Eaton celebrates century mark

According to his golfing friends, Kenny Eaton’s two years as a drill sergeant carried through to his hobby as a golfer.

 

“He would call us up and tell us to ‘report to the golf course’ at a certain time,” comments long-time golfing companion Neal Scott, 86, pretending to be offended. “And when it was your turn, you didn’t waste time or you’d hear about it.”

 

Rolland Swenson adds that he would “drive Kenny around,” acting as chauffeur in the golf cart co-owned by the three of them. 

 

But any further claims that Kenny, who turned 100 on Friday, July 26, ran a tight ship on the golf course seem difficult to substantiate.

 

Asked who among them was the better golfer, Rolland admitted, “We usually didn’t keep score.”

 

To hear Neal talk, the only score kept was the number of digs each one got in on the others during the 1.5 to 2 hours it would take them to complete the nine-hole course at New Richland’s Riverview Golf Course.

 

“We would line up, take careful aim…then we’d take another shot,” Neal describes. “We used to tell each other, ‘Swing harder, maybe you’ll hit it this time.’

 

“And we’d congratulate each other when the ball would go in the water.

 

“We had our own way of playing golf,” he admits.

 

The three would play on Tuesdays and Fridays, usually quite early in the day, starting around 7:30 a.m.

 

Kenny’s oldest son Steve suggests they had to play at that time so their shenanigans didn’t annoy golfers who took their game more seriously.

 

Until retiring from the game about two years ago, the threesome had been playing together for more than 20 years. But the whole business started 30 years before that with more of a “ninesome.” The trio names a whole group of players who were fellow members at Vista Covenant Church and who came and went over time: Floyd Calhoun, Sid Bishop, Pastor Steve Johnson, Pastor Dick Williams, Ole Roesler and Rolland Peterson.

 

The “ninesome” was apparently only a bit more serious about the game than the three came to be. Neal remembers one player as “the hummer.”

 

“You’d line up to shoot,” he says, again with mock offense, “and he’d start to hum, just to get you off your game.”

 

Despite the horsing around, the digs, and the apparent indifference to the polite rules of play, Kenny says their time on the golf course had rich significance. He says he fell in love with the game “from the first time I hit that ball.

 

“It just seemed to go forever. It was almost magical.”

 

Kenny and his wife Harriet, who have been married 78 years, now reside in a senior living community in Faribault. He still owns the 300-acre farm about a mile east of Otisco where he and Harriet established their home in the 1950s, and where they raised their five children. He was still part of its operation at 90; three grandnephews now farm there.

 

The couple’s offspring, currently ranging in age from 76 to 61, remember many changes over time.

 

“I helped with the [dairy] cattle until I was 12 or 13,” remembers firstborn Steve, who recalls there were 30 head. “Dad knew all of their names,” he comments. “And some of them weren’t very flattering.”

 

The cattle were sold in the mid-1960s. Kenny said it was a strategic move: the money from the sale helped with the purchase of additional farmland. He recalls he had carefully calculated whether having more acreage would bring him the income he needed “without having to keep the cattle.” He had also determined farming the extra land might not leave him time to run the dairy operation.

 

Whether with or without livestock, though, Kenny might claim farming is in his blood. He was raised as one of five children on an area farm. 

 

“It’s all I ever wanted to do,” he says simply.

 

He consents it is both physically and mentally demanding to operate a farm. “You’ve got to love it with your whole heart,” he comments. When his sons point out he never pressured them to follow in his footsteps, he repeats the statement.

 

Kenny was 17 when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. As he finished out his teen years, he was deferred from the draft because he was performing the essential job of raising food on the home front. Still, by 1944, he says “I felt I should serve the nation.”

He reported to basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama.

 

Son-in-law Ted Johnson remembers Kenny sharing the story with him on a recent walk. “You were all running up a hill carrying a 40-pound pack on your backs,” Johnson repeats. “And one fellow couldn’t make it up the hill.

 

“So you picked his pack up and carried it, too.

 

“That’s when they decided to make you a drill sergeant.”

 

“I was really lucky,” observes Kenny. “I stayed right there for the rest of the war. A lot of the fellows who went overseas came back in a box.”

 

Another element of luck occurred shortly after the war ended and Kenny was back on home turf. He took his pickup to the free outdoor movies which were shown in Otisco at that time. So he didn’t have to sit on the ground, he set the seat cushion from his truck on the grass. “This girl came by and asked me to let her sit on it,” he recalls. “And I ended up on the ground after all.”

 

But, “By the end of the night, I had asked her for a date.”

 

The two of them married in 1946. They purchased their first farmland in 1950. Among her children’s strongest recollections of Harriet’s role on the farm was “making sure the farmers were fed.” 

 

“And not only farmers,” says Steve. “If you were on the property at meal time, you got a meal.”

 

Although he had not been much of a church-goer in his youth, Kenny became a member at Vista Covenant, where Harriet’s name continued to be posted on the “cradle roll” past the time her own children were in cradles. When the couple received an invitation to attend a Billy Graham revival held in Austin in the 1950s, they not only attended but ended up in a group which went on a boat ride with Graham.

 

The weekend’s message “changed my life,” states Kenny. He never again performed fieldwork on Sundays and has placed strong emphasis on his faith ever since.

 

Of being a drill sergeant, Kenny refuses to acknowledge the infamous harsh behavior associated with the role. “You had to get up before everyone else,” he observes. “You had to make sure everything was ready. Then you had to let people know what was expected.”

 

His family members say the habit of “letting others know what was expected” has been a central element. Not that Kenny bossed others around, but he has always placed a high value on physical fitness. Family lore has it that, although he was in his eighties at the time, he regularly taught children how to perform cartwheels while serving as a volunteer counselor at Lake Beauty Bible Camp in the northern part of the state. Perhaps not surprisingly, the campers in his group also tended to win the “cleanest cabin” award.

 

His children also mention that shared family vacations—which came to include as many as 57 people--pretty much always included elements of fitness. Son-in-law Ted describes up to 50 people being “roped into” sit-up contests which led to the other, exhausted participants watching and talking among themselves as Kenny continued long after they had stopped. He recalls a record of 211 consecutive sit-ups.

 

“He had tremendous perseverance,” remembers son Brian. “He just would not stop.”

 

Of those contests, and perhaps of other elements of his life, Kenny says, “Sure, I could’ve taken things easier. I’ve just always been a hard worker; it’s what made sense to me.”

 

Even now in the retirement residence, Kenny has marked off a distance one mile in length and walks it two or three times a day.

 

“He’s been a great role model and a great dad,” commented Brian. “He showed us a good path.”

 

Son Steve recalls an exchange that would take place almost daily at the breakfast table. “Dad would say to Mom, ‘Guess what? We have another day.’

 

“He has always been positive, always grateful for what he has.”