Thursday, July 13, 2023
Hello everyone my name is Ernesto,
It was early 2017 when I got a phone call from Ken, right after he lost power.
I answered the phone and he asked me: “do you do electrical work?”
I said “yes, you called a licensed electrician.”
“Okay” he said. “Do you think you can come to my house? I don’t have any power.”
I told him I would be there shortly.
When I arrived at his house he showed me the neighbor’s tree which had fallen on the power lines and asked if I could help. I said yes and asked if he could show me to his electrical panel.
We went down into his basement and, let me tell you, as an electrical contractor I’ve seen plenty of basements in my day, but nothing quite like Ken’s. There were thousands of golf balls all perfectly lined in organizing trays.
I said, ‘Sir? What is all this?”
“Oh that’s my golf ball collection—I’ve been collecting for years. In fact, I entered myself into a contest to get into the Guinness world record book for Largest Collection of Golf Balls.”
He began to explain to me how the reason he came in second place was because the guy who came in first place was an actual store that sold golf balls for a living. He said that this didn’t seem very fair.
He told me how he had excel sheets, with the information of every golf ball he owned categorized by number and said, “when my power gets back up, I could share it with you if you’d like to see it.”
I said, “OK one day, Sir.” Thinking in my head that this was one interesting guy.
The next couple days I worked at his house, putting his electrical service back together. He would stand there while I worked just talking to me—boy, did he love to talk.
I remember he kept mentioning a woman named Jane and I kept thinking “Who is Jane?” Finally, I decided to ask and he said,
“Oh, Jane’s my wife. She passed away a couple years ago.”
I told him I was sorry, to which he responded,
“Do you know how hard it is for a Jewish man to cook on his own? So you know what I did? I wrote a cookbook. Would you like a copy?”
I said “Sure, let me look at it,” and he began to tell me how proud he was of his wife and his two daughters Anne and Ellen. He spoke so highly of both of them and their husbands and all his grandkids. He also told me about his family tree which was a spreadsheet, about 37 feet long.
Ken was a very kind man and he loved company. He would tell me me stories about his childhood, about how every year after tax season he did his road trips cross-country with his family. He loved those trips.
He said “You know, Ernesto, I do taxes. I did taxes my whole life for a company called L3 Harris,” and again he was so proud. “I saved them millions of dollars in taxes.”
I meet a lot of people in the line of work I do and I hear a lot of stories as you can imagine. But something stuck with me about Ken. He was different. He was a man of his word. He was kind. He was caring. So one day during tax season I gave him a call and asked if he could help me with my taxes.
He said, “Sure. Send me your information.”
So I did and he emails me back: Ernesto, I have a few short, easy questions. But if anybody knows when Ken does taxes, his questions are never short OR easy. So after several emails and many follow-up questions and phone calls later my taxes were done and, just like he said, he saved me a ton of money. Thank you Ken.
After that we became friends and I would visit and call him quite often. He would never answered with a simple Hello and he never answered the same way twice: Tax Advisory, Stop & Shop Produce, Pelham Manor Country Club.
We had conversations about anything and everything from his open heart surgery as a child, to the magic tricks he would play with his grandchildren.
Ken loved the outdoors. If he wasn’t golfing, he was swimming or hiking. He also loved the public theater in New York City.
During the pandemic Ken and I became very close. I would go food shopping for him several times a week. He would give me a shopping list that was SO detailed. Numbered and listed by category: fruit, poultry, dairy, bread. In the exact order they would appear in the grocery store. He even included which items were on sale and for what price. Several times I made mistakes, but he never got upset and he was always so grateful when I showed up at his doorstep with his bags of food.
Even after the pandemic I continued to stop by to check up on him. If I wasn’t visiting we were chatting on the phone. I learned so many interesting things about Ken.
Ken would never say no; he would never get upset. He was a great person to me I am so glad that I was able to become his friend. He will always have a special place in my heart and I will miss him and his quirky greetings dearly.
