Remembering Father on Father's Day

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

Father's Day 2013

It is that time of the year again, another Fathers Day. I am not sure how I take this day any more. Either good or bad. Good, obviously because I have four fantastic children who are healthy and alive. Them along with their husbands and wives....or soon to be wife in one case....seem to have great relationships with each other. This is always great to see. Bad, the not so obvious reason,  this time of year reminds me that I miss my father so terribly much. The opportunity to make a call or send a card or even have dinner together doesn't exist for me.

My father passed away over twenty eight years ago. Each time I say that it seems so long ago. Time may have healed wounds from the painful day when I was in my early twenties and just started college. Faded are too many of the memories of the distant past. I don't like the fact that I don't think of my father as much as I feel I should. However when I do remember it is filled with a bit of pain deep inside realizing what I said above, I just won't ever be able to see him again.

I see within myself some of my fathers traits.....of those that I recognize. They are the amusing memories...maybe because those are the things I choose to recall. My father was always an ambitious individual. He had high hopes and dreams to make and do more for his family. We visited lots of places as a family, and even more when it was just me at home. Maybe I should do a blog about some of those trips....some were really funny. My father tried to do something beyond imagination with a few inventions that he had been working on. The biggest was a patent he held for a non-aerosol devise. We went all over the country and even down into Mexico to try to get that off the ground. 

One of the biggest influences I see my father within me is the drive to have and run our own businesses. My father opened his tax office when I was only a year old. It was called KENCO, ....after his name.....KEN and company basically. I grew up in that small office on Frank Phillips Blvd. Played as a child in the back office and many of my fathers clients saw me grow up within those walls. I don't recall the person, but I know one contractor brought me in a small wooden dog house to play with. I had that toy for many years. I wonder where that went to? I guess I got his will to create and be an entrepreneur from the years I spent in that office. As a young child I worked for my father doing "chores". I got paid a wage for the work I did. I raked the shagrug, .25; cleaned the bathroom, .25; took out the trash....there were a lot of bins for each of the employees, .25; dusted, .25; refilled the soda machine, .25..... and so on. As I grew up I was taught how to do short form taxes. This was just another math problem for me. Pre computer days. And then once into high school I advanced to corporate taxes. This saved me from ever having to flip burgers at a fast food place. I am thankful for that.

My father's office had a bunch of services that I was allowed to assit with. He had a Western Union service there that transferred money more than messages. I often help with that and the teletype machine in the back. KENCO provided copies for clients. Many would come in just for that. They didn't make copies themselves but rather give us the documents and we went to the back to make them. Some times just a few copies, sometimes hundreds. This was a way that my father saw to help offset the costs of the copy machine that he needed to prepare taxes. It wasn't until I went to college I saw the first KINKO'S in Stillwater......funny the name was so close.....and they provided copy services. I wonder to this day where and how they got started. Maybe they drove through Bartlesville one day? 

As copy orders got bigger, we had a small printing press in the back. On that machine we could make hundreds of copies.....of each one....black and white mostly. Wow, time certainly has changed in technology. Those services put me up at the front desk taking orders and meeting face to face with customers. Taking money and giving change....all in my head. We didn't have a cash register. I don't think many people can do that these days. They don't even know how to count. I had to add up the cash drawer every evening as well to see how much money we made.

Not always but sometimes I even answered the phone and took messages. Not bad for just a teenage kid. I still did the chores too.....usually got more than a quarter for it. I saw my father's office grow. He had to get the small house next door so he could store more things. He had an office in Skiatook for a while. I remember when he got his first computer for taxes. It looked like the captain's chair for Star Trek. It was massive. And did so little...lol. Then there were versions of the PC that came out. The business of taxes was growing. We saw the development of our new competition.....H&R Block. All of this makes me wonder if my dad could have seen how the development of the tax offices or copy outlets could have grown where it would have gone. Where would the growth have taken my family?

My brothers worked briefly for my father, but that was only once they were grown and only for a bit. It was me that grew up in that office, that knew it so well. I know my parents wanted me to take over the business. They hoped that I would be interested in carrying on the KENCO name. However, that wasn't the case. Nobody in our family showed a desire to "work taxes". Nobody seemed to have my father's business in their interest. Such a shame. The business had ran its course and allowed my father to raise and support his family. And then we all turned our back on it. I certainly didn't see myself working taxes the rest of my life. I didn't want to be an accountant. I wanted to be an architect. We all had our own goals.

And then the day came when it was just too much for my father as well. His frail body couldn't keep up with the diabetes that attacked it. And I am sure that running a small business had its own set of stresses as well. I understand that first hand. My father, my dad, passed away on August 13, 1985. I was home from college that summer after my first year. I wasn't even working for my father that summer. I was working for a concrete contractor. It was my mother's birthday. I rode to the hospital in the ambulance. The driver was a guy I went to high school with, played soccer with. His heart had given out. I remember sitting on the floor of the hall in the hospital wearing my old house slippers......hadn't worn those in years. Is was the quickest thing I could find in the middle of the night as I rushed to ride along in the ambulance. Isn't it funny the things we remember?

The days, the weeks, the months and now the years have passed since that dark evening. There are times now that I sit at my desk in my office and I think of my father. I try to compare the stress that I have with what his might have been. I really never understood.....I really wasn't old enough to. I compare my business with his. The size of the office....as we now begin our expansion. The number of employees....as we continue to grow. I wish he could see me. I wish I could share. I wish I knew that he was proud of me. I wish I could sit down and have a chat about stuff......anything. He wasn't all into sports, he wasn't all into politics, nor even church. He just did his business. That was all I really ever knew of him. And I was there much of the journey. This I am thankful for.

I am thankful for a father that provided for me. For a father that obviously loved me....even if he didn't always know how to show it. I am thankful for that funny guy who was more odd than being in style. I am thankful that I got to spend time....even if it was too short....with my dad. I guess, now I see how strange I am.....I guess, in a little way....my kids get the chance to see their grandfather in me.....a little odd, a little quirky, a little possessed, a little goofy......but most importantly a father that loves his children. 

I miss you Dad, love you always. Thinking of you today.

ET this I beleive