News

The Last Kraus: One family, 10 HHS grads over 22 years

Meredith Kraus, right, shown at sister Judith's wedding, graduates from Hendersonville High School on June 9.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 9, 2017

Part 3: Love in a yellow Pinto

Ken and KathleenThanksgiving Day of 1981 was a work day for Kathleen. The seven-day-a-week schedule well for the young mother. Justin slept while she was gone, and during the day.

Kathleen had gotten to know Ken’s parents at church.

“I met his parents first and they took me in because they were that kind of people,” Kathleen said. “They loved helping the helpless and the wayward ones. I had a baby and I wasn’t married so I had issues somewhere and they were very good to me. They weren’t trying to match me up with their son or anything.”

On that Thanksgiving morning, the whole Kraus family — Ken, his dad and brothers — helped Kathleen stuff 600 newspapers into orange plastic bags. The issue was fat with inserts promoting Black Friday sales. Kathleen loaded her cargo of newspapers into her 1973 yellow Ford Pinto — “the one where if you get hit in the rear it explodes” — and then got an unexpected offer.
“You want some help?” Ken said.

Ken’s dad looked at the Pinto hatchback, stuffed full of orange-wrapped newspapers, and shook his head: “I don’t think you’re going to fit in there,” he said.

“And he said — and I was so impressed — ‘I think I can try.’ So he squeezes in,” Kathleen recalled. “He came in through the window because if you opened the door all those bags would slide out.”

Ken didn’t know much about this woman with a baby. He wasn’t thinking romance.

“I was just going along for the ride, because I thought she was older,” he said. “And then we got to talking. I’m a little bit young for my grade. And she said she was 25. Well, she wasn’t. She was 24½. And I was 21 but I wasn’t really. I was 21 and 10 months. And then she said she was class of ’75, and then I realized she’s only two years ahead of me in school. So at that point, I thought, ‘OK. I can deal with this.’”

Ken’s mathematical gymnastics to justify a date with an “older woman” is an eye roller to Kathleen, even now.

“It’s amazing that rationale is what he had to go through in order to determine if I was worth going out with,” she said.

They hit it off.
“We talked about everything. I talked about my life,” she said. “He’s a very good listener and asks questions at the right time. He would have made a good counselor if he ever decided to do that. And it’s very easy for me to talk. I had no reason not to tell him anything because we were not romantically inclined at that point.”

She invited Ken over for hot chocolate. She pulled out a scrapbook that contained the Charlotte Observer article, describing how God had rewarded her faith with Justin. Ken had been raised in a devout Christian home; Kathleen had become a believer to help survive her childhood. They connected.

Although neither had any money, they could share a meal at Kathleen’s house and talk.

“I fed him four or five times before we actually went out on a date,” she said. “I had my own place. Our first date was at the Red Lobster. That’s where he used to work in Tulsa so he knew the menu very well. It has over the past 34 years been a place for what we call comfort food. There’s a warm emotional attachment as well as we enjoy the food. It’s our go-to place.”

When Ken’s parents suddenly announced a move to Philadelphia for a new job, the young couple got busy.

“In six weeks we planned a wedding, got married,” Kathleen said. “We got married at the church that I got saved in. It was a little church and we had a little wedding.”

Ken had loved Justin right from the start. Kathleen, of course, would have had it no other way. With guidance from Ken’s father, they wrote a ceremony to add to the end of the wedding vows. Ken would adopt Justin in the eyes of God. The decision reignited the hostility between Kathleen and her mother.

“I tell her about the ceremony that we’re going to do and Mom said, ‘Oh, absolutely not. You’re not doing that. I won’t come to your wedding if you’re doing that.’ And I said, ‘I guess you’re not going to come because that’s what we’re going to do.’”

In third person, Kathleen describes a ruling principle: “Nobody tells Kathleen what to do, not to this day. It has to be Kathleen’s idea.”

Kathleen won. Her mother came to the wedding.