On Memorial Day an old high school friend of mine, Kelly Cline passed away. I feel a need to write some words in his memory, though in truth I didn’t see him more than once a year in his older age where he lived in Pacific Beach.
I first meet Kelly on the cross-country team at Cleveland High School in Seattle. I was a senior and he was a junior. People who knew him in his later years would probably be surprised to think of Kelly as a long distance runner. The years took a heavy toll on his body and he didn’t take very good care of it.
He was a good companion for me back in the early 70’s. In the spring of that year he and I rode the freight trains from Seattle down to San Francisco to run in the first annual Golden Gate Marathon. You can read about that trip here.
He wasn’t able to finish that race as he had stabbed his right calf with a scissors the day before while cutting off his jeans to make a pair of cutoffs.
I would team up with him again in the spring of 1972 when we got an apartment together in Palo Alto. He worked at a gas station in Milpitas while I worked the night shift at the Jack-in-the-Box in Redwood City. He worked the graveyard shift and spent most of his time playing his guitar.
We were trying to save up money for a hitchhiking tour of Europe, but when the money didn’t accumulate we moved to Gila Bend, Arizona to work in his father’s hay cutting business. Often in the evening we would make a trip to Phoenix to visit some girls he had meet in his one semester of college at Arizona State.
During the day after work we would hang out in our van recording music and dreaming of sending it to his brother in Spokane who was a DJ there.
After a couple of months in Gila Bend we made a cross country trip that took us back through Seattle and eventually to Boston. You can follow the details of that trip here.
That trip ended in desperation on the shores of Carson Beach in Boston where we decided to return home to Seattle.
The next year in 1973 Kelly married his first wife Cheryl, and lived in the southern suburbs of Seattle where he worked sometimes as a salesman. That marriage lasted for about 2 years.
He met his second wife, Tracy, at a bar in Ballard. She was the daughter of a mortician and he lived in the upstairs apartment of the mortuary. His first son died of SIDS around that time. I lost track of Kelly when I moved to California in 1979, but this marriage only lasted a short time.
He got a job withUPS where he met his third wife Tammy. He eventually suffered a back injury at work and began living off of disability. His third and final marriage also came to an end and he soured on the idea of family life.
He became addicted to the welfare state collecting disability for his back injury and I don’t believe he held a steady job since that time.
I know he spent time living in his van in Los Angles, where he wrote a screen play that he hoped would bring him the fame and recognition he longed for.
He came back to Seattle and lived with my brother’s family taking up residence in his basement. He drifted around but finally ended up at Pacific Beach in 1999 after my brother moved his family there.
This was probably the high point of his life as he had a deal working for Linux magazine doing shipping and work on their web page. Linux magazine financed the purchase of his Trucking Express building and he made a good life for himself.
Here you can see him working as a DJ at the pirate radio station, KPB, that was begun by my brother at the Wacky Warehouse.He got the radio bug then and when the pirate radio was shut down he focused all his energy on getting a legal radio license which eventually came to be KXPB radio, Pacific Beach.
It was really quite an accomplishment and he became more and more attached to the success of the radio station. Unfortunately it feed his ego which began to grow and blinded him to the misuse and abuse he inflicted on his life long friends.
Events turned on him and he lost his connection to Linux magazine and eventually forced him to sell the Trucking Express building which cut off his source of income forcing him to rely totally on funds raised by the radio station.
Unable to put food on his table he relied on his friends to help financially support himself and his health suffered.
He became well known at Pacific Beach for the work he did on their web page and the local events that he would MC and DJ for. He reached his pinnacle this past Memorial Day as the DJ for the local celebration raising funds for the operation of the food bank and the radio station.
He was found sitting at his desk with the stacks of cash and checks he had raised, no doubt planning the future of his radio station which he had managed to take full control of.
I will remember him as a friend willing to take on adventures that few others would have dared.
Kelly Cline 1953-2006
5 comments:
Very nice commentary.
Jim Hudspeth
I met Kelly when he arrived in Pacific Beach. I had recently moved to the beach as well and in addition to our mutual love of music, we were both from Rainier Valley. Kelly from Cleveland and myself, from Rainier Beach. We became good friends. Kelly's character, as described in this article, left him with a few hurdles to climb over, but the radio station was gaining ground and settling in. The music is incredible! Not at all like the 20-30 songs that are repeated on the Seattle radio stations. Anyway, to make a very long story short (I hope), I was also a volunteer for our North Beach Ambulance Dept. and arrived on scene the day he (as he would say) evolved to a higher life form. Since then, seven of us have kept the radio station going. We all volunteer our time to keep the place going and be regular DJ's on the air. Rita, one of our DJ's keeps Kelly's prgrams alive. We all pay tribute to him regularly, using his DJ handle of Max Better. So, Kelly's spirit is alive and well here in Moclips and Pacific Beach. Thanks for the tribute. I have just read it for the first time. Very nice.
Surf Diva
It needs to be said that Kelly was not all he was made out to be in this article. I was related to Kelly and saw first hand what a nasty person he was. He was a wife beater to many of his wives, beating them so badly they had to be hospitalized. He was married,but you have written the names incorrectly. He had 3 children, one who did die of SIDS. His other children he never made any attempt to see or to support. He was a small man with a huge drinking problem, who enjoyed beating women. He was a dead beat father and husband. Kelly made bad choices throughout his whole life and has only himself to blame. He never wanted to work a real job, because that would mean he had to pay child support which apparently was beneath him. Thankfully his children were not subjected to being raised by him.Perhaps you should think about this before acting like he was such a great guy. He wasn't and nothing will ever change that. If your going to tell a story, perhaps you should include all sides of the story.
I was unaware of Kelly’s violent treatment of women since I mostly knew him before he started getting married.
I tried to hint at his character flaws without being too harsh so the discerning reader would understand what I meant. You have made it much clearer and presented more details from a different perspective. I would not dispute any of what you said.
Thank you for presenting another side of the story.
This was interesting to read. Kelly and my mom had me in 1979. I never knew him - and from what I understand to be true, he never believed I was his. He certainly never paid support. Regardless, it’s interesting to hear stories from those who knew him.
Post a Comment