How much can you deny the obvious? Ken H. demonstrates that the capacity is almost unlimited.

His father was a terrifying drunk who became a negative role model for Ken. "I was never gonna be like him," Ken vowed as a teenager. But he was. In the army, he was busted to a private and kicked out of his cushy job in Germany. On the boat home in June 1950, the Korean War broke out and Ken was on his way to the war zone. Nearly three years later, he was a civilian and back in this country. He hired on with Mountain Bell in Denver, the predecessor to Qwest. His drinking had increased steadily while in the military, but he quit for a little while in the excitement of his new job.

But not for long. Married in 1955, he was drinking more and more as he built his career and his family. Their oldest daughter, Kerry, was five when unimaginable tragedy struck. "I was working on this old car that I´d bought for commuting," Ken recalled. "I had a juice can half full of gas to prime the carburetor. The car backfired and the gas caught fire in the can. I threw it over my shoulder, not realizing that Kerry was standing behind me. It fell right on her face and she inhaled the burning gasoline. She lived ´til 6 o´clock the next morning."

Amazingly, Ken´s wife, Norma, forgave him. "I was devastated, a basket case. Norma put her arms around me and said, ´Ken, you know Kerry idolized you. It was your fault, but it wasn´t your fault. How much beer did you drink yesterday?´ I said I didn´t know, maybe three or four. Norma corrected me: ´You had two or three beers in a half-hour before working on that car. It was the combination of alcohol and fire that made you react the way you did. Now you have to think of your other two daughters."

"I said okay, no more booze. I got out the Bible to help, and it worked for a year,. But I was miserable. I never considered going to Alcoholics Anonymous." Another 12 years of drinking would pass before Ken finally found his bottom.

His story begins in Era, Texas, where he was born Jan. 29, 1929, in the home of his aunt because "Dad was between jobs" and the family was homeless. That, Ken said, was a chronic condition with his father, partly because of tuberculosis contracted in the army and partly because he was an alcoholic. The family moved to Denver when Ken was five to take advantage of Colorado´s Depression era state pension program.

His father was in the chips from teamstering on a dam project in New Mexico, so the family arrived in a brand new Buick. They signed into a hotel and were immediately almost drowned in a flash flood. His father ran out the door to try to save the car and disappeared for four days. Ken´s mother grabbed him and ran to higher ground. A Denver Post photographer got a picture of Ken´s mother in chest deep water, holding Ken over her head in the surging flood. They spent a few nights in a Salvation Army shelter before returning to their hotel to find almost nothing left but his parents´ marriage certificate. Ken still has it, watermarked and stained, a treasured family heirloom. While in the shelter, Ken´s dad reappeared, handcuffed between two policemen, to the mortification of Ken´s mother and the embarrassed silence of the other refugees. When the Buick disappeared forever in the raging flood, Ken´s dad had gotten drunk and wound up in jail.

(The flood marked Ken´s first appearance on page 1of a newspaper. He did it again some 44 years later, when he blacked out on an icy Boise freeway, spun out and crashed. He was thrown clear without a scratch, but the crash blocked the freeway and he was on page 1 again. More about that later.)

The family settled in Denver, his dad coming and going on various construction jobs. His long-suffering mother held the family together, Ken and his four brothers. "We moved innumerable times around Denver." Ken stayed out of his father´s way as much as he could. "That´s kinda the way we grew up," he recalled. When he was 15, his woodshop class was gearing up to present some fancy doorstops they had made to the Veterans Administration Hospital.

"I came home all excited when Dad says, ´Git your shit. We´re movin´. Five o´clock the next morning, we´re heading for Texas. Dad hadn´t told us he´d leased a peanut farm in Whitesboro, or that we were going there to take care of my grandma Hat."

He depended on his boys for farm labor. It was Christmas time and the local Baptist Church invited the family to attend. "You can go," said Dad. "I´m not entering that goddamn place." Ken stared off into space as he recalled those days. "It was like another life," he said.

After one season of peanut farming, Ken joined the army in 1946, when he was 17. He had little education, but he was smart enough to pick the Signal Corps and begin getting a technical education. Before long, he was shipped to Germany as a signalman for the War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg, then underway. "I got there right after Goering committed suicide," was how Ken established the timing.

Using the captured German Enigma code, Ken and his fellow signalmen Teletyped each day´s testimony to the Pentagon, where it was analyzed for whatever value the intelligence experts could extract from it. Ken said he was too busy most of the time to do much drinking, but did manage one life-changing drunk. He missed the curfew, and as a consequence was reduced in rank to private and forfeited his pay for six months. Deemed a bad soldier, he was sent home and assigned to the 1st Signal Company in Baltimore. The Korean War broke out in June 1950, and Ken was on his way to the war after just 14 days in this country.

Ken cut a fat hog in Korea. Promotions came fast and easy. He was a 1st sergeant, one of the highest enlisted grades, within a year. His signal company supplied cryptographic services to the fighting units about eight miles behind the front. Not very far in civilian miles, but light years in a war. Sergeants and officers got a fifth or a quart of hard liquor every week for $1.60. Ken was in charge of those supplies, so he got his fifth and whatever was left over from the teetotalers´ share. About four or five fifths a week, he estimates.

"The captain said he didn´t care how much we drank; he just didn´t want to ever see us drunk. I was totally zonked one night when Bedcheck Charlie, this little harassing Chinese plane, came over and dropped some five pounders. Everyone was supposed to be in his foxhole, but I´m lying in my tent passed out. The next morning, I´m in front of the old man explaining why I didn´t get myself and my men into foxholes. I couldn´t think of anything else to say, so I said, ´Captain, I was drunk.´"

Growing dependence on booze led to deteriorating work and poor ratings, and after almost three years in Korea, he was reassigned to Ft. Carson, Colorado. He spent most of his 30-day leave drunk in the bars in Denver. When he reported for duty, his reputation preceded him. "I think you need a little time in the mule artillery," the battery commander told him. "See that mountain? You´re gonna climb it with a mule and an artillery piece." Ken, who had only two months left on his enlistment, demanded to have his discharge papers cut. The army put him on leave for those final months.

Technically skilled, he got a job with Mountain Bell in Denver and stayed with the phone company for the next 25 years through personal and professional highs and lows that would have killed a weaker man. One reason he weathered his storms was that he met Norma. They were married six months later, and last February celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary.

He had quit drinking in the excitement of his new job and new life, but that didn´t last long. "I never realized how much my behavior matched my dad´s," Ken said. "Many times, Norma and I almost came apart. I´d just get out of the house like Dad did. But we moved along. I got two promotions. Teletype was a booming industry in the middle 50s, and my skills in installation and maintenance paid off."

By 1966, Ken was on Bell´s corporate staff, traveling, living the fast corporate life. The family bought a house that year, and then came the tragic accident with his daughter.

(Continued next month)

Interviewed and written by Dick S.