Ken Millen was born in 1930 and grew up here on North C Street, a neighborhood of treeless blocks along the Wishkah River, which occasionally swallows a chunk of a deteriorating house and carries it away.
“Ol’ Ken lived there all his life,” said Lauri Penttila, nodding down the alley toward a blue-and-white 900-square-foot house, which recently was fitted with new windows, siding and a roof.
“I thought I knew him pretty well,” Penttila said. “Until now.”
Much of the city shares that feeling.
“The hospital where he was he born, the house where he lived and the graveyard where he rests are all within a few miles of one another.”
The kind of American who gets no notice but is still heroically holding this country together.
Memory eternal.