REMEMBERING KENNETH ANDERSON (1928-2015)

REMEMBERING KENNETH ANDERSON (1928-2015)

I learned with sorrow that my friend, Kenneth Anderson, died on June 9, 2015.  He was born December 3, 1928 and lived somewhat more than 87 years. I first met Ken Anderson at Stony Brook University when I was teaching my second year there.  He asked if he could audit my course.  I learned from him that he was one of the first African Americans to work as a nurse anesthesiologist in Suffolk County and to serve on the University’s outreach programs to recruit black faculty and staff. Ken had served in the US Army in Germany after the end of WWII and sang for the troops and on good will missions because of his beautiful baritone voice.  I also learned from him that it was a struggle for him and other minorities to find housing in Suffolk County.  To facilitate change, Ken joined civic organizations like the Boy Scouts and met many of the leading officials in the County.  He was friendly and persistent, two qualities that made him successful in bringing about change.  He also was a frequent target to vandalism or threats of violence during those turbulent years of the late 1960s to the 1980s.  A cross was burned on his lawn in Port Jefferson.  Over the years I attended many concerts given by Ken to the Unitarian-Universalist churches in Nassau and Suffolk County where he was frequently invited.  He had begun a serious study of Negro spirituals and worked out Paul Robeson’s schedule of performances and the playbills with the songs he sang in his distinguished careers.  He would sometimes take on the persona of Robeson to give an account of his life and he used to borrow my Phi Beta Kappa key because Robeson proudly wore it.  When I was on the Stony Brook Phi Beta Kappa chapter’s board, I proposed Ken for the Phi Beta Kappa award because of his scholarship on Robeson’s musical career and his efforts to enlighten the public about Robeson’s many talents as an all-star collegiate athlete, a musician, an actor, and an activist for human rights.  I was pleased when he was unanimously elected to the Stony Brook chapter.

  Many times Ken would invite me to meet civic leaders he knew so I could discuss issues of higher education with them.  When Ken retired and moved upstate, he would stay at our home on Mud Road in Setauket while visiting friends or giving performances.  It was to the delight of my mother-in-law who was living with us, that Ken would always sing her a song at supper.  Once Ken took me to the veteran’s cemetery in Suffolk County where his wife was buried and it was very moving as I saw him sending his thoughts and prayers for her. When Nedra and I moved to Bloomington, Indiana in 2009, I corresponded with Ken as he moved around upstate New York and later in Delaware.  He was always eager to learn about black history and I shared items I found for him when he asked me about contemporaries of Robeson or leaders of the abolitionist and civil rights movements of the nineteenth century.  We also spoke on the phone about once a month to get updates on our lives.  Ken became friends with Pete Seeger and the two of them sometimes sang together.  For the last 20 years of Ken’s life he was in pain from arthritic degeneration of his bones and from congestive heart failure. Ken inspired me.  He tried to bring out the best in people he met. It was that love for humanity that poured out in his songs and it was a privilege to know him.