The jumping off discussion area for the rest of the Deck. All things Lakewood.
Please check out our other sections. As we refile many discussions from the past into
their proper sections please check them out and offer suggestions.
Memorial Service for Kenneth Warren 3 pm on Sunday, June 21 at Lakewood Park
Friends and family of the late Ken Warren will gather to remember and celebrate his life on Sunday, June 21st at 3 pm, the one month anniversary of his passing. In honor of Ken’s lifelong commitment to public life and the creative spirit, we will gather by the gazebo at Lakewood Park, rain or shine, where all will be invited to honor Ken in spoken word.
Memorial donations may be made to the Gloucester Writers Center or Poets Emergency Fund.
The following is the homily delivered at the funeral service for Ken Warren by his brother, John Warren, a deacon with the Catholic diocese of Queens, New York. John resides in Floral Park, New York on Long Island, with his wife Lisa and his daughters Marie and Grace.
My brother, Kenny, learned to play the drums and joined a band when he was around 13 years old. I was a baby at the time and can thank him for giving me the ability to sleep through virtually anything. That said, I think that the image of my brother as drummer captures many themes of his life and connection to us as family, community and church.
To begin, all drummers set the beat for the band. My brother Kenny certainly set his own beat. He lived a life filled with some crazy ideas but mainly filled with deep thought and desire to understand and connect with the world around him in new and creative ways. He was a librarian and writer of poetry and essays. He was publisher of a literary journal committed to intellectual thought outside of the traditional academic setting. He worked very hard to build a community that went far beyond the places where he lived.
He also worked hard in the place he lived most of his adult life to build up the community right there. He was a founding member of the Lakewood Observer, a grassroots newspaper that took direct aim at hypocrites, institutions and those looking to make a buck at the expense of the average person. He also sought to create economic power for the little guy by working on a barter system where cash wasn’t necessary – just a person’s skills and hard work.
So Ken was definitely banging out the beat for a band that transcended the place where he set his drum kit, even as the sounds reverberated in Lakewood, Ohio.
As a drummer, Ken also understood that song was poetry set to music. His love for the written and spoken word was boundless. When I mean boundless, I mean boundless. He could out talk or out write anyone I’ve ever known. He loved nothing more than engaging in a good conversation about politics, the stars, sports as a metaphor, metaphor as a metaphor for just about anything. But, he really did want to listen, too. He always wanted to hear what my daughters, Marie and Grace, and my nieces and nephews thought about various ideas and experiences. Most especially, he liked to talk about Marie’s trips to school on the Q43 bus. Apparently, life on the Cray 43, as he liked to call it, was about the best lesson anyone could have for engaging in a complex world.
I think it was this love of word and image that appealed to his poetic self. He was always seeking to understand the world as he saw it and interpret the world as others saw it.
Finally, Ken, the drummer, wasn’t a solo act. He was part of the band, actually several bands. First, it was this band of brothers, the five of us, each different as could be, but sharing gestures, expressions, vocal delivery – all of it confusing to our children when they were toddlers. Ken very much loved this family. Mostly, of course, he loved his two sons, Beckett and Parker. In many ways, they are men like him - men who share his sharp eyed view of a slightly crazy world; men who are decent and loyal. They grew up to become men who made him proud and they make us proud, too.
Ken’s other bands included a band of friends from high school, a mere 45 years ago. These men also shared his love of the off kilter. I didn’t have time to dig up a copy of his underground high school newspaper to review his early writings, but I think you get the point.
Ken had a band of people in Lakewood, as I talked about before and another band of writers and thinkers with whom he was in contact all the time. For a guy who lived alone on Lake Ontario, he actually had a pretty active community operating.
Ken was also an important voice for some working poets out of Gloucester, Massachusetts and edited a lifetime of work for one particular poet named Vincent Ferrini, who didn’t make much of a living from writing, but who had a very bold style both as a writer and as a person that my brother really loved.
At this point, my dad may be a little exasperated because it seems like I’ve turned a homily into a eulogy. Perhaps I have, but maybe I can salvage it now by telling you something about my brother’s life of faith. He had a complicated relationship with his Catholic faith, sometimes embracing it and sometimes staying away from the doors of the church. What I can tell you is that his life is filled with lessons of the faith for all of us.
His love of the creative spark is something we churchgoers know as grace. He was very much in touch with the divine when he was writing, creating, building on the great ideas he was absorbing and processing.
He understood community as well as anybody. He knew that we are a people fully alive when we are fully connected and he reveled in the sparks that flew from that connectivity. And, he created quite a few of those sparks, too.
He understood Catholic social justice from the core of his being. His work opening the doors of his library to everyone, creating a place where you could exchange ideas without cost, making his space more welcoming than any Borders or Barnes and Noble Bookstore and looking out for the underdog in Lakewood is very much a part of the work of Church.
Finally, he understood the Mystical Body of Christ in his work and his life. There was a point in his adult life when he went to Mass every day. I wish I could say that continued through to his last days. I cannot say that, but I can say that his respect for the Eucharist and for people he encountered, engaged and loved show a deep understanding of that Mystical Body.
So, we have lost our drummer, way too soon, but the lessons that he taught, the stories that he told, the love that he shared live on. If we remember our place in the Mystical Body, we will continue to hear that beating drum.
Deacon John Warren Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church May 26, 2015
