A gentle giant — an orphan, a cowboy, a veteran, a police officer, an opera singer and a star football player — has died after setting himself on fire in Highland Square in November.
Kenn Gilchrist succumbed Thursday morning to infection related to self-inflicted burns that covered most of his body below the chest. A week after the November election, the Akron man walked into Angel Falls Coffee Company on West Market Street in Akron and complained of the animosity sweeping American politics. He exited and told a bystander to record him as he doused himself in gasoline and struck a cigarette lighter.
Born in Cleveland in 1947, his loss is felt from California to Seattle to Wyoming and Akron — places filled with the lives he touched.
“Understated. [He was] very understated and humble,” said Dale Bohren, the executive editor of the Casper Star-Tribune, a Wyoming newspaper that wrote about Gilchrist’s good deeds when he lived there as a parole officer and cowboy.
“When he was in his military blues, singing, he was unforgettable,” Bohren added, remembering how the Vietnam veteran would don his Marine uniform and sing the National Anthem at a local cemetery to honor his fallen brothers.
Bohren found out about Gilchrist’s passing from rumblings on Facebook by a Wyoming group that had held a musical to raise funds for the family, which includes six children and, Veronica, Kenn’s wife of 36 years.
Veronica Gilchrist stayed by her husband’s side at a burn unit in Akron Children’s Hospital. He had been in the hospital since the November incident. She said he wanted to live when they brought him in but he could not speak later.
Still, in the end, she said she knew he was ready to go. “I’m going to miss him sorely, but I will see him again in heaven. And he has no pain.”
Nurses and doctors “attended to him like he was just the most special person in the world. They would play his songs and sing along,” Veronica said. She’ll always remember a little coffee shop in Casper, Wyo., where he sang to her with the “voice God gave him” for 90 minutes on their 25th wedding anniversary.
“He had so much love. He just had a hard, hard life,” Veronica said. “But he was such a good husband. I have grieved for almost four months there at the hospital, going back and forth, going up and down. And it was amazing how he tried to live. Even the doctor said he was a strong man to have survived these burns.”
“I love him,” said Michael Miller, a California attorney and Gilchrist’s former partner on the San Mateo Police Department, just outside of San Francisco. “And I wish he would have been able to survive to speak for himself. It’s a terrible story.”
Gilchrist was an orphan. He grew up tall and learned to lead at Father Flanagan’s Boys Town in Omaha, Neb. As a senior, he made the Omaha All-Metro All-Star team and was named high school All-American by Scholastic Magazine in 1964.
He forfeited a college football scholarship to serve his country. After two tours in Vietnam, he returned with shrapnel in his leg and a slight limp that lasted the rest of his life.
After leaving the police force in the 1970s, he sang opera in Seattle and ranched in Wyoming. He returned to Ohio to buy a home on Copley Road with his wife in 2012. He volunteered across the street at the Summit County Historical Society and bragged about the peewee football team he helped coach at a nearby city park.
He never wanted a funeral service. His wife and friends are respecting that wish. He was “modest and humble to the end,” said Miller.
“If you had to pick up a two-by-four, he wouldn’t ask you if you needed help. He just did,” remembered Bohren, who contacted the Beacon Journal to confirm Gilchrist’s passing. “It’s really a loss to humankind.”
“Kenn’s story needs to be heard,” his wife said. “The only thing I can say from my point of view is that it’s been an honor and pleasure to be his wife for 36 years. He’s such an amazing person. He had such a heart for everybody. He loved his family. And he did anything — anything — for everybody.”
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .