A Don McCormack column: We’ve lost Jefferson’s Mr. Cool

DON McCORMACK

When I think of Ken Crandall, only one word comes to mind.

Smooth.

In pretty much everything he did when we were kids, Ken was exactly that.

Or as Stuart Scott of ESPN has said way too many times, he was “as cool as the other side of the pillow.”

He always wore a blue Kansas City Royals ballcap. I never understood why, so I asked him.

“It’s got my initials on it,” he said with a grin.

He was one of those guys who was quick, fast and strong, but was all of that while possessing that maddening, God-given ability to give the appearance he did so effortlessly.

It’s an ability we all wish we had, but only a precious few did.

If the rest of us were ham-and-eggers, Kenny was an omelet.

So when I received the news from Ron Butcher, who was calling from his desk at Great Lakes Auto in Jefferson, that Ken had died Monday morning in Florida, it was a stunner.

A 1980 Jefferson graduate, Ken was a year ahead of me in school. But for some reason, the guys in his class and mine just sort of clicked. We all hung out together. We did movies, went to ballgames and played pickup basketball and backyard football, slept out in the woods half of the nights in the summer.

And now, unfortunately, Ken is the first from our gang to be lost.

And the circumstances, which aren’t fully known at the time I write this, seem so wrong.

Blessed with genetics of a remarkable athletic family that Karl Pearson explains in the accompanying piece, Ken had remained in the best physical shape of all of us.

“Kenny was flat out chiseled,” Steve Locy, now Jefferson’s athletic director and boys basketball coach and close friend of Crandall, said. “He was in great, tip-top shape. I had seen him just a while back and he was in as good a shape as ever.”

While details are still a bit sketchy, Kenny was running on an ocean-side beach in Florida on Monday morning.

“It’s the same thing he did four days a week, every week,” Locy, who like Butcher, had remained close with Ken through the years, said. “Kenny was doing what he always did — stay in great shape.”

Though we’re not certain, Ken dove into the ocean as he normally did to cool off. It was at that point, something happened.

“We just don’t know,” Butcher, who graduated a year ahead of Ken and Steve in 1979 said. “It’s tragic, no matter what it was.”

“It’s hard for me to believe it would have been a heart attack,” Locy said. “Kenny ran there four days a week and always dove in to cool off, but I guess anything is possible.

“It really doesn’t matter, though. What matters is he’s gone — way too early — and it just doesn’t seem right.

“Not Kenny... not now.”

As I worked at becoming whatever basketball player I did, Ken was the guy in front of me. He was the guy who pushed me, who made me bust my tail to be better every single day.

Watching him quarterback Jefferson’s 1978-79 team to the first boys basketball sectional championship at Jefferson in 32 seasons was like watching a conductor work with an orchestra.

He had two 20-points-per-game forwards in 6-foot-5 Nate Wilson and 6-4 Chuck Stevens, an Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation Hall of Famer beside him, 6-6 center Kevin Justice in the middle and 6-2 Steve Parsons in the backcourt with him.

That team, coached by Rick Nemet, went 16-5 and had a 14-point lead in a district semifinal against Lakeview that should have held but didn’t.

Though he had plenty of offensive skills, Ken sacrificed his numbers to make sure guys like Wilson and Stevens received the ball in position to score. No county teammates had averaged 20 or more points per game in the same season since Wilson and Stevens until Pymatuning Valley’s dynamic duo of Steve Savel and Corey Shontz did so 29 seasons later, two years ago.

In Ken’s senior season, I had the opportunity to play alongside him and was able to see firsthand just how much easier he made the game for his teammates and we, Locy and the rest of us won a league championship together.

It was during that 1979-80 season that I realized just how important a point guard — and how much of an effect a great one could have on everyone else — was to a team.

His younger sister, Shellie, is even more well known in these parts for her basketball exploits. A member of the ACBF Hall of Fame who scored 1,067 points in a fabulous four-year career for coach Larry Meloro, she would have started for any of the great teams coach by Rod Holmes.

As was the case with me, Shellie was always pushed by Kenny. We’d include her with us as we played pickup games in their driveway at their house on Lenox-New Lyme Road. And, like me, Kenny would also beat Shellie. But also like me, he made her better.

Though he left Jefferson years ago, Ken stayed in touch. He was in town for Shellie’s induction in the ACBF Hall of Fame in 2005.

Butcher and his wife, Kelly, spent time with Ken and his wife, Elaine.

“In fact, after our honeymoon, me and Kelly spent a couple days with Kenny and Elaine,” he said.

Locy and his wife, Jackie, also spent time with the Crandalls.

“Jackie and I went down and saw Kenny and Elaine,” he said. “He never changed. He was still the same guy. He and Elaine were great together.”

While Kenny was smooth, he had an odd sense of humor... but in a good way.

I can remember clear as day him going to buy flowers for his senior homecoming date, the gorgeous Diane Van Slyke.

The flowers were pretty and all, as flowers go, but one problem.

They were plastic.

“Why spend money on something that will be dead in a few days?” he said, and he was totally serious. “This way, Diane will have them forever... they’ll never die.”

Those words seem almost haunting as I recall them.

For just like those ridiculous plastic flowers Kenny bought for Diane three decades ago, our memories of him... as an athlete, as a friend... as one of our gang... won’t, either.

“Kenny said one thing he had to do before I finished coaching was to sit on the bench for a game that I coach,” Locy said, his voice cracking. “He always said, ‘Just say the word, Loce... I’ll be there.’

“It breaks my heart that we won’t be able to do that now. He won’t be there with me.”

Kenny will be there for the first game at the new Falcon Gym, Loce, don’t worry.

He will just have the best seat in the house.



McCormack is the sports editor of the Star Beacon. Reach him at donmac@suite224.net.

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