Nothing unusual about the way that Friday morning began. Bill, her husband, brought her the newspaper like he always did, and Jean Kirby unfolded it to the front page.
"I saw that picture, and I screamed: 'Not him! Not him!' It was beyond belief," she said.
The photograph at the top of the Dec. 12 , 2003, newspaper was one Kenny Walker intended for the family Christmas card. It was he and his wife and the bouncing 3-year-old girl that pushed around the house a vacuum cleaner just like her dad's.
Next to the festive photo was a dark headline: "Tragedy on I-185." Beneath it was a startling story detailing the shooting death of Walker, 39, an employee of Blue Cross/Blue Shield --- the place Kirby first got him a job in the fall of 1981.
If Kirby shut her eyes, Walker was still the dignified high school jock that every day loped into typing class right before the bell and the champion typist with the basketball player's hands who used his left thumb on the space bar instead of the right one. He also was one of those students that a teacher never forgets.
She went to his wedding when he married Cheryl in 1997. He wrote about her when the Ledger-Enquirer asked readers to share memories of a teacher that made a difference in their life. In 25 years of teaching high school, Kirby had only four or five students that truly touched her. On those special ones, she kept files, adding mementos or clippings every time she saw their names in print.
"I never thought I'd add a story about Kenneth's death, not like this," said Kirby, still involved in education at Columbus Technical College.
Kirby's view of Kenneth Brian Walker is in contrast to the rest of us. For the city at-large, he was that man who was killed by a deputy sheriff. He had been in an apartment where drugs were being sold, and he may have died because he wouldn't do what a lawman ordered him to do.
Friends quickly put his memory on a pedestal. He was depicted as a church usher, an only son, a husband, a father, an ambitious professional who was planning to become a certified public accountant.
Warts and flaws were ignored. When toxicology reports indicated there was cocaine in his system, they were shouted down. A family lawyer claimed the drugs were planted --- something others said was physiologically impossible because cocaine injected after the heart stops couldn't circulate into the bloodstream.
The truth about who Kenny Walker was lies between the hints of a not-so-pleasant side and the grandiose descriptions that might have made Walker himself uncomfortable. Truth is, he was a human being with many sides.
Mother and son
The Kenny Walker whom Jean Kirby knew as a high school student inspired her to go to his mother's home after she read about his death. When the former teacher arrived, Emily Walker was in another room, getting ready for a painful trip to Progressive Funeral Home.
"Mrs. Kirby!" she shouted out, "I've been waiting for you. I knew you'd come. You've always been there for him."
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