A bittersweet day that has become increasing difficult for me these days. So thankful that I have my kids and now grand babies (soon number two) to enjoy and make me smile. That usually makes the day barable. However it often makes me reflect on what I have missed out on all these years. My father passed away between my first and second year of college. A heart attack that was brought on my the same disease that curses me, diabetes. He had it for years and there just wasn't as much understanding of how to aggressively treat it back in those days as there is now. Not that is any much easier to deal with now. It is still a hurdle everyday.
This year it is a bit more painful since my mother has also left this earth last December. I realize now my connection between my parents has been completely dissolved. Dissolved by time, distance and now death. Mother's Day was hard this year and so is Father's Day. I was able to gather up many photos of my parents through the years, many from before I was born and many others from our journeies and adventures when I was a kid and teenager. He did pass on the history of the goofiness for me to share with my kids. So many stories that I have probably failed to share.
One story that surfaces is all about the history of my father's business, KENCO. He had a tax and insurance office for twenty years in my home town of Bartlesville OK. Once even expanded to Skiatook and Owasso. His office in Stillwater never really got off the ground. He had passed away too soon to get it running. It was opened primarily because I was in college at Oklahoma State.
His business was opened in 1966 when I was only a year old. I grew up in the office. Started out in the back in a crib. Later earned money by doing simple chores like cleaning the bathroom, filling up the old soda machine, vacuuming the carpet and even raking the shag rug. Yes, I said raking. All for a quarter each chore. Also I had to provide my dad with an invoice listing out each chore completed totaling up the fee. He was an accountant that was for sure. Probably also passed down my entrepreneurial spirit.
Later on my chores changed to preparing taxes. First short forms and by the time I was a senior in high school I was preparing long form taxes and even a few corporate returns. My father saved me from ever having to work in a fast food joint.......funny now I design fast food joints!
What you may not have known was how my dad came up with his logo and developed his marking schemes. I was gifted with doodling cartoons even at a young age. My involvement with helping the creation of the "Blue? Man" came from a sheet out of my comic books. I was drawing pictures from a page in the ARCHIES and my dad had over looked what I was doing. I think he swiped up my comic and my doodles setting out to create his business logo.
Taxes are never anyone's favorite thing to deal with (unless you are an accountant) and my father knew that. So he tried to make it fun. He put a spin on it my making up a sad blue blob of a man with with the phase BLUE? Written across his belly.
Over the years I continued to doodle the character in different scenarios as the hero. My dad continued to swipe them up and take them to a marketing firm to clean up the sketches for his marketing scheme. Some of my ideas were cleaned up some were just tweeted a bit. My dad always found a way to add a corny quote to them. But that is what dads do. Now my kids know where it came from. And even why my own marketing schemes for my own business are always so silly.
Below are a handful of marketing trace files (old school methods) of designs I helped with and maybe even started a bit that my dad had used on billboards around town and flyers that went out to his clients. I had thought these were lost after so many years. You can imagine my joy when I found them in a pile of photographs at my mothers house. Sweet fond memories.
Things that I have mimicked in IONIC that originally came from my father:
The IONIC "Blue" was originally the KENCO "Blue".
The shape and IONIC logo was a morphing of the Blue Man.
IONIC used many of the same letters as KENCO. The N anchored the middle.
My father had many "creations" in his office. Crafts and knick knacks. I have tried to do the same.....just slightly better.
Love you Dad. Miss you lots.
My friends, be sure to take time now as is doesn't always exist if you wait too long.
ET This I Believe
Eugene Thompson
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
L. Frank Braum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Shel Silverstein
Roald Dahl, The Minpins
Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
