Krause wheels into old times, old friends

Ken Krause, former BJ sports editor who lives on Mystic Street in Medford, Massachussetts, has been taking a trip down memory lane in Ohio.

He visited old friends and long-ago places, in Cleveland and Akron. Tasted the food of Slavic Village again. Bicycled through Amish country in Holmes County.

Ken Krause (right), wife Maura (inset), John Olesky

Ken, one of seven siblings, has a covey of nieces and nephews in the Akron area, including a golfer on the St. Vincent High School team.

His wife, former BJ reporter Maura McEnaney, was with him.

Since leaving the BJ, Ken has been free-lancing for civic causes and charities, notably WalkBoston, a group that puts the pedestrian on a pedestal of protection as a non-profit pedestrian advocacy group.

Medford isn’t that much of a walk from Boston if you’re in good shape. Even quicker by bicycle.

Ken received the Ripple Award from the Mystic River Watershed Association for his efforts in protecting the integrity of the Massachusetts river. He’s also involved with Friends of the Mystic River, Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance and the Communications Committee of WalkBoston.

Ken is a man on a mission and on a bicycle. 

While visiting in Ohio, he and Maura rode bikes in Holmes County behind Amish buggies.

While Ken is free-lancing, Maura works for Fidelity Investments, headquartered in Boston, which should give her and Ken some insights into managing their money into a retirement of travel and fun in another decade.

Ken and Maura also are into dogs. Former BJ Features editor and pet columnist Connie Bloom, a quilt art guru in Ohio circles, did an art quilt for Maura as a Christmas gift for Ken of the late and lamented Belle, a lab mix that Maura found tied to a fence in Firestone Park in Akron years ago.

It was the first Christmas in 20 years without a dog in the Ken and Maura household.

Maura received her first royalty check for her  book, “Willard Garvey: An Epic Life.” Garvey built homes in the USA, South America and Asia for people with low incomes, is owner-operator of the “world’s largest” grain elevator, is the “largest private landowner in Nevada” and builder of Kansas’s tallest building—the Epic Center with its slanted copper roof.

Maura knew the family through friends and, after a half-decade of research and other prep work, put the book together. 

You can watch Maura's 33-minute appearance at the Wichita, Kansas Rotary Club, talking about the Garvey book,  by clicking on http://www.independent.org/multimedia/detail.asp?m=2452

Syracuse graduate Maura’s more than three decades as a business writer and editor include being on the BJ team that won a Pulitzer Gold Medal for its “A Question of Color” about race relations in the Akron area. She left the BJ for Boston in 2000 and later worked for Bloomberg News.

Ken and Maura wound up in Medford because Maura has a lot of family in the Boston area, which is convenient for Maura’s skiing in New Hampshire and their jaunts to other New England landmarks, particularly those accessible by bicycle.

When BJ legend Harry Liggett passed away in January, Ken and John Olesky put their heads together with the authority that Harry had given them and kept this BJ Alums blog you are reading going as a tribute to Harry – and Pat Englehart and Fran Murphey and Ben Maidenburg and John Knight, all of whom were mentioned in the two-hour reunion/recollections by Ken and John at the Longhorn Restaurant on Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls.

We lassoed the good times and good memories.

K & M will head back home Thursday, with tourist stops along the way.