Living my earliest years in Osceola, Iowa was pretty much one of the best times of my life. It was a "Leave it to Beaver" childhood. My brother Mike was the "wild child" in our time. My sister Martha is the middle child and got the job of helping to look after me.

There are so many memories of these early years. Martha would be quick to tell the most memorable ones, i.e., I couldn't have been more than three or four years old when she took me shopping downtown on a Saturday morning. I don't remember much about the trip except that at the end of it I had to use the facilities. I knew I could count on my sister to get me to a restroom before some damage was done. You might guess that she failed at rescuing my bladder. She made me walk ahead of her all the way home as if she didn't know me. I think it was the part when the stream that was running down my leg started to run down the street as well.

The most told "Kirk" story has to be what my siblings refer to as the "Kool-Aid" incident. It was to be believed that I was lactose intolerant. So when the meal was served, I usually didn't get anything put in my glass to drink with the meal. Everyone else got to drink milk.

Now you have to know that my sister usually made our lunches for my dad and me as my mother would be working and at this time my brother was in the military service. So there were not many witnesses. However, at age 50, I still haven't been able to live down this act of disgust.

You see, once again it was lunchtime and I believed that the green glass at my place setting was empty. But my kind sister had put about an inch of green Kool-Aid in the bottom of the glass. So naturally I thought the glass was empty. After the prayer was said and my sister, father and I started eating, I felt compelled to express my appreciation for the empty glass. I proceeded to turn the glass upside down over my head (thinking the glass was empty) and saying, "Gee, thanks, Martha!" The look on my face must have been priceless as the look my father was giving me was of pure disbelief! One of his favorite names for someone that he believed wasn't working with a full set of silverware as "Stupnagle." I thought we were going to have to call 911 as the two of them were on the floor as drenched in laughter as I was in Kool-Aid.

We lived in a two-story house on Cass Street in Osceola. My dad worked for Iowa Southern Utilities Company and my mother worked for the local telephone company. Dad had a long commute to work every day... his office was across the street. Come to think of it, my mother always walked to work when the weather was nice. It was such a simple and laid back life. It really was a magical time.

My dad, working for the electrical company, hooked up a "Fun House" battery-powered buzzer in our attic . He had designed it to trip when the electricity would go off. This would wake him so he could go across the street to work. But if you think about when the electricity goes off, you would understand that it is usually when an electrical storm' would blow through. Imagine yourself as a kid, thunder and lightning, the electricity goes out and the "Fun House" buzzer goes off. I'm sure we cried every time it happened.

Our dad was a natural mechanical engineer. When I was about five years old, he made us a go-cart from an old lawnmower engine. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me at that time. You'd be surprised how popular a guy can be when he owns a gasoline powered go-cart.

I was plagued with illness from birth. I had a classic textbook case of ulcerative colitis. My folks didn't know I had this disease until I was about eight years old. The summer before I was to start first grade, I had rheumatic fever. I remember tripping over a dirt mound in our yard (someone was digging a new water line or something) and I hit my knee. It swelled up and I started running a fever. Our family doctor, Dr. Bristow, made house calls in those days. He was the one who diagnosed the problem. I had to miss several weeks of school that year.

I got to spend a week in the hospital when I was eight years old. My mother and father could not wake me up from a nap. I was bleeding from my ulcerative colitis. That was the scariest time of my childhood. They took me to Blank Memorial Children's Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. All of the procedures they did were not something I want to remember.

I had two roommates in the hospital. One had his appendix taken out and the other had his hand blown up from an M-80 firecracker. The room wasn't air-conditioned and both my roommates moaned a lot from their pain.

Along with two illnesses, I also suffered from seasonal allergies (hay fever) that would turn into asthma attacks. Like clock work, every Labor Day weekend I would end up in the E.R. (Emergency Room) getting a shot of adrenaline to ease my breathing.

Grandparents

My father's parents lived in Osceola when we lived there. My mother's parents were divorced. Her mother lived in Des Moines, Iowa. She liked to move about once a year and my dad and uncle always got that job. My mother's father lived on a farm in Decatur, Iowa.

My grandpa Ketcham played the piano and would take me down to see the trains at the depot in Osceola. He had a friend he called "Toots," that he would take me to see. Grandpa always kept a carton of Pepsi on the back porch, but he wouldn't ever let us drink any. He said it was poison he used to open the drains when they got clogged. We believed him. Grandmother Ketcham was such a sweet and gracious lady. She was so kind to all her grandkids. Things I remember about her include her "Pop Beads" that she always wore and she always had a stick of gum in her purse. Her trade mark saying was, "Oh, for goodness sakes" and "O, Fred."

Grandmother Millsap, Gladys, was my mother's mom. She did baking and domestic cleaning for people. I never tasted homemade bread that tasted like Grandmother Millsap's bread. Her cinnamon rolls were to die for. They would just melt in your mouth and the fine yeast taste was just right. I miss you, Grandma!

Gladys would play with me whenever she would visit. I remember we cut hair from the dog one afternoon and made mustaches from dog hair and scotch tape. She wore one and I wore one. We used to put on shows in the basement. I'm sure an outsider would think we were really stupid! But we didn't care.

I didn't really get to know my mother's father, Warren Millsap. He didn't do the family things with us much. He would come to the major family dinners. I do remember he smoked and liked to roll his own cigarettes. On one of his birthdays, someone asked him when he started smoking. His answer was, "When I was three."

Creston, Iowa

We moved to Creston, Iowa in 1967. It was a short distance but a big move for us. My sister was so upset and my brother said he wasn't going to move. But he did, eventually.

I was in the third grade when we moved to Creston...for the second time! My parents decided that with all the illnesses and missed school, this would be the best way for me to catch up. I was not the best student to begin with and the allergy medicine in those days made one so sleepy. I can remember daydreaming a lot at school with very low energy to do much.

I always loved music and it has been a big part of our family. My mother used to always say, "I want one of my kids to play the piano like Liberachi." Thank God none of us went that direction! My first musical instrument was a snare drum my folks bought me. This was such a disappointment for me, as what I really wanted was a drum set. It just wasn't the same.

I joined the band in fifth grade and learned to play the trumpet because that is what we had at home. I got good enough to play in the Junior High Stage Band. I learned to improvise playing jazz with my band teacher, Dick Bauman. He was a Stan Kenton fan and we listened to a lot of Stan Kenton. My career path was set, as I couldn't see doing anything but music. I played in the band and sang in chorus all the way through high school and on to the community college in Creston, SWCC.

My fondest memories are of the big bands that Mr. Baughman would have come to our little town in Iowa. We had Stan Kenton, of course, as well as Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson and Gerry Mulligan. These were all great musicians and I got to meet them and even play with them. One musician I met at our high school, Ed Lojeski, was a choral arranger for the Hal Lenard Publishing Company. Mr. Lojeski lived in Los Angeles and came to our school as a guest conductor and clinician. He spent an afternoon talking with a small group of us. He was fascinated that I had a mini moog synthesizer. He gave some advice for life that continues to come to the surface of my mind. He said, "Do as many different things in your life as you can. Don't focus on doing just one thing for your whole life." Whenever I feel the pressures of change in my life, I remember his words.

Mr. Baughman took me to a jazz summer camp in Springfield, Missouri in 1978. The Kenton band hosted the camp. We had to audition to be placed in one of the camp bands. I was so nervous with so many people attending this camp from all over the United States. But I made it into one of the top three bands out of 13 camp bands. It was such an honor, as the top three bands would play a concert with the Stan Kenton band the last evening of the camp.

My brother, Mike, and I played in the bars around Creston and the Southwest Iowa region. I bought a new Fender Roads electric piano when I was a senior in high school. Mike taught me to play the piano with a guitar player's mentality. We were the real life "Blues Brothers," so to speak.

Our band got into a fight with the audience one night. Just like the Blues Brothers only without the chicken wire between the audience and us. It was a country bar and we were a Rock band. It just didn't mix too well. I think the night came to a head when our soundman in the back of the room hit the biggest cowboy in the room in the back of the head with a bottle full of beer! That was the fastest pack-up the band ever did.

College Life

After two years of community college, I attended Northwest Missouri State University at Maryville, Missouri. I was a music major there and participated in all the music activities that one can imagine. I lived off campus in a house with five other guys and one girl. She was working on her masters in psychology. Some of the guys I lived with had a "Punk Rock" band. I would come home from an evening class or the library and these guys would be dressed in tinfoil, practicing in the living room. The psychology major would be in the kitchen interviewing the members of the house, as we were her clinical study group.

I met my wife, Sherry Armstrong at Northwest. She was a business major but took a band class as one of her electives. We met in symphonic band. The symphonic band did a road trip to St. Louis and we shared a seat on the bus. We knew each other for almost two years before I asked her out on a date. I asked her if she would like to go with a group of us to hear the living room punk band playing in a bar about 30 miles away. As the day went on, everyone that said they would go back out leaving just Sherry and me. To this day she believes I planned it that way.

I graduated from NWMS in 1982, and got my first teaching job in Humboldt, Nebraska. Sherry was a year behind me in college and graduated the following year. Humboldt, Nebraska had to be one of the smallest towns I had ever visited and I knew it would be short term, as Sherry wanted a business career. Her first job was in Los Angeles, California. She moved there in the summer of her graduation to live with her grandparents and look for a job. Job hunting in the Midwest was just not working out.

I had already signed a contract to teach for a second year in Humboldt. That was the longest year of my life. I thought my life had ended when I said goodbye to Sherry that summer as she boarded the plane to L.A. I felt like the bottom had dropped out of my life with her gone. That year I played in a band to help move the time along. The band was called "Slick Shift," but the marquees of the bars we played in would always leave the "f" out of Shift.

Married Life

Sherry and I were married on June 16, 1984. I moved to LA and we started our married life. I got a job working for a private music studio in Hollywood. I was a real live "Harold Hill!" I went to the Catholic schools and set up instrumental music programs. I had a different school every day.

The past 24 years of marriage has been blessed far more than I could ever imagine. Sherry is a natural business lady. She has taken her career and our life together on one of the most fantastic adventures anyone from a small town in Iowa could ever hope to have. We moved from California to Colorado, Colorado to Georgia, Georgia to Texas, and Texas back to Atlanta. She has been a vice president twice and is now the senior director of finance for YRC Logistics in Kansas City. At the time of this writing, we are preparing to move our family from Kansas City to Atlanta. We have met so many people and have traveled to many places and countries. I am thankful that our lives have been so diverse and blessed.
The first 11 years of our marriage there were just the two of us. We worked at having children, but as one doctor told my wife, we needed to be in the same state if we wanted to have children. You see, Sherry travels extensively in her jobs and has a constant high level of stress with her occupation. But on April 4, 1995, Meghan Lynn Ketcham was introduced to our family. Just when we had all but given up on having any children, a true miracle came into our lives. Seeing as it had taken so long to have our first child, Sherry and I were both in disbelief when our son, Matthew Patrick Ketcham arrived on the scene 17 months later.

I got to spend the next seven years at home being a real "Mr. Mom." Our kids were the happiest kids in the neighborhood as their dad liked to give endless horsy rides and take them in the golf cart to their favorite park every day while the mac and cheese were drying in the carpet. Those years just evaporated and now both kids will be in middle school this coming year. Meghan will be in eighth grade and Matt will be in sixth. They are both enrichment students and have kept their straight "A" school career intact so far.

Matt is into playing roller hockey and started playing drums in the school band. Meghan is into writing and wants to be a journalist. She has also been active and involved with our church's children's musicals and has had major character rolls with a singing part in these shows. She has participated in chorus at school as well.

The past five years, I've been working two jobs. I have been teaching school, most recently middle school strings/music class. I have also been a praise and worship leader in two churches. I have been so fortunate to get to perform each Sunday in the house of our Lord with some very talented musicians and to help lead the worship services.

God and Faith

As I mentioned earlier, I had a lot of illness in my life. I feel that I've always had a close relationship with God and it may be due to my struggle with health. But in the following section, I will tell how our faith has grown and changed from our family's experience and walk with God.

In February of 1996, our mother, Marjorie Ketcham, had elective colon surgery. The surgery became more complex than the surgeon had believed it would be. Marjorie had all but eight inches of her colon removed during that surgery. They reconnected her colon and shortly released her from the hospital. Once at home, our mother became very sick and had to return to the hospital three days later. The reconnection had leaked and peritonitis had set in. They performed emergency surgery on her and did a colostomy (which six months later was reversed).

Sherry, Meghan and I were in Atlanta when this was happening. My sister, Martha, called me the following day to tell us how Mom was doing. I could tell everyone had been up all night and were tired from the experience. We had just found out that our son was on his way to be with our family. Sherry was pregnant and we hadn't told anyone yet. I proceeded to let Martha know that Sherry was expecting and that she could tell Mom she was going to be a grandmother again.

No sooner than I had told my sister this, than her voice started sounding shaky, and she said over and over to me, "Kirk, you just don't know what you are saying!" I tried to explain to her that Sherry had been to the doctor and it was a fact that we were expecting a second child. Again Martha said, "Kirk, you just don't know what you are saying!" So I listened as she explained about the surgery and Mom's condition being so grave. My brother, Mike, was a witness as well as Martha to what my mother had been saying in the recovery room. The nurses had been asking our mother questions to check her state of coherency. Questions like, "Who are you?" "Where do you live?" and the kicker: "How many grandchildren do you have?"

At the time of this surgery, Marjorie and Sam had four granddaughters — my sister's three girls and our Meghan. However, our mom's response to the question was "five grandchildren!" She said she had five grandchildren. My sister and brother both looked at each other and said, "It's not me!" So when I told Martha the news on the phone, her bewildered state is understandable.

Some time during the surgery or the recovery period, our mother had a near-death experience. She told us she couldn't remember when it happened but that she is no longer afraid to die. Mom said it was the most peaceful and tranquil experience she has ever known. She recalls seeing three pink crosses coming up from a bubbling fountain. The crosses represented her three children. A figure thought to be Jesus spoke to her and told her, "You may come with me now if you choose, however your mission is not complete. Your children need you."

Side note: It is interesting that the words "if you choose" were included in his statement. According to the Bible, God gave man free will to live. And this statement indicates that he gives us a choice when to die as well.

One of my dearest friends in Georgia has had a life of trouble with a question as to why her mother had died with breast cancer at the age of 39. She told me that hearing this story helped her understand better than anyone had ever been able to in her Bible study and church. My friend now is 51 and has just completed treatment and survived breast cancer.

Our mother loves to make quilts. She tells us she had a vision to make a quilt for the new baby to come. It is a blue quilt with trains running around the border. Mom knew we were going to have a boy before we did. The quilt is in our son's room.

"Your children still need you." Within that statement came the truth. In that year my brother and sister and I all had life-changing events happen to us. We all three needed her and our father for support, both physically and mentally.

Physically and mentally Mom and Dad were both such a help to us. Mom bonded so much with Matthew in those weeks as Sherry went back to work.

Thoughts at 50

I turned 50 on October 19, 2007. All my family whom I love so dearly came to Georgia to help me celebrate. We had a great weekend that started with a Friday evening of live music with all my musical friends and ended the weekend with a very worshipful church service that included my brother Mike and my wife's Aunt Betty from Colorado joining in with their musical talents. (It is great to look into the congregation and see your loved ones from so far away being part of our life.)

In this life journey at 50, I have had glimpses of Heaven and Truth and I have seen glimpses of Hell and Lies. Life is eternal and this earth is only one season of the total journey.

I believe we are still living in biblical times. THE WORD of GOD is and should be the most important axis of our lives. God created us with words: "Then God said "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground" (Gen. 1:26 NTV).

We should be very careful in the words we choose to speak to each other. Words are very powerful and can bring joy and love or they can bring hurt and pain.

Love is more than emotions. Love should be a way of life. God's love is the only pure, true and lasting love in our world. Our love for each other is a commitment and a reminder of God's love for us.

I love my family more and more each day. When the kids are fighting and our lives are stressed I turn to God and he gives me rest.

My favorite Bible verse is: "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5 NW).

May God's love follow you all of your days!

Kirk Ketcham
Written on July 18, 2008

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