So who’s Kimo? supposedly a professor of physics or philosophy at Berkeley who loved to spend time in Hawaii. Thanks Sharon Gold for sharing this text with me years ago, when we worked together at Roberts & Raymond Advertising Agency in Philadelphia. The time was the early 90s; our company was making the transition from traditional methods to computer technology. As a production artist, I would no longer be working at a drawing board using a parallel rule to paste-up camera-ready mechanicals for a printers use, a skill I’d been using to make a living for years, since the mid-70s. Instead I would be sitting at a computer screen. At almost 50 I saw myself as an old dog about to attempt a new trick, and was very dubious about whether I was capable of learning this Brave New Technology. Company owner Bob Sulpizio’s patient willingness to supply on-the-job training facilitated the transition. I learned new skills that I continue to use to this day, and am forever grateful for. The first application in which I acquired skills was QuarkXpress; once I had acquired a basic understanding of the application’s tools, I created Kimo’s Rules as a fun project for myself and a thank you to Sharon for bringing to my attention those words which were on a t-shirt she had bought in Hawaii while visiting her sister.
Christmas 1961 – 53 years ago: first and last time on television – singing baritone in a quartet of friends on Olga Lemke’s Youth Cavalcade, broadcast out of Portland Maine, one of the early TV shows focusing on young talent, which has spawned many a show besides American Idol, from Arthur Godrey on. Richard Smith second tenor, Carl Rundgren first tenor, myself baritone, and Bill Carvell, bass.
Our quartet first came together in the church that was our common heritage: the Advent Christian church in Goodwins Mills, Maine, where all four of us had grown up. In addition, we were all close enough in age to be in the same high school class of ’62 at Thornton Academy in Saco, Maine. Our abilities to harmonize had been noticed and encouraged early on in church, and by high school we sang as a unit, seen practicing with accompanist Debe Osborne.
Senior year we were joined by another quartet of classmates to form the Maroon Crooners, shown at left in a sepia-manipulated year-book photograph with Bill Harrison at the piano, Alden Cole, Carl Rundgren, Bill Carvell, Tom Keefe, Burt Taylor, & Frank Eukitis standing around the piano just waiting to burst into song. Richard Smith apparently missed the photo shoot.
Another photo from the yearbook of the whole Glee Club. For an aspiring singer, there’s nothing quite like the charge of making music with a large number of other singers
When I wasn’t singing, there were always other distractions. For instance: ice skating on the Saco River with family and friends, around 1958, as I was entering high school.
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