{"id":221,"date":"2008-04-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/2008\/04\/07\/remembering-kenny-anderson\/"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:19","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:19","slug":"remembering-kenny-anderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/remembering-kenny-anderson\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Kenny Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nWell, here it is..Monday. The city election is tomorrow and I still haven&rsquo;t decided who I&rsquo;m going to vote for. Or is it whom?<br \/>\nAh, whom gives a darn?<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nLinda and I live in the Northeast district which has had a real growth spurt in recent years..more of a growth gusher, actually.<br \/>\nUnlike the rest of the country, Sioux Falls&rsquo; housing market shows no serious signs of slowing down so whoever..or whomever is elected to represent us on the council will likely have a much larger constituency at the end of their term than the beginning.<br \/>\nI hope that they keep in mind that growth may be good..but it should not come at the expense of those of us already here. I can still hear Kenny Anderson saying that..or words to that effect.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nWe cast our ballots at the Kenny Anderson Community Center near Washington High School.<br \/>\nThe center..along with an outdoor sports complex..is named after one of the most beloved people ever to come from Sioux Falls.&nbsp;<br \/>\nThe fact that Kenny&nbsp;was a black man in a city made up mostly of pasty white Scandinavians, Germans and Irish never seemed to be an issue..at least not for us. He used to love saying, &quot;I&#8217;m not black, I&#8217;m not green..I&#8217;m Sioux Falls.&quot;Indeed he was.<br \/>\nKenny grew up in the North End and eventually operated a successful dry cleaning business. He was also a standout ball player who&nbsp;was elected to&nbsp;the South Dakota fast pitch softball hall of fame.&nbsp;He not only loved to play sports..he was a loyal fan and&nbsp;a familiar face along the sidelines of most any local sporting event.When Kenny decided to run for a seat on the city commission in 1988, he won with ease and served with distinction until&nbsp;he died..way too soon..in 1990 after suffering a stroke.<br \/>\nI don&rsquo;t know of any real life changing decisions he made during his time on the commission. I just remember that he greeted everybody with a smile, was always approachable, a great interview who had a genuine passion to help the people of his hometown.&nbsp;Accordingly, folks just thought the world of Kenny..enough to&nbsp;name a couple &quot;people places&quot; in his honor.<br \/>\nNow,&nbsp;his son, Kenny Junior, is on the city council ballot this year hoping to follow in his famous father&rsquo;s footsteps.<br \/>\nMost&nbsp;who knew his old man would have to say they&rsquo;re some pretty big shoes to fill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Well, here it is..Monday. The city election is tomorrow and I still haven&rsquo;t decided who I&rsquo;m going to vote for. Or is it whom? Ah, whom gives a darn? &nbsp; Linda and I live in the Northeast district which has had a real growth spurt in recent years..more of a growth gusher, actually. Unlike&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lund-at-large","category-60","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12113,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/12113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}