My brother Kern passed away, in the early morning on Sunday the 30th of August, as the season changed. One day shy of his Seventy Eighth Birthday. I was asked to write his obituary. So, I looked the word up, its Latin origin obitus has this meaning “A going toward”. That leaves me calm. Thinking the Romans might be on to something, perhaps across our horizon, destinations continue to be provided.
If you look along the horizon just after dark, there is this small star that is unusually bright. I imagine if you could see it up close, you would catch a small red and white Piper Cub ascending toward some greater beyond. My brother Kern relaxed right hand on the stick, left hand on the throttle. In the calm of the evening air, steady in an unhurried climb. Confident, experienced and content in his passing. Holding the nose on a point, far on the horizon, so as to hold a constant course. Knowing now, that there is more than that from which he had to leave.
Kern was an ordinary man with more than a few extras thrown in to make his, an extraordinary life. Born in the last of summer in 1948 and raised around horses and carriages in a small town in New Jersey. He went to the Harding Township school in New Vernon He then attended the Delbarton school in Morristown. He earned his pilot’s license at the age of sixteen when he soloed two different planes on that birthday.
While still in high school Kern flew coast to coast and back with his younger brother Rinker for summer vacation. Making him at seventeen, the youngest pilot to ever make that trip. He went on to Holy Cross College Worcester Massachusetts. While there he founded a flying club, raised money to buy a plane and used his instructors’ certificate to teach several of his classmates to fly.
A list of his siblings including Kern. Dempsey, Kernahan, McNamara, Rinker, Bridget, Bryan, Cronin, Nicholas, Andrew, Ferris, and Adrian. We had a song we sang as children. ” Eleven in a bed and Ady said move over, move over. We all moved over and Dempsey fell out. Ten in a bed and Ady said…” Well, you can see how this goes. So far only our brothers Bryan and Kern have fallen off. Fortune and misfortune as bedfellows. Now there are nine.
He was a reader, a researcher, and an introvert, who often had to be retrieved from his own thoughts while in the company of others. He studied the family tree. On his father’s Thomas Francis Bucks side all the way back to a great uncle, Kunkle Rinker born in Pennsylvania in the 1760s, before the American Revolution. Mary Patricia Kernahan, his mother, was a first generation American on her mother’s side. Kern had traveled to his mother’s; mothers home in the West of Ireland.
After Holy Cross and a period of working as a congressional aide. Kern attended the International School of Law. He was one of the original 26 students meeting in a church basement. After passing the bar in Washington DC he took up a practice as a public defender. Later he passed the bar in Massachusetts. Kern had a forty-Eight-year career as a public defender. Living his life advocating for the most vulnerable members of society.
He continued flying at different periods of his life as time allowed. He became a tow pilot after his move to Massachusetts Towing banners and aerial billboards. Many of those flights over Boston’s Fenway Park. Later in his sixties he towed gliders out of Sterling Airport in central Massachusetts.
Kern loved his family. He loved his wife, Jody. Married for more than forty years. He loved his Children Karolyn, an artist living on the coast of Maine and Tom an EMT living in San Jose, CA and a Marine reservist.Kern loved us all. There are just so many of us and the page is full enough with Kern.
Kern was a witness to history and he knew it. He found meaning in life everywhere he looked. As a boy in his father’s barn he built a light bulb and invited the neighborhood in to see it.. Explaining that because he could not make a vacuum it would blink into darkness in an instant. He had short wave radios and enjoyed listening to the wider world up in his bedroom. Inviting his brothers and sisters in to listen to far off lands. He once built a spanking machine, a crucifix of discarded boards and some old harness parts. Imagine this kid grew up to live a life of public advocacy!
I could go on and on, a covered wagon trip he took with his family as a young boy, countless flying escapades. Some important legal precedents. how he kept in touch with friends and extended family. These are all true but, in the end, Kern was an ordinary man who found refuge in his family, his home of 32 years in Holliston, MA, and those he loved and those that loved him back. Fair winds aloft Kern. until we meet again. Nick Buck
A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, October 24th at 11:00 AM at Hopedale Unitarian Parish, 65 Hopedale Street, Hopedale, MA. Arrangements are under the care of the Chesmore Funeral Home of Holliston, www.ChesmoreFuneralHome.com
