
Grandmothers and Grandfathers
Ken: Just little towns. Gosh, that’s such a small town. Somewhere in here, I had the family tree. Maybe it’s just something I had on my phone, but they had it traced down into the 1700s. Anyway, there was next to nothing on my dad, other than my grandmother — Dad’s mom. She was the sweetest lady. You remember on The Beverly Hillbillies, the one who played Granny?
Shirley: Granny, yeah.
Ken: Dad’s mom looked just like her. Sweetest lady in the world. Her maiden name was Elva Myers. I never knew her maiden name until I got that from Nancy as well. It was hard to believe she was so sweet because my grandfather was just mean. He was just mean.
Wallace: Is he the one who had the beer for breakfast?
Ken: No, that was Harmon, my mom’s dad. He was pretty harmless — a very frail-looking guy. He was pretty old even when I was a kid; I think he was about 93 when he passed. We didn’t see him that much. We saw my dad’s parents much more than we saw my mom’s parents. Dad’s mom had left her husband a few times while I was a kid and lived with my Uncle Lee because she couldn’t take living with my grandfather. He was just hard to describe — he was just mean.
Genealogy and the “Red” Traits
Wallace: What was his last name again?
Ken: His last name was Covert.
Ken: Yeah, that’s where the Covert name comes from. And that name does go back to Germany. I’d never seen anybody trace it anywhere else, but Dad said somewhere in there a Frenchman got in there — that’s where the name supposedly came from — but it was mainly German.
The Meyerholtz line went back into the 1700s. And my mom’s brothers and sisters — almost all of them were “Reds.” In fact, her brother — I only knew him as “Red.” He had freckles and very red hair. I don’t know what his real name was. I think he was also a Harmon, but I’m not sure.
Paula: I don’t think he had any red-headed kids; it usually skips a generation, and it did with us. My mom was a redhead, too, and none of us seven kids were redheads. But our two boys are redheads, and we had a niece and a nephew who are redheads. Debbie’s a redhead.
Biology of the “Towhead”
Ken: It’s interesting when you talk about the genealogy. My dad had dark brown hair and Mom was a redhead, yet all seven of us were what they called “towheads” back then — we were all blondes. Biology views our family as a strange example.
Obviously, Dad was heterozygous for brown hair, meaning he wasn’t “purebred” for it, or he couldn’t have had blonde kids. Mom, obviously, was a purebred redhead. If you took the odds of them having seven blonde kids, it is one fourth to the seventh power.
Wallace: Did you have a milkman or a postman?
Ken: Well, we did have a milkman. When we got into those kinds of conversations, Mom used to say, “When would I have had time to fool around with seven kids running around?” We are all Dad’s because all of us boys look like Dad to some degree or another.
The Marine and the Heartbreak
Shirley: You look a lot like that brother you’re standing next to in the photo.
Ken: Yeah, we all look alike. In fact, we could have been twins when we were younger. In junior high school, Mom saved money by buying us the same clothes. He flunked a year — I think he flunked the sixth or seventh grade — so we were in the same grade, wearing the same clothes, until we were seniors. Everybody thought we were twins. We were the same size, too.
That didn’t help Bob’s attitude; he had a temper as it was. All I can say is he was always a few pounds lighter than me, but woe to any guy who picked on him. Anybody bigger than him found out real quick not to mess with him. He was a very quiet guy — not outgoing at all.
Shirley: But once he had enough, he had enough.
Ken: He was like Mom. Once you lit the fuse, it was hard to put out. There was no stopping him. He had a heart attack when he was in his late 50s or early 60s. He died in his sleep. He had gone to bed complaining of heartburn. He was married at the time, which surprised everybody; his wife was Penny. We were living down here at the time, and they came and visited once.
She was trying to make him “civilized,” and he was settling down. He was a Marine to the core. When Dad passed, I told my brothers and sisters that if Bob wanted the house, I was going to donate my half. If he had any issues buying it, mine was his for free. He was my brother and he’d been through enough. He’d been divorced; the wife he married before he went into Vietnam divorced him right after he got out. It was a tough time for him; he didn’t deserve that.
But he didn’t really want the house. He seemed to be happy where he was; he had Marine stuff all over the place and was definitely proud of his service. He told me that in Marine boot camp, their objective wasn’t so much to make you a Marine as it was to break you. He said you could see them breaking down the big guys.
The night he died, he thought it was just heartburn. He complained early in the evening and I don’t know if he took an antacid, but he fell asleep. The next thing Penny knew, he was gasping for air like he couldn’t catch his breath. She thought it was just the heartburn again. They called EMS, but by the time they got there, he was already in cardiac arrest. It was a heart attack, in my opinion. My sisters say that at the VA, they checked him for the blood factor that causes clotting and told him he didn’t have it. I don’t know; Bob wasn’t always forthright in telling you those things.
Health Struggles
Wallace: Well, of course, the VA is not always the most reliable.
Paula: It runs all through his family.
Shirley: Yeah, you said you had the heart murmur when you were young.
Ken: Yeah, and I had an uncle who had heart problems. But one thing I learned is that when you have that blood clotting problem, if you have clots in your legs — anywhere below your waist — they end up in your lungs. If you get clots above your waist, they end up in your heart.
I found that out when I went into the hospital at Marshall Medical North. I couldn’t catch my breath and my blood oxygen was around 83%. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had multiple clots in both lungs. They kept asking me if I had hurt my legs. I had no bruises, nothing. They asked me the same question every day. I found out that if you bruise anything down there, you can get a clot that travels. I’ve learned my lesson: don’t hurt anything!
Wallace: I’m going to put this in your story, but have y’all had the virus vaccine?
Ken: No, we haven’t had a vaccine since elementary school. Like I said, don’t get me started. When I first read about RNA vaccines, even with my limited biological training, I knew there was no way that was going to work.
Wallace: I guess because they’re causing blood clots now.
Ken: Yeah, it had to.
Managing Chronic Conditions
Paula: Ken has the clotting issue, Kevin has it, and most of his brothers and sisters have it.
Ken: Well, some have been tested and passed. Larry was on Xarelto for a while and got off of it. He’s had a stroke, but they said it was platelet clotting, not the same thing. I’ve learned a lot from my brother Dan. He had so many clots in his leg and I never knew it. If you get a clot in your leg, the veins will literally regrow a path around the blockage. He said on the sonogram his leg looked like a bunch of little donuts. They were shocked.
He was on Warfarin, but he’s on Eliquis now and he’s much happier. Warfarin is a tough road to hoe. You have to get blood tests constantly to keep track of your potassium levels. If your potassium gets too high, the Warfarin has to be adjusted, so you can’t eat green vegetables. Potassium increases the clotting factor. Dan had his own prescription testing kit so he didn’t have to go to the doctor so often, but he got so tired of it.
Shirley: That’s like being a diabetic.
Ken: Almost, yeah. He had to stick himself every day. When they asked me if I wanted to be on Warfarin or Eliquis, I said, “Oh no, not Warfarin, thank you.” I’ll take the Xarelto.
Paula: He has to carry a wound powder with him now. If he gets cut while out on the tractor, he just bleeds, so he takes the powder everywhere.
Ken: I sprinkle it everywhere! It’s a clotting powder. If you have it in a first aid kit, they come in packets. It burns when you put it on, but it’ll clot as long as you leave it there. I’ve stained so many shirts and pants. Paula saw this at the drugstore and bought me some, so I’ve carried it ever since.
Kev uses super glue. That’s why he had to quit being a mechanic. He doesn’t work on cars except his own because he can’t afford to get a cut while stuck under a car. He used to love whitewater kayaking, but he can’t do that anymore either. Neither can I. Powder won’t do you any good if you’re in the water.
Wallace: Exactly.
Paula: So, Kev is the parts manager and all these mechanics come to him for advice. He’ll ask them, “Are you sure that’s what you really need?”
Ken: Like we talked about with education, he says — it’s amazing what these guys don’t know. You’re old and wise now, so you have to educate them!
Spiritual Commitment and Relocating South
Wallace: You started a while ago telling us about your dad and the lessons you learned about the belt. I think — if you have some further spiritual…?
Ken: On the spiritual side, thanks for getting me back on it. We really got off on that. I kind of came back to what we are going to be talking about in our chapter for our over-60 group. In my life, I’ve had career changes, and I think one of the major career changes occurred with what brought us down here. Coming down here was a big life change; it meant relocating the family. One of the things that I pledged myself to — and we both kind of pledged to — was that when we came down here, we’d get more involved in the church, and our kids would get more involved in the church.
The first week I was down here, other than being at the plant, I started scouting out churches. We were still in —
Wallace: Ohio. Yeah.
Ken: We hadn’t sold the house yet. That’s another story — little miracles that happened along the way, just amazing. Anyway, I’m out here scouting churches. Gosh, I think I went to Old Brazier’s and New Brazier’s, and First United Methodist. I had gone to the Methodist Church when I was in college. We went to a Methodist Church not far from where we lived there in Brunswick. I think the thing that bothered us about it was that, coming out of the parking lot — I mean, people are okay and sort of nice in church — but coming out of the parking lot, it was dog-eat-dog. It was just horns. I thought, “Okay, what the heck is this?” People are nice to the kids while they’re in church but won’t even speak to them when they get out. We had some of them in our Indian Guide troop, and it was like, “Okay, this doesn’t add up; this isn’t right.”
Baptism and Teaching the Word
Ken: So, anyway, we ended up going to New Brazier’s Chapel. It was a nice little church and we kind of liked it. In fact, I made a goal to be baptized. Paula had been baptized, and I made up my mind that I would be baptized. Trish, Kevin, and Darren — we were all baptized on the same day.
Ken: I was 42, I think, something like that, because I hadn’t been baptized as a kid. Mom always wanted us to, but it just never happened. So I got baptized, and it was something that I said was a goal I had. I was driven and led to do that. As I got more involved in the church, I said I had to be vested in it; I had to be committed to this. I became more involved and got into Sunday school.
I think I ended up being a service leader somehow — I got talked into that. What it amounted to was we had a bulletin, and I’d read the bulletin and get in front of the congregation to read. It was no big deal, as teachers are used to reading in front of people. Then there was the Sunday school class. I think they had somebody quit or whatever, and I said, “I don’t know about teaching. I just really don’t know the Bible.” One of the guys, Harold Gerald Martin, said, “Well, if you want to learn the Bible, teach it. That’s how you’ll learn.”
Ken: Yeah, he had a point there.
Ken: Okay, so I taught Sunday school. I learned a lot about the Bible teaching Sunday school. In the Methodist Church, you basically had a track system where you had a pamphlet that you used as a guide, and you taught your lesson and had Bible resources. I started by buying books to help as a resource, so I learned some of the background to the Bible stuff. I got more materials, and as the internet got better, I started finding resources for the stories. I learned more and more about the Bible as I taught. I even gave a sermon one time as a layperson in the church. I ended up being the board president, or whatever they call that, for the church. I thought, “Okay, I’m running a plant; I can handle this.”
Church Politics
Ken: Then I got into the politics of the church, and oh, that wasn’t fun. It was like a small family. As we were getting lots of younger people joining the church — we were one of the best for a small church and were growing pretty quickly with young families — it ran into an issue where they wanted to build a playground. At New Brazier’s, the church sat in one spot and they wanted to build a playground, but it had a little dirt driveway that drove around the church. If you’re going to have the playground, you’ve got to fence it in, but the fence was going to cut off the drive.
Oh, you would have thought we just started World War III. It turned into yelling. I thought, “Oh Lord, I don’t think I can handle this one.” You had the people who started the church and the group that broke away from Old Brazier’s Chapel. I just wasn’t up to this. So we kind of started moving away. And then I got involved in the Pastor-Parish Relationship.
Our pastor at that time was Roy Bryant — John Wesley’s great-grandson. A great man, a good guy. Right before all that, Roy Bryant’s wife had died of cancer. About a year and a half after she had passed, he was dating a lady whose husband had committed suicide, and she had a young son. I don’t know why some of the older congregants thought that was just a horrible thing.
Paula: Kathy is the lady, yes, his girlfriend.
Ken: I’m thinking, “What’s the problem?” The Lord put them together. What’s wrong with them? They wouldn’t say; they just said it wasn’t right that the pastor should be dating. There was so much rumor. It didn’t make sense to me; it was terrible. I heard it day after day after day. I said the Lord placed them together because He knew he needed a wife, and the Lord placed him with her by moving him to the church, and the son, Scott, needed a father. Yeah, it was just like, “Okay.” So it went on and on, and I said, “Okay, I’m resigning my position. I am done.”
Shirley: Did they end up getting together?
Ken: Oh yes. The ended up getting married until he passed. About five years ago. He was an associate pastor at First Methodist for a little while and then he left. He ended up being a pastor in Sylvania for a time. In fact, he was involved in a lawsuit in Sylvania between the federal government and prayer in the schools. The football team was praying before the football games or at halftime. He was a pastor at the Methodist Church there that the coach or the principal went to. He told us some stories of when a federal judge out of Birmingham called the principal in to threaten him with taking his house and all of his personal property, leaving his family out in the street if he didn’t stop the prayer.
I still remember Roy telling me that. You have got to be kidding me. It wasn’t long after that Brother Roy came to the Methodist Church. It was just chaos. In the United States, in Alabama, you’ve got to be kidding me — having to stop that. For a time, it ended up coming back, though. He was at First United Methodist, and I think he finally retired. And then he died — I think of a heart attack. No, liver cancer.
Family Struggles
Ken: Our kids always went to him. In fact, I had asked him — because by then he had married both Trish and Kevin. He married two of our three kids. He was there for them. Trish was going through a divorce and having a hard time, so I asked him, “Would you mind if I referred my kids to you on things that they don’t feel comfortable asking me about?” I felt I was too close and might do things they were afraid I might do. He said, “Yeah, I can do that.” So I told them, “If you guys have any problems, you call Pastor Roy.” And they did. Trish did, and I could count on him to talk honestly from a Christian point of view.
It helped because her ex-husband was that bad; he’s a clinical narcissist. The guy would lie in a heartbeat. Anyway, that’s another story. We don’t even talk about that anymore; they’re free and clear of him now. Caleb is 18 and he doesn’t even communicate with him because, even though you’re supposed to honor your dad, he feels like he can’t. The things the guy did just hurt people.
I learned that the civil courts in Georgia are a sham. It’s amazing. I went with Trisha to every court appearance she had, and I will tell you, I am just shocked. Their system is absolutely useless. He was a piece of — well — but he got away with it. He wasn’t physical, but he sent threatening emails. Every little thing, he threatened to take her to court, to take Caleb away, and said she’d never see him again. It was never-ending, so that poor child grew up always being afraid of doing anything against him to protect his mom. He always found an attorney who would do pro bono work because he claimed he had a Christian non-profit. He was a youth pastor — and I’m using that term very loosely.
It was seriously a scam. In fact, one of the judges said in court, “If you were any larger of a non-profit organization, you would be in jail for what you’re doing.” But he was small beans, so they wouldn’t go after him.
Ken: Then why are you letting him get away with it?
Ken: It was just so frustrating. Now I know why the church is so bothered by others. You can’t win. She’s a strong woman.
New Connections
Wallace: What about you? You started to tell why you moved down here.
Ken: That was it — part of the Christian voyage is dealing with society. Even down here, it’s a lot better than up North, but you still have people who aren’t saved. At New Brazier’s, we found a lot of young people, but you also found older people who were strong in their faith and found strength in that to raise their families. We had a good group of people — Chester, the Kennedys, Betty and Vicky, and the Parkers. Bob Parker was like a second father to me when we moved down here. He helped me; gosh, he’d let me borrow his tractor to bush hog my property and helped me with my fence work. He was just a good guy. He ended up dying of a heart attack. Betty and Vicky were in Sunday school class when he got the call. I still remember that.
When we left that church, it was hard because we left all that behind and went to First Methodist. We always looked to find that church family again. We sort of did; Vic and Betty ended up going with us to First United. We ended up meeting Clay and Mary Holly and became good friends with them. The Lemons came, too.
We got to know Mary Holly real well because her brother was a drug addict. We got to know more than we wanted to, to some degree, because we got to know him well enough as she told us what he was going through as a family. Her mom and dad couldn’t handle her brother and his addiction, so they figured bringing him down here to the South might help him. She made a comment one day: “You know, he didn’t find the drugs; the drugs found him.” They got him a job at the SCI plant, but she said the drugs found him there. People offered it to him, and it finally got so bad I think she ended up having to send him back to Illinois.
Career Transitions and Kaiser
Wallace: Did you move down here working for a plant?
Ken: I was working at a company — I started off there when I left teaching — that got bought and sold so many times. It’s hard for you to keep track, but at the time, it had been bought by Engelhard. I had worked my way up from a shift supervisor to a department superintendent.
I worked for a guy who was with Kaiser when Kaiser owned it. He was a Harvard Business MBA graduate named Ruehl Cheatham. He and I had been through union strikes. He got me involved in union negotiations, and I aced out the Human Resources department because he didn’t think they were right for it. He helped me get involved in actual negotiations because I had a stance toward unions which was not common at the time. To me, I looked at it as a partnership. The company is in business to make money; the union is sometimes in the business of trying to take money, and you’ve got to find something that works. That was Kaiser’s approach, so Ruehl and I had that common goal, and it worked. We had a pretty good friendship in time.
Relocation to South Carolina and Corporate Politics
Ken: Engelhard ended up moving Ruehl to another catalyst plant that they owned. He had some union issues there, and he said, “Hey, how about I bring you over and you run the catalyst plant there and the catalyst plant here? You’ll have two plants to run.” I told him I didn’t know; that was like a hundred and some employees, plus engineers, and this union group was more brilliant and knuckleheaded than the one I was used to. But I said, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”
It wasn’t long — maybe a year or so after that — when Engelhard said, “Okay, you’re doing so good, I want to move you down to Seneca, South Carolina.” So now I’m in this plant, but my sponsor has moved to a different plant. If you’ve ever been in business, when you lose your sponsor in a big corporation, you’re kind of like a sitting duck.
The new guy who came in asked, “You don’t have an engineering degree, do you?” I said, “Nope.” He said, “I don’t need you.” Even though I had been doing the work for a while and could do it well, I didn’t have the degree. He called me into the office and said, “I’m sending you back to the plant here, and you’re going to be a supervisor. Not a manager — a supervisor. We’re going to keep you at the same pay, but you’re going to have to interview with the guy who’s running that. You’re going to have to beg for your job, basically.” In other words, I had so many days before I was going to have to quit.
Move to Arab, Alabama
Ken: Some guys I used to work with — salesmen, mainly — had moved out of Engelhard for the same reason because of all the craziness and ended up working at Hall. I got a call from one of the salesmen, Ed Stason, who was then the president of sales at Hall. He called me up and said, “Hey, what are you doing? I’ve got tickets; the Browns are in the playoffs. How about going to the game?” I told him okay. He said, “I’ve got something to talk to you about.”
I went to the Browns game with him. It was cold — maybe 20 degrees or something — and Paula was home with the kids. We went to the game, and in the parking lot, Ed said, “I’ve got an offer for you.” I asked what it was, and he said, “Would you like a plant manager’s job? Do you think you can do it?” I said, “Well, where is it?” He said, “In Arab, Alabama.” I asked where the heck that was. He said, “Northeast Alabama.”
I told him I’d talk to Paula about it. It was a big change. Let’s face it: in Cleveland, there wasn’t much work. Steel was gone, aluminum was gone, and the engine plants were gone. There wasn’t much left. I had already put out feelers and there wasn’t much there. We prayed about it, I went and interviewed, and within a week, they told me, “It’s yours if you want it.”
Paula: You went down in May and were staying at the Holiday Inn on the lake there. Then they flew me down a couple of times. In August, we moved down. We drove back home, packed everything up, and went down. We hadn’t even sold the house yet.
Goldman Group and Environmental Issues
Ken: The agreement was with the Goldman Group. They had bought out the family after Mr. Hall passed. Goldman was a stereotypical venture capitalist. Most people didn’t know what they were like, but I had some inkling.
Anyway, I was down here learning what was going on and hearing rumors. It was different from what I had left; they didn’t make catalysts like I was used to making. They made liquid catalysts for polymers, but the kind of catalysts I was used to making were for petrochemicals and edible oils, which is a lot different. But catalysts are catalysts, and metal digestion is the same thing.
I was learning the ropes and hearing rumors about an environmental problem the plant had, which was bigger than I was led to believe when I took the job. I started looking for a church and a house. A realtor named Joanne was showing me around, and I saw the house that we live in now. I liked it, but some of the other places didn’t have enough land. We wanted a little more room. The house we had back home was 895 square feet with a full basement, part of which I’d turned into a bedroom for Kevin.
Buying the Farm
Ken: I had to do a lot of work on this place. I had no background in carpeting, but I learned. I ended up putting an offer on the house. I flew Paula down one time to look at it, and when she walked in, she said, “This is home. This is all I ever wanted. This is the house I’ve always wanted to have.”
Shirley: So he knew you well enough to know what you were going to like.
Ken: Yeah, we have 30 acres and love it. Originally, the company said they would buy our old house if it didn’t sell by the time we closed on the new one. That was a common thing for relocation back then. They sent one of the VPs to look at the house, but then they told me, “Nah, we’re not going to do it.”
Paula: Maybe they don’t do farms?
Ken: They said they couldn’t do it. Here I was, thinking, “You guys have got to be kidding.” Basically, the house wasn’t worth enough. If it had been a nicer house, they might have considered it, but it was a basic starter home — the kind you get on a teacher’s salary.
Then the bank came back and said, “We don’t want to do mini-farms. We will offer the house and 10 acres, and you’ll have to buy the other 19.7 acres separately.” I thought the whole thing was going to fall apart. There were no offers on our house in Cleveland, and we were really in a pickle. I prayed about it, and then out of the clear blue, while we were already down here, the house sold. A guy came in and bought it for what we wanted, no questions asked. It just dominoed from there. We bought the house and the 10 acres, and we paid off the rest of the acreage way before the house was paid off. It all worked out.
Family and Life360
Ken: We bought the house in Cleveland for $30,000 and sold it for $70,000. We’d only been in it nine years. That gave us the money for a down payment and for college funds.
Shirley: Where is the property located?
Ken: We’re just off Fry Gap Road. If you go toward Guntersville, before you go off the mountain, that’s where we are. One thing we’ve done as a family is stay on Life360. We know where everybody is. If anybody is in trouble, like if a car breaks down, we can go right to them. When Kevin goes off-road, we know.
Paula: It’s a good thing. We’re only about five minutes away from the church here, which is nice.
Ken: If you come out of church, you go down Fry Gap and turn right on Kenmore. Our property is right there. There are chicken houses nearby — that almost made me not buy it!
Retirement and Autism Awareness
Wallace: And how long have you been retired?
Ken: I retired at 65, and I’m 78 now, so it’s been close to 13 years.
Paula: I retired early because Damian was born, and it was a blessing because he ended up being autistic. I was able to learn how to help him and take him to therapy.
Shirley: Is that your son’s son?
Paula: Yes. He’s high-functioning and smart as a whip, but he has anxiety with loud noises and big crowds.
Ken: We’ve got a couple of people in church who are high-functioning autistic. You know Van? I used to know his last name.
Ken: Stephanie — we sit with her every day in church. Van built a Jurassic Park SUV and a Star Trek-type room inside his house from scratch. He even built a functioning R2-D2 robot with no formal training. He’s unique. He keeps to himself, but once you get him started, he’ll talk. He goes to the first service because he can’t handle the loud noise.
ESOP and the Settlement
Ken: We’ve been down here for a while — since 1990. There were so many things the Lord did to help us get here. When the Goldman Group took over, I’d only been here six months when they started an ESOP (Employee Stock Option Plan). I told Paula, “If we’re here in five years, we’re lucky. This place will be closed.”
I asked the accountant if it was legit, and he said he was setting the money aside himself. I ended up being let go after nine years, and one year after that, the company went bankrupt.
Duke Bryant, a VP of sales I’d known for a long time from the “Harshaw Gang,” had gone to Engelhard. The Harshaw group of engineers and chemists was world-known for their expertise. When I left Hall, I found a job with YS, and Duke would call me with jobs he found for us. He passed away a couple of years ago. He and another president who got let go by Goldman ended up suing over the ESOP garbage. I got a settlement of $44,000. It didn’t last long between college funds and paying down the house, but the Lord took care of us.
Letting Go and Finding Peace
Ken: When things went down at Hall, I got one unemployment check. I applied for the job at YS and talked to the owner and his son in Guntersville. I told Paula, “I think this is it. I’m just what they’re looking for.”
Paula: He came home and said he just got let go from Hall, and neither one of us was upset.
Ken: I wasn’t. The kids couldn’t believe I wasn’t upset. I told them I was just tired of dealing with it. I had people the company owed money to demanding payment every day. They were being told lies by the accounting department, and they would eventually come to the plant because their calls weren’t being answered.
One guy came in and said he was going to take his pipe off the walls. I told him, “You know full well in Alabama you can’t do that. You can go to court, but if you try to take it now, I’ll call the cops.” Every day was like that. So when they let me go, it was a relief.
Ken: I was happy. I was working for Lynn Taylor at the time. The kids said, “I can’t believe you’re not upset.” But I knew we were going to be okay.
Community and Faith
Paula: We were still at First United Methodist then. We moved to this church shortly after the tornado went through. We came to help with meals and luncheons. We were just being drawn here. We got put to work emptying freezers and pulling pork for sandwiches, and a day after that, we started attending here.
Ken: I had been an usher and taught Sunday school at the Methodist church, but I didn’t want to get involved in the politics there anymore.
Working at YS was great because the owner was a good Christian. I said grace before every meal and meeting. When I worked for Hall, it was owned by a Jewish venture capitalist. The HR guy once asked me, “You’re not going to do grace, are you?” I said, “Of course I am.” He said, “He’s Jewish,” and I told him I didn’t care. I did grace and thanked Lord Jesus. No one said a word. You can’t be afraid of stuff like that. It was nice being someplace where you weren’t afraid of your Christian beliefs. You can’t back down from it.
Carpool and Disappearance
Ken: One time when I was teaching, there was a lady who was a special education teacher. She taught the academically challenged — I don’t know what you would call it now, maybe slow learners or something like that. Anyway, those were the kids she taught. We were living in Brunswick, which was just over the border from Cuyahoga County in Medina, south of Cleveland. She was on the way into Cleveland, and this was when the gas shortage was happening in the ’70s.
She asked me one day, “Hey, I’ve been trying to find someone to carpool with. I’m going that way; could we carpool, and I’ll pay for part of the gas?” I said, “Okay, fine.” We had been doing that for a month or two by then. I would drop her off at a gas station. To tell you the truth, I think it was on the road she lived on, not far from her apartments.
Paula: Yeah, you picked her up right at the apartment.
Ken: That’s what I thought, because it was right off the exit on I-71. Anyway, I dropped her off and I was filling up. She said, “Go ahead and fill up,” and she was going to pay her part of the gas for the day. I had just finished, and I think she had given me the money. I wanted to pull out, but she tapped on the window and I stopped. I asked, “What’s the matter?” She said, “I think I left my keys on your seat, or they fell out.” I looked over and, sure enough, there they were. She opened the door, grabbed her keys, gave me the money, said “Bye,” and I left to go home.
Investigation and Media Frenzy
Ken: It was about eight o’clock that night when I got a call from the police in her neighborhood. They said, “She’s missing. Do you have any idea where she might be?” I told them, “I don’t know. I dropped her off at our normal drop-off place at a gas station.” Well, her roommate said she’d been carpooling, so they asked, “Could you come to the station and give a statement?”
I went in and told them what happened. They said, “We notice you drive a green car.” I said, “Yeah, it’s the car I drive to work every day.” They said, “Some people at the apartment building said they saw a green sedan, sort of like yours, near her apartment before she disappeared.” I told them I had never been to her apartment and had no idea where it was. As I was leaving, they told me, “By the way, you better go out this other exit; all the reporters are outside the main entrance.” I went out that way and didn’t think much more about it, though it was kind of weird.
Next thing I knew, the media was at the school where we taught. The next time I saw the Cleveland Plain Dealer, my name was in the paper as a suspect. The next day or the day after, they searched my car in the parking lot. I thought, “Oh God, you’ve got to be kidding me.” I told them, “Search the car? Knock your socks off, I don’t care.”
Then I got a call on my room phone from the front office. The vice principal said, “Hey, there are some people from the Plain Dealer here who said you agreed to give an interview.” I said, “I have done no such thing. I will not talk to anybody from the media.” I dodged the media at every turn. They said things about me being a suspect and the last person to see her. We even got phone calls at the house. It was unbelievable.
Rescue and the Truth
Ken: This went on for probably almost a month. In fact, it lasted until the schools stopped paying us. It was a day when I was supposed to get a call from the police department to take a lie detector test, but then news came that she had shown up at a store.
The guy who had kidnapped her had stopped to get gas. Because she had worked with emotionally challenged kids, she knew how to handle him and gain his confidence. She managed to get the attention of a lady at the gas station — I guess she had to go to the bathroom — and whispered that she was being held hostage. The lady managed to call the police and stall the guy without tipping him off until the police got there. They rescued her.
Wallace: They never posted anything clearing you, did they?
Ken: Well, they did because they had to post that they caught the guy. He also drove a green car. I can’t remember which model it was.
That was around the time Cleveland schools closed because they ran out of money. They closed for four weeks one time and three weeks the next. Back then, schools were funded by property taxes. Railroad companies owned a lot of property in Cleveland, and they had all their property reevaluated downward. The school system lost millions — so much that they couldn’t meet payroll. We went a month without a paycheck.
The Aftermath and Linda’s Story
Ken: After they caught the guy, I never talked to the media. Every time I saw anyone talking to them, I thought, “You’ve got to be an idiot to talk to the media.” I spoke to Linda — that was her name — one time after that. I learned that the guy had been in prison previously and had learned locksmithing there. He was so good that he picked her lock. He was actually after her roommate, not her.
Ken: She came home before her roommate, and he decided to take her instead.
Shirley: Where was she for that month she was missing?
Ken: Wherever he had her. He dyed her hair to change her look and cut it. He even took her to movies while holding a gun on her. She was in fear for her life.
Wallace: Was he mentally ill?
Ken: I don’t know, but she said, “Thank God I was trained in how to handle a mentally deranged person.” That’s the only thing that kept her alive. When she had her opportunity, she took it.
Think about the timing of those keys. If she had not remembered her keys were on the seat, they would have found her keys in my car. Then it would have really been a problem. She was so afraid of him coming back that she demanded to be relocated in witness protection, and nobody has seen her again. He went back to jail, but she was afraid that if he ever got out, he would come for her. In fact, they made a movie about that whole thing a few years later. I’ve never seen it, but they did make a movie about it.
Wallace: And you were real close to it.
Ken: Yeah, very close. It was one of those dark things in life. When you see crime shows talk about circumstantial evidence, I have some sympathy for people who get caught in that.
Life at Charles Mooney School
Shirley: Was there anything that the kids went through?
Ken: They were pretty young at the time.
Paula: But the kids at school — you know how cruel they can be.
Ken: At the school where I taught, I guarantee they had all kinds of crap going on. Lord knows what they talked about.
Paula: It was one of the better schools in the Cleveland system.
Ken: The best.
Paula: Charles Mooney School was good. It had a strong PTA.
Ken: It was mainly Polish and Russian. There were strong family ties, and that kept the kids good. We probably had the best of everything, including two music teachers. One guy who ran the band had written books that many high school bands used for their concerts.
The other guy, the assistant, did shows during the summers at Cedar Point. He worked with the Golden Girls who used to be on the Dean Martin show. The music teachers in that junior high school were top-notch. That school had a lot of talent; it was a nice place to be.