Prequel II: Growing Up – Train Up a Child (Proverbs 22:6), Ken Kalis
- Ken Kalis
- 6 days ago
- 11 min read
Every believer has a season when faith meets the real world.For me, it began in 1958 with my father’s accident and the long road that followed — through teenage rebellion, first love, vocational turns, and an unexpected call to Canada.This chapter, Prequel II: Growing Up – Train Up a Child (Proverbs 22:6), tells how God’s hand was shaping me even when I couldn’t see it.Have you ever looked back and seen His fingerprints on your detours?
–––Growing Up: Train Up a Child, Proverbs 22:6
Prequel #2:1958-1964
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Figure 1 Robert, Ruth, Anna, and Rudolph Kalis, 1956
June 1958 brought the biggest catastrophe of my life – my Dad was seriously injured in a car accident in Union, NJ. Dad was 56 and the Pastor of Emmanuel Pentecostal Church in Elizabeth, NJ. It was a working-class, ethnic city, home of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.
Dressed in his dark blue suit, white shirt, and tie, Dad stood out from the crowd, and everyone called him Reverend or Brother Kalis. Now the white shirt was red with blood as he was rushed to the hospital with a ruptured spleen.
My brother Bob brought the evil tidings to us at 658 Monroe Avenue and took Mom to him. That left me alone with Beatrice Streep and Grace Vence, two twenty-something women who lived with us in training for the ministry. I remember Grace making me chocolate pudding and Bea playing our piano as we prayed for Dad’s recovery.
For a while, it looked like he would die, but my mother and brother stayed with him round the clock praying, and the Lord brought him home. He could not preach for a while, and Bob took his place in the Church and Emmanuel grew under his ministry aa he mourned for the death of Grace Esther, his 10-month-old daughter who died from spinal bifida.
Figure 2 Emmanuel Pentecostal Church in 1966
From that day forward, nothing in our house was quite the same. Childhood ended suddenly, and I began to see how fragile even a preacher’s world could be.
Figure 3 Lafayette Jr High School Yearbook 1961
That was fine for Bob and the church, but not for me. Although I was getting ready for Junior High, Bob insisted I go to the Tuesday Youth meeting for the Sunday school kids. I was more interested in a blooming friendship with Gayle Jordan, a beautiful, vivacious girl my age but from the wrong side of the tracks.
He did all he could to discourage that, but there was nothing he could do to stop me from falling in love with Karen Tangowski, my first girlfriend and my first kiss, behind her house and the billboard on Jackson Avenue. Karen sat behind me in Mrs. McBride’s social studies class.
Figure 4 Karen is the 2nd one in the 2nd row
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I will never forget the day we opened our books to read about the beginnings of men and animals on the earth “Put away your books,” she said, took out a Bible and began to read, “ In the beginning God created the heavens and earth……..” reading on to the end of Genesis 2
Figure 5 Genesis 1:1-2:4
Another teacher who blessed me was Mrs. Laffey, in English class. She led me into the classics, beginning with the Odyssey and having us find and write out the similes and epigraphs. I loved this work, but I loved the stories more.
Figure 6 Mrs. McBride and Mrs Laffey and the 1st and 3rd women in the 2nd row
I also loved cars, as only a 15-year-old boy can, and under the influence of my hot-rod friend Frank Antonucci (and with my father’s approval) signed up to go to Edison Vocational High School to learn auto mechanics.
Mrs. Laffey called in my mother. “You cannot let him do this, Mrs. Kalis. Kenny is college prep material, and I want to get him into the honors English class at Jefferson.” This was music to my mother’s ears, and she signed off on it. My Dad was not pleased.
Around this time, there was a prom for the ninth graders, and Judy Goodel asked me to be her date. I agreed, but shortly after, I got poison ivy on my foot. When she heard about this, Judy called my Mom and asked how I was doing, and Mom said I was getting better.
“Will he be able to dance with me at the prom?” she asked. I don’t know how Mom answered Judy, but she went right to Dad with the news and then reminded me, “We’re Christians, Kenny, and we don’t dance.”
“Well, I made a date with her, and I’m going,” I replied. I went and had a good time, Judy putting up with my stepping on her pretty feet. After the dance, we went to Spirito’s pizza and had a wonderful time.
Figure 7 Spirito's Pizza, Elizabeth NJ
When I got home, Dad was waiting for me and hit me for the only time in my life. “We belong to Jesus and are not our own. You aren’t living for Him when you are dancing with the world.” He let it go at that and broke out some ham, Jewish rye, and Boller’s soda, and we had a little feast.
Meanwhile, Bea and Grace started a storefront mission on Main Street in Keansburg, where Elizabethans and other blue-collar people went to swim and enjoy the summer boardwalk. I drove down there with Grace on Sunday for the afternoon and evening service.
Figure 8 Beatrice Streep, co-founder of Keansburg Pentecostal Church
Figure 9 Grace Vence, co-founder of Keansburg Pentecostal Church with my Mom in 1950s
A beautiful Linda Manganelli got saved and came regularly to both services (as well as the Thursday night Bible Study), and she won my heart. We became a couple and endured for many years until a handsome soldier married her as soon as she got out of high school.
Because of her, I learned to write letters and did for years. She often added to the envelope’s cute epigraphs like, D-liver D-letter D-sooner D-better, and I looked forward to each one with delight.
There was romance afoot at the adult level as well. Grace was getting into her late twenties and had given up on marriage, dedicating herself to the work of the Lord. But He had other plans.
Jesus saved a handsome professional baseball player, Jim Schulteis, who soon fell in love with Grace and began to woo her. The Lord blessed their union, and soon they were living with us at 658 Monroe Avenue with a child on the way.
Figure 10 Jim & Grace Schultheis family in the180s
Shortly after, I graduated from Lafayette Junior High School in 1961. This was the most important graduation of my life because it separated me from half my friends, i.e. every girl I knew in school and prepared me for life in an all-boys school, something I was not prepared for.
But I made the most of that summer of 1961, letting my hair grow to reflect the Beatles’ arrival, and thus drawing the attention and affection of Edie Jasina, a charming, affectionate Italian with the most beautiful long black hair I had ever seen (to this day!). She loved to hold me, hug, kiss and caress, which I took as signs of love.
I soon realized this was simply her nature, an Italian warmth at polar opposites with my German culture and upbringing. I lost her to a rival who had a car, but we remained off-and-on friends until she graduated from High school.
This romance developed and flourished at Uncle Pete’s Sweet Shop on the corner of Monroe Avenue and Julia Street, where the teenage boys came to smoke cigarettes and play the pinball machine, and the girls came to check out the boys.
My friends from the neighborhood hung out here and at Jim’s on the corner of Monroe and Louisa, and four of us walked the mile to Jefferson when the school year began in September. The school was a huge place with over a thousand young men. There were distinctive groups there: the honors students, college prep, business, and the general population.
Figure 11 Thomas Jeffferson High School, Wikipedia Commons
They came from different parts of the city and did not get along well. The absence of girls coarsened the atmosphere and made the place a disaster area. As a member of the effete honors group, I made sure I kept my tough North End Duke friends available to help protect me from the other mostly black roughnecks.
I remember one Duke turning a blowtorch on a rival in chemistry class, and there were fistfights daily. When the police came to break up one scheduled rumble, my blow-torch duke friend gave me a bag and told me to run.
Foolishly, I took it and ran, only looking in the bag after I was in safety – there was a gun. That helped me decide I had to get out of there.
I appealed to Mom, who somehow got me into the high school at Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada.
Arrival and Culture Shock
We didn’t have the money to pay the tuition, and I had to work 15 hours a week to help pay my room and board. Canada was very cold and far away, but there were two compensating factors: it was far away from that snake pit of Jefferson High, and there were girls! Lots of them. Pretty, well-dressed Christian girls, but there was one BIG problem: we weren’t allowed to talk to them!
Why? They were training for the mission field and taught to eschew any entangling engagement that would hinder God’s plan for them. Accordingly, Prairie structured its campus with separate sidewalks and entrances for boys and girls, and we were forbidden to speak or write.
Figure 12 Prairie Bible Institute Campus Fee Internet download:
Infractions meant detentions or picking up daisies on the endless prairies surrounding the school. I did my time in both, but I loved it anyway. For one, we lived under strict schedules that had a time for every part of our lives, from wake-up and devotionals in the morning through rigorous classes from 9- 4, to sports and study time in the evenings before another time with Jesus and lights out and bed.
Figure 13Ken kalis in his room at Praire 1962 (I still have the hat!)
Here, I was able to take 8 prepared subjects in contrast to the 3 or 4 permitted in the States. As a result, I was accepted at Trinity College in Chicago after my Junior year, and I grew to love learning. I continued to nourish my love life as well!
Linda Manganelli wrote me loving letters regularly, and through notes, smiles and occasional secret kisses I tied my heart to lovely Judy Friedly, a local damsel whose smile could lift any burden.
Figure 14 Judy Friedly, Prairie Year Book Photo
Growth and Change
But there was a downside. Here was the first time I met Christian people who thought Pentecostal people were demon-possessed. My Mom and Dad? It made me furious.
When I won a scholarship for my senior year to Hillcrest Christian High School in Medicine Hat, I went and loved it even more than Prairie. Here I was on the basketball team, and a star, not so much because of my great ability but because my Canadian friends liked hockey better, and boy, could they play.
When I arrived at my first gym class, they asked me where my skates were, which I didn’t have. So I bought a pair for $2, and they put me out on the ice. I couldn’t skate, so all they could do was install me as a goalie. After a few games, withstanding firing pucks. I learned to skate fast so I could leave that dangerous job!
Danger loomed in November when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. We Americans got the day off, and that weekend one of the boys took me home with him to work on his parents' farm.
One day stacking hay was enough for me, and I began longing for home. I misbehaved and lost my scholarship, and headed back to New Jersey. Fayth Wilderman tried to get me to stay, even meeting me at the train with a letter as I was about to leave. I will never forget this kindness.
Figure 15 Canadian Pacific dme-observation cars
This was the 4th and final time I took that two-thousand-mile drive on the Canadian Pacific. I loved every one, this last one the best. When I got home, my brother Bob came to meet me and helped me get readjusted to life at 658 Monroe Avenue.
I returned that week to Mrs. Raffety’s honors English class, and she welcomed me back by excusing me from a test the class was taking on Macbeth. We had studied it in Canada, and I got the highest mark in the class and elevated myself to stardom in that tiny honors group. I began reading earnestly and enjoying the reading experience.
I also got back to Emmanuel Pentecostal Church, picking up the 5 Borowski kids for Sunday school and trying to live for Jesus. But I also used that car to drive to the teenage drinking spots in Staten Island, catering to the 18-year-old New Jersy teens who couldn’t drink there.
I continued to pursue the beautiful Barbara Humprey, a chaste Catholic girl who was in love with someone else.
Figure 16 Barbara Humphrey of Rahway, NJ - a personal gift
Linda had married a soldier, and Faythe came down for a visit and I gave her a tour of New York City.
Figure 17 Faythe Dawn Wilderman, Medicine Hat Alberta, Canada, personal gift
Mom got me a job at the American Jewish Ledger, where I was in charge of organizing the new postal zip codes. As I did, I geared up for Rutgers, academically prepared but lonely inside.
Figure 18 Statue of John Donne, my favorite poet at this time. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Matthew Black from London, UK
The one poem I remember from that first semester was the Relic, by John Donne:
When my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,
(For graves have learn'd that woman head,
To be to more than one a bed)
And he that digs it, spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
Will he not let'us alone,
And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls, at the last busy day,
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?
If this fall in a time, or land,
Where mis-devotion doth command,
Then he, that digs us up, will bring
Us to the bishop, and the king,
To make us relics; then
Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I
A something else thereby;
All women shall adore us, and some men;
And since at such time miracles are sought,
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.
First, we lov'd well and faithfully,
Yet knew not what we lov'd, nor why;
Difference of sex no more we knew
Than our guardian angels do;
Coming and going, we
Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;
Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals
Which nature, injur'd by late law, sets free;
These miracles we did, but now alas,
All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.
I felt this way about Faythe and even got a lock of her soft blond hair to make such a bracelet. It lies still, in a red aluminum box with a map of Canada in gold and my compass and other tools from geometry class.
Figure 19: Red box with map of Canada, like the one containing that lock of blond hair and om geometry tools.
“I didn’t know it then, but that compass would point me far beyond the map of Canada — toward the city I was already seeking.”
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Coming next:
Tender Branch: When his branch is yet tender. Matthew 25:32
Prequel #3: 1951-1957
Figure 20 Dad and Kenny on theback steps of 658 Monroe Avenue
Conceived and Consecrated: And the woman conceived and bare a son. Exodus 3:2
Prequel #4: 1946-19