In Memoriam: Ken Laxague
Former CALPIRG student activist, Telephone Outreach Project director, WashPIRG campus organizer and Fund summer canvass director Ken Laxague passed away on Nov. 15, 2020. Here is a tribute his wife, Linda Oshman, recently shared with us all:
Ken kept his original canvassing clipboard!
Kenny was born in Van Nuys, California, in 1962 and lived there through his graduation from UCLA. He had a very happy childhood and loved spending time with his family. He was the youngest of five siblings who now live far and wide across the U.S. He spent some time with PIRG in California and then in Bellingham, Washington. From there he bounced back to LA and then followed a friend to Boston, where he and I met in graduate school in 1989.
We had our first date over Columbus Day weekend in 1990 and got married on that same weekend in 1993. We lived in Seattle from 1992 to 1997 and returned to Boston in 1997. During that whole time, Kenny was miserable working in health care administration, but kept at it. We had our daughter, Pearl, in 1996, and our son, Abraham, in 1998.
After too many unhappy years at his job, I finally convinced him to try his hand at teaching, something I thought was perfect for him. He spent about a year substitute teaching in elementary and middle school classrooms, and it was clear that this was what he was meant to do. He started teaching full time at the Jonas Clarke Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 2000. Kenny thrived as a teacher, and he was incredibly loved by both his students and his peers. He was an amazing mentor to young teachers and new parents. I can't tell you how much his teacher friends meant to us all over the past year. As soon as Kenny got sick, they started spending time with him at least 3 to 4 days a week. They had a rotating schedule so he got to see them all.
Woody Holton, left, with Ken at a PIRG event in the ‘80s.
In the summer of 2011, our family of four set off on a six-and-a-half week road trip across the U.S. with no plans. We got into the car and drove, and we only stopped when someone said, "I'm done." I'm linking the blog we kept during that trip, because it says so much about who we are as a family. Upon our return, Kenny got into woodworking with a focus on boats. Over the years, the boats he built got more complicated until he went in whole hog in 2015. With plans to build a 15-foot wooden sailboat, Kenny devoted the next 3+ years to getting that dream realized. By the summer of 2018, Lucky Pierre, his beautiful baby, finally launched! To pay for the building of the boat, Kenny worked at Community Boating in Boston where he took disabled people out to sail on the Charles River. He loved getting them out on the water, and he worked there from 2016 to 2019. He spent a lot of time working on the boat and taking family and friends out on the water. One of his dreams was for the two of us to sail from harbor island to harbor island in Maine, camping and enjoying the scenery. Sadly, that never happened.
Like everyone who knew Kenny, I miss his genuine kindness and affability. He welcomed everyone, and went out of his way to make strangers feel like part of the conversation. Kenny often said, "In marriage, keep in mind that your spouse has only positive intentions." He believed that if there was a misunderstanding, your partner probably had the best intentions in mind, so it was important to listen. With that, Kenny and I never fought. Really. Never. We communicated. He had a wonderful sense of humor and was also a care-giver. Cancer stole his ability to do what he loved: care for others.
He was remarkable. His friends always tell me that Kenny spoke about me, Pearl and Abe as if we were the greatest gifts he ever had. He was incredibly devoted to us all, and we were devoted to him. His relationships with Pearl and Abe were special. He and Pearl had a beautiful father/daughter bond, and did nearly everything together, and when Abe was in grade school, Kenny coached every single baseball team he was on. When Abe was a junior in college, Kenny found a summer softball league that they could both play on, and for two summers, the two of them trotted off to Somerville once a week to play on their lousy but fun team. Playing softball made him feel young and he loved being good at it.
Kenny was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2019 and his treatment showed great promise. Although by February of 2020 he was told that the cancer was gone, it seems that was not the case. On March 20, 2020, we learned that the cancer was metastatic and had spread to other parts of his body. Chemo did little, and with the support of me, Pearl and Abe, Kenny made the decision to stop treatments in September. He walked into Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston one day and said he was done, and for that, we were grateful, as the latest treatment was tearing him apart.
Once he gave up treatment, he was much more at peace with his pending death. I read the chapter on terminal illness in The Art of Dying Well in May, and suggested that Kenny read it, too. I think that book gave him the courage to decide what kind of death he wanted, which was helpful to us all. We did everything to make his final wishes come true, and hospice was amazing. He entered a hospice care facility on Wednesday, November 11, slipped into unconsciousness that day, and died early in the morning of November 15, 2020. Kenny donated his body to Tufts University School of Medicine.
Over his last couple of months, Kenny actually referred to himself as George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life, one of his favorite movies. And he lived long enough to see his beloved Dodgers win the World Series! He may have had only 58 years on this planet, but damn it, he made the most of every single day.
Ken celebrating the Dodgers’ fall 2020 World Series win.
