Thanks for posting this Randy! Jon J… I’m with you too bro! Ken, Tim, and Dean are the kind of people you will never stop missing. Not if you knew them.
For Ken specifically, it broke my heart…. tears fell hard when I returned from the road to find out we’d lost him. The turns my life has made has not allowed me the luxury of keeping up with my former activity here and I had fallen “out of the loop” because of it. Nobody’s fault, it’s just life. But Ken and I were pretty close for a while.
We met early in the fish the river days and once pms were possible, we got into bantering sessions that were absolutely vicious! Had anyone seen those conversations, they’d have thought that we didn’t like each other, but we’d laugh until we cried over the zingers we delivered on each other. This style of humor/comradery, is truthfully quite rare. Of course we couldn’t pass up opportunities on the message boards either and for those long-timers out there, they may still remember “The Pup and the Professor” going at each other from time to time. This all led to “we have to get some time in the boat together.”
I was totally wet behind the ears but eager to learn from him. I wanted to become skillful in my fishing endeavors and I knew I was holding the Snoopy pole compared to most around here, but he possessed the science behind much of his strategies and I appreciated that he was willing to share the insight of his strategies with me. He sped up my learning curve without making me waste days learning purely thru trial and error.
He took me out on the Mississippi and thanks to some info from Chris Tuckner, we had a good day on Pool 3. We did Pool 4 a couple of times and we teamed in a couple of IDO Get Together Tournaments. He was simple. Practical. Educated. And he could deliver zingers that’d make you fist pump all the day long. He sold me his boat when he decided to upgrade and some days, I wish I still had it. Some really great memories are connected to that old Crosby trihull. He took me to one of his “secret honey holes” once…. and schooled me to no end, but in true Pup fashion, I had to start catching fish in a manner the Professor claimed was impossible. To this day, I’m not sure if anyone has ever heard that story…. but this exemplifies the kind of friendship we formed and the wingnut, can’t-stop-laughing type of memories we created.
He stood by me when someone was trying to make things difficult for me. He was the first and last time I ever played fantasy football.
When my life started moving away from being a regular water warrior, we lost our consistency but if either of us needed “that buddy”, we were still there. I visited him at his home in Osceola several times. Worked with him thru some trying events.
When he took on photography, his fishing poles started to collect dust. He was into it on a spiritual level and it gave him something that fishing no longer did. Fishing was our common interest so again, the regular interactions faded, but we were always great, true to a fault, friends.
Like all those that knew him, I sure do miss him and honestly, I can’t think about this website or that “secret” place without having a thought of him pass thru my mind. He was a great friend, a talented visionary, and Professor. He had a weak heart as it was and the strain of losing his daughter was indeed more than his compassionate heart could handle. He had a love for life and family, yet he was secretive. If he ever shared any of these things with you, you were in his highest respects. It was his way of letting you know you were special to him too.
Between he and I, The Pup and the Professor will live forever.
Why? I never hit you! 