Kevin Honness died on Sat. Drowned in a kayaking
accident in S. Dakota. Kevin, Huy, Andrea, Tom,
Sarah, Joe, and Luben trained together in 1986 at the
Univ. of Oklahoma to become fisheries officers in the
Peace Corps. 7 of us chosen from who knows how large a
pool. Incredibly, Kevin and I had gone to tiny SUNY
Cobleskill a year apart. He was roommates with dudes
who would become good friends of mine a year later
when I transferred there. He had gone on to Ithaca.
Joe attended Cornell, also in Ithaca, although a
Kansas boy. Andrea was also raised in Kansas. Years
later, I was to attend Mississippi State with a fellow
grad student who was on the same floor at Michigan
State with Tom. Likewise, when we returned from
Africa, Andrea and I were to follow each other to
similar parts of the country. The world is so small,
it seems.
My favorite memory of Kevin was in our final hours in Norman, OK. He and Andrea decided the best thing they could do after we had completed our rigourous 10 weeks of training was to finish a 1/5 of Cutty Sark. Afterwhich, we all went to the movies. I remember the flick: Stand By Me. When we went in, Joe and I could not find seats together with Andrea, Tom, Sarah and Huy. We sat near the back. After the movie, we exited to the parking lot, where our trainer was waiting for us with the van. There were also police and/or an ambulance there, and we wondered what had happened. When none of our friends showed up, we decided we’d walk to O’Malleys Bar, and the trainer would bring the rest when they came out.
Joe and I walked to O’Malleys, where we had several beers. I remember the waitress asking if we needed glasses, and I said no, I could see fine. She turned to get the beers, got the remark, and gave us a look. I had it, even back then. The rest of the crew never showed, and Joe and I walked home hours later. When we got to our campus housing, Huy was wired, smoking cigarettes with golf ball eyes. “Where were you guys? Don’t you know what happened? Kevin and Pandy passed out as soon as the movie started. Then they started throwing up. They threw up on themselves. They threw up on each other. Great!!!!!. The theatre owners called for medical help and said they’d press charges if we didn’t clean up the mess.” That was a freakin’ classic.
When I returned to Alaska from Sierra Leone, my first
year round job was in Kodiak. One day I got a call
which said a friend of mine was here to see me in the
Kodiak office. I saw a man with a long pony tail,
with his back to me, looking at a chart. I thought it
was a fish and gamer I’d known. However, when the
dude turned around, it was Kevin. No mistaking those
piercing blue eyes and million dollar smile. When
Kevin was in the Peace Corps, he had short cropped
hair and a starch white collared shirt. Just the
opposite of expectations. Back in the states, he grew
his hair long and came to Kodiak as an observer on a
foreign fishing vessel. He’d found a cause in
Greenpeace then.
Although at the time, he swore off most animal protein
as a vegetarian, one taste of my canned coho salmon
altered that. After we ate some coho, and then
caught some, Kevin had to know how to can them. I
showed him, and he stayed on with me in Kodiak for a
week or two. I remember not wanting him to leave. It
was good to have a brother again.
Kevin went on to wolf work in Yellowstone. We met
once with Joe back in Trumansburg at this parents
house. He had a local female friend there, and I
think Joe was there too, as he got some short term
contract work back near Cornell. Andrea was in NY
City at the time, and I can’t, for the life of me,
remember if she was there or we called her in her tiny
NY apartment.
A few years later, I found myself in Juneau as a
fishery biologist for Fish and Game. Kevin’s folks
came through town on a cruise ship. I asked what they
wanted to do, and it was unanimous- they wanted to
fish. So we loaded up the skiff and headed north to
Hand Trollers Cove. We fished all day but no luck. I
at least wanted to get them semi-near some humpback
whales, but they always seemed to stay in the
distance. Just as we had to get back, we got a salmon
on the line. As we landed it in the net, a group of
humpback whales blew right near the skiff. We headed
back to the house, grilled the salmon for dinner, and
then put Gay and Howard back on their ship. A perfect
day.
I happened to go to Minnesota a couple years ago.
When Kevin saw my schedule of towns I was going to
visit peddling our salmon, he said I was “in striking
distance” of where he was in S. Dakota, working to
reintroduce swift fox on Ted Turners Ranch. I
couldn’t resist. I drove all day and arrived in the
state capital late in the evening. Kevin was there
waiting. We parked my rental car, and drove in his
truck the 40 odd miles out into the prairie to his
cabin on the ranch. He put me up in a pop-up camper,
and it was so quiet out there on the prairie.
The next day, we went and tracked some of his swift
fox. One had been taken by a predator. We found some
entrails and the collar, and Kevin thought a hawk had
taken it. This didn’t bother him much. That’s part
of what swift foxes were in the food chain.
When we got back to the cabin, Kevin put on some bison
ribs. The ranch had to take a cow bison which broke
it’s leg, I think, in the process of a round up.
Kevin got the meat. The ribs were one of the best
meals I’ve ever had. The only disappointment of the
whole trip was I never did get to meet his wife, who
was off at grad school.
We talked annually or more on the phone or email. He
took great pride in putting together several salmon
orders with his graduate student family at U. S.
Dakota, where he’d entered a MS/PhD program.
Kevin died on Sat. His wife called me today. I said
I’d call Andrea, Joe, Tom and Sara. Huy is back in
his homeland of Vietnam, and Kristy said she’d try to
email him. We’ve lost contact with Luben. As I
called each person, we shared shock together, made
small talk of other things in our lives - Andrea
pregnant with twins at 44, Tom trying to pass his
medical exams at 45, me heading to Prudhoe Bay at 44,
and Joe heading to his field work in Canada at 43.
Pretty tough for all of us to take. I was in the
middle of the bearing on the boat I was driving to put
on the ferry to the buyer in Washington State thinking
things couldn’t get worse. But it did get worse.
-
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com