While I’ve never reached superstar status, I’ve often been the center of attention for family, friends, and sports enthusiasts.
In the late 1970s and early ‘80s when I was a high school and college basketball star, loyal fans were at every game to cheer me and my team on to victory. When I pick up a guitar and sing country tunes, my friends and family happily applaud my amateur talent. As a father, my children watch and copy my every move.
You could say that a group of student nurses who watched my birth on October 27, 1961, at Sacred Heart Hospital in Yankton, S.D., were among the first to admire me. Technically, they were in the room to observe the delivery as part of their training, but I’m sure for some of them it was love at first sight. After all, I was pretty cute with my hazel eyes, light brown hair, and plump cheeks.
Six or eight of those student nurses were Mom’s high school friends from Mount Marty. It was kind of relaxing having someone there you know, Mom said as she recalled my birth in later years. In those days, fathers were not allowed in the delivery room.
The official record of my birth to Joan L. Newton King and Larry Philip King is filed at the Bon Homme County seat in Tyndall, S.D. According to the 1960 census, the county had a population of 9,229 in 1960.
My parents lived in a one bedroom unit on the Southern Teacher’s College campus in Springfield, S.D. They were living on about $2,000 annually at a time when the median average American family income was $5,700. Dad, an 18-year-old sophomore industrial arts major was attending school on an athletic scholarship, spent much of his time on the basketball court and traveling with the team.
Mom stayed at home to care for me until the fall of 1962 when she took a job teaching at a country school outside the nearby town of Tabor.
Mom’s first labor pains came a little earlier than her Nov. 9 due date. She sensed the time was near the night before when she experienced side pains. Dad, however, blamed that discomfort on the green apples she had eaten. It was about 11 p.m. when they decided to head to the hospital. Scared and nervous, Dad drove their 1954 Ford Station Wagon a fast 30 miles to Yankton. Once there, he stayed with Mom during her 12 hours of labor. When it was time for my delivery, the hospital staff directed Dad to the waiting room. Mom, groggy from the pain killers, didn’t know if she had given birth to a boy or girl until sometime later.
Despite my size of 9 pounds, 4 ounces baby, 21.5 inches long, my mother’s pregnancy was routine. Probably because I was her firstborn, Mom’s labor lasted longer than with my three younger sisters, Kimberly Ann, born on Feb. 21, 1963; Karmen Kay, who arrived on July 22, 1964; and Kristi Lee, a March 12, 1970, baby. I was the largest of my parent’s four babies, but not by much. Kristi weighed in a close second at 9 pounds, 3.5 ounces. My eventual height of 6 foot 5 surprised everyone. Mom said she never dreamed I’d be as tall as I am now.
The forceps my mother’s gynecologist Dr. Brooks Ranney used to make the delivery left temporary red marks on my cheeks and head. When Dad first saw those indentations, he worried I wouldn’t make it.
My grandparents were called. Dad found it hard to control his tears as he told his parents, Darlene and Cecil King who lived in Kennebec, S.D. My maternal grandparents, LeRoy and Rose Newton, lived in Highmore, S.D. There were lots of hugs and kisses when both sets of grandparents arrived at the hospital to see their first grandbaby. Referring to my chubby cheeks. Grandpa Newton told Mom, It looks like your baby has the mumps.
My parents named me Kevin Dean. Both first and middle names were popular names for boys in the early ‘60s. Another popular trend was to name siblings with the same first letter. In my family’s case, my sisters and I all have first names that start with K.
Mom recovered quickly and after five days in the hospital - a typical stay at the time - she and Dad took me home where their bedroom served as a nursery furnished with a borrowed bassinet. Because they didn’t have health insurance, they had to come up with about $500 to pay the hospital bill.
Even though hospital staff had shown Mom how to care for an infant, once home she was scared to give me a full bath. While visiting, Grandma King asked, Haven’t you given that baby a bath? and proceeded to show Mom how to give me a proper cleaning. To this day, I’m particular about cleanliness.
A priest at the Kennebec, S.D., Catholic Church baptized me in November while my aunt and uncle, Bonnie and Donnie Schindler of Reliance, S.D., stood by as Godparents. I was the type of baby content to play with a box for an hour, yet curious about everything. Dad remembers me as a good baby, always happy and smiling. He was very protective. Once, when Dad noticed other children had nice, shiny toys to play with while my toys were secondhand, he rashly spent $18, money my parents couldn’t afford, to buy me new ones. When he gave me the toys, I began to play with the boxes.
I kept trying to get Kevin to play with the truck or one of the other toys, but Kevin wanted the box and wouldn’t play with the toys, he said. Dad loaded up the toys and returned them. Mom describes me as a plump little man. I guess I had a healthy appetite because at two weeks I was already eating cereal in addition to drinking my homemade formula of evaporated milk and syrup. At one month old, vegetables and fruit were added to my diet. According to Mom, I ate every three hours as a baby.
Dad took to calling me Sheena, an Indian name his friends called each other. Later, when my sisters and I started to give each other nicknames, they called me Sweet Tooth Harry because I liked anything sugary. I retaliated with names such as Cross-Eyed Annie for Karmen. I called my best childhood friend Budgie.
My first playmate was Doyle, the son of Shirley and Glen Frick, neighbors in Springfield. Doyle was about two years older. Shirley remembers us boys dressing up in old cowboy hats and boots, guns strapped around our waists. We would have looked like real cowboys except for the fact we were wearing shorts. Other times we would put on old glasses without lenses. We often sat on the steps at my house or at Doyle’s, eating cookies and drinkomg Kool Aid while we visited away.
“Kevin was a good young man, very loveable,” Shirley said, recalling those days. “ I can still see him knocking on our door with that smile.” She also remembers me and Doyle playing outside with our trucks on a hot day. When Shirley looked outside after it had been raining awhile, she saw we were naked and covered in mud. Those were the days!
Mom did most of the childcare, including washing cloth diapers in a wringer washer and sterilizing bottles in boiling water. Kevin was just so good, I never really had to reprimand him at all, Mom said.
When he was home to help, Dad changed my diapers, bathed and fed me and put me to bed. He taught me to sit up in my crib at six months, but every once in awhile my plump body would fall from one side to the other, just like a little round toy bear.
I gave Dad a few scares. Mom said once, at seven months, when I fell off the couch my dad was so afraid I had hurt my neck he insisted she take me to the doctor.
My parents had just returned from a grocery shopping trip. As they unloaded the produce, Dad took me into our trailer home on Ranch La Plant near Gettysburg, S.D., set me on the Davenport and returned to the car to get more groceries. I fell off the couch, and as my forehead hit the floor, my body rolled over top, trapping my head underneath.
I just knew he had broken his neck, but Kevin was pretty limber, Dad said. He barely cried.” Dad, who had stayed at the ranch to work, was anxiously sitting in a chair outside the trailer when Mom returned home with me. She wasn’t used to driving and had taken a break in town before heading back to the ranch, extending the time it should have taken for our return.
Another time Dad turned around to find me choking on some food he had laid on my highchair tray. He jerked me out of the chair, turned me upside down, held me by my feet and shook me. Not exactly the Heimlich Maneuver taught these days, but the method worked. The food dislodged, I cried for a second, then started to giggle.
It really scared me, and I watched him eat from then on, until he got a little older, Dad said as he recounted the incident.
I liked to get around in my walker and began losing the baby fat as I grew taller. By eight months or so I was walking on my own. Mom, who would take me to watch Dad play basketball, thinks I took my first steps in the gym. He’d just run all over after every game, she said. He just loved it.
I’m proud to say I was potty trained by my first birthday. In the days of cloth diapers, this was an especially noteworthy event that saved Mom the unpleasant task of washing all those soiled diapers.
As soon as I could sit on my own, Dad starting taking me to the gym. He remembers setting me on one end of the basketball court with a ball while he played on the other end. When I got bored with the ball, I would crawl to the end of the court where Dad was playing, giggling and talking baby talk all the way.
I would pick him up, hold him for a minute, put him down, give him a ball and go down to the other end of the court, Dad said. That worked for a little while, then Kevin would crawl about half way and stop, sit down, and start crying. Then I knew it was time to take him home for a nap.
