by Kathi Koll
It was later determined that his condition was a result of exposure to radiation while in the Air Force. We knew that he’d be gone days at a time flying secret missions, but the specifics were always far above the clearance granted to worried, loving family members. Family folklore has it that he flew his F-84F Thunderstreak into Red China, but we’ll never know if that’s true. Even now, it’s hard to imagine a career he loved so much turning on him so cruelly.
Today, one’s chances of survival from aplastic anemia are higher with the aid of internet resources to millions of people and the National Marrow Registry’s tens of thousands of donors, but in 1974 the only way to find a perfect donor was digging through old-fashioned medical records. Finding a perfect match was as lucky as finding a needle in a haystack. The best chance would be an identical twin, which he didn’t have. The next closest chance would be a sibling.
I immediately flew to Los Angeles to see him. He was weak. His color was terrible, but he was tackling the problem like a business situation. Reading everything he could get his hands on, talking to a multitude of doctors, tackling each treatment and update like a fourth-quarter comeback. He would win. The team would win. The family would win.
I went to UCLA to be tested as a donor. My brother Don had already done so, but he didn’t match closely enough. Dink met me at the top of the stairs outside the parking lot to the hospital. He gave me a hug and thanked me a million times for coming. He explained how important the transplant was, but apparently how difficult it would be for me as a donor to go through if we matched closely enough. He wanted me to completely understand how painful it would be for me and how much he would understand if I didn’t want to do it. I just knew it would be me who would save his life. My brother would live, and he would finally see me as the woman I matured to, not as his bratty little sister. This was my chance to save his life. I loved him, and now we would be forever bound through life with a closeness few could ever have. He would receive my bone marrow, which would regenerate in him, giving him a new chance at life.
After a blood test to check DNA markers for compatibility, he sat me down and told me we didn’t match closely enough. He was so disappointed. I had never before seen my fighter pilot brother, star athlete and now successful businessman, with the look of such utter defeat. I think it was the first time I ever saw tears in his eyes and maybe the only time. I was devastated. I couldn’t save my brother’s life.
My brother taught me how to live life through the face of adversity. He tackled each day as if the impossible was inevitable. He barely missed a day of work no matter how ill he felt. He spent nights in the hospital, hooked up to an IV with pint after pint of blood filling his veins, and then go into work with nary a complaint, as if everything was normal. It was a grueling couple of years, but he lived with the optimism that a donor would be found, and in the meantime, he would fight to be strong and live his life as normally as possible.
Arthur “Dink” Robinson and his wife, Barbara
He had taken his four older children on a trip around the US many years earlier, with me as part of the gang. He wanted to do the same for his youngest child, who was too young at the time to make the trip. The doctors said it would be impossible, but he called every major hospital on his round-the-country tour and arranged through his doctors to take off every few days to receive blood transfusions. Despite the unheard of challenge, his little boy was going to have this trip with him no matter what anyone thought.
The next few years for him were a constant battle to survive. His fight for life was mirroring my father’s struggle. No one knew who would go first, but I held on to the dream of a miracle for both of them.
In a bittersweet mercy, my dad passed away on Christmas Eve, 1975. He wouldn’t have been able to handle the death of his son.
When my dad elected not to take his chance with surgery, I couldn’t understand where he was coming from, but now I do. We celebrate birth; we celebrate all our milestones through life, but the one we run from is death. It’s so hard for the ones left behind, but through all the experiences I’ve had with end of life, I now understand how important it is for one to have their last milestone in life be celebrated. It’s a gift to let one go in their own way without the guilt of the patient having to worry about the ones they’re leaving behind. It’s their time. Yes, it’s so hard on everyone else, but it’s also a time to celebrate the rich life that person has experienced, whether good or bad, hard or easy.
During the first part of 1976, I suffered from the death of my father. I was deeply depressed but didn’t know it. I felt physically sick every day, an uncontrollable reaction to something I couldn’t quite put a name to. I lost close to twenty pounds, and needless to say, I looked horrible.
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” my husband said one snowy Missouri Sunday. “There’s something wrong with you. This isn’t normal.”
I didn’t argue. I knew I had to go. I knew something was wrong. I was in the ER on a gurney when my doctor came in. He was startled to see what I looked like. Patrick explained how sick I had been, and my doctor immediately said, “She needs to be admitted. We need to do some tests. Something’s wrong.”
I could still hear the whisper of my mom saying to me, never tell, but I ignored it and blurted out, “Doctor, I lost my mom a couple of years ago. My dad just died, and my brother doesn’t have much longer. My whole family is dying. I’m just so sad.”
“Kathi,” my doctor said with an unforgettable expression of compassion, “there’s nothing wrong with you other than you’re about to have a nervous breakdown. No one can go through this kind of stress.” He wanted to keep me in the hospital, but I just couldn’t bear to stay there. I wanted to go home to my husband and babies. My doctor said OK, but only if I would take some medication to get me through this roller coaster of life, with complete rest at home.
When Dink heard what happened, he called and told me he was coming to Missouri. He didn’t want anyone knowing he was coming. He only wanted to see me and talk to my doctor. He didn’t like the fact the doctor had prescribed Valium and wanted to find out what was going on. He sounded weak on the other end of the phone. I asked to talk to my sister-in-law. She told me he had pneumonia. I pleaded with him not to come. It was too dangerous. He wouldn’t hear of it, saying he had business in New York and would use that as an excuse to see me on his way home to California.
I never talked to him again. He flew to New York and passed out in a coffee shop at the Newark Airport with a high fever. People ignored him, not knowing who he was or what his problem was. They probably thought he was a passed out drunk and not someone they wanted to involve themselves with. Someone finally called an ambulance, and he was transported to the hospital. When the doctors asked who he was, he refused to tell them. He said, “I’m dying. Let me die in peace.”
My family is one of complex relationships, and Dink’s and mine was no exception. The bond between a younger sister and older brother is a strange and sacred thing. He was tough on me and often hurtful, but in his last years, I saw a glimpse of his lifelong love for me and his respect for me as I grew older. Despite our contentious start, we bonded when faced with life’s greatest struggle. I know I am lucky to have witnessed his true strength.
Even in the darkest moments, when I felt like there couldn’t possibly be a way to carry on, the earth kept spinning, the days kept passing by, and life continued on. I found out I was pregnant, and a little light flickered on at the end of the tunnel. Nothing could ever replace the family I’d lost, but I knew I’d see their expressions and mannerisms in my precious children as they grew up.
Patrick and I were visiting my brother Don in Hawaii the Christmas before Brooke was born. For some reason, I never showed much during the first trimester of my pregnancies, so I decided not to tell anyone I was pregnant right away. We wanted to wait and surprise Jennifer and Kevin during the holidays. Christmas morning, after the excitement of Santa Claus had worn off, we made the announce
ment to Jennifer and Kevin that they were going to have a baby brother or sister.
“This is the happiest day of my life!” Jennifer jumped up and shrieked in excitement. At seven and a half, she was a ball of energy. Kevin paid no attention, but at four, nothing was more fun than playing with his new toys.
The day of Brooke’s birth came quite unexpectedly. I was at a luncheon with girlfriends six weeks before her due date when my water broke. One friend quickly drove me home, where Patrick was waiting to take me to the hospital. Everything seemed to be going well until the birth. I barely got to see my precious new baby before I was whisked to recovery. Patrick and his mother came in for a few seconds to see me. Patrick seemed anxious, and his mom had tears in her eyes. Something seemed very wrong, but before I could ask what was going on, they were both gone. I lay there alone with all sorts of terrible thoughts filling my imagination. Was everything OK? I silently feared the worst.
A nun I had never met before quietly came in and sat down beside me. She explained that there was a problem. My baby was struggling to breathe because she was born before her lungs fully developed. It would be twenty-four hours before they would know if she had the strength to survive. I begged to see her and was finally wheeled into the nursery. There she was in an incubator. So tiny and battling for each precious breath as her little body arched and fought for life. Patrick had his hands placed through two holes of the incubator, which enabled him to pat her. The doctors explained that many times babies survive just from human touch giving them the will to live. I might have brought her into the world, but Brooke’s dad gave her the will to fight as he stayed by her side throughout the night, never leaving her.
Without a doubt, my most successful, difficult, and rewarding profession has been motherhood. Since I was a little girl playing with baby dolls, it was all I ever aspired to be. I didn’t want one baby or two; I wanted twelve. My favorite movie growing up was Cheaper by the Dozen, the classic film starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy. I must have seen it a hundred times, and I wanted a life just like theirs.
While wanting to be a mother, I was no exception to the little girl dreams of modeling and movie stardom. My brother had dated a number of starlets whom he brought to the house from time to time, which only enlivened my dreams.
The local department store ran a contest for an inexperienced young girl to be in their fashion show. I was with my mom buying school clothes, and without mentioning it to her, filled out the form. I won! That afternoon was the beginning of a modest career. I had taken a few modeling classes, but this was definitely different—people were watching me. As my mom and I were leaving the store after my runway debut, a producer named Al Burton invited me to audition for a show he was making called The Visual Girl, which was geared towards teenage girls. With a few recommendations from Mr. Burton, I easily found an agent. Modeling for print ads, television commercials, and the show were fun, but it was also very demanding with school and the onset of the infant stages of my mother’s illness.
On the set of The Visual Girl
My acting and modeling career came to a halt after Patrick and I moved to Missouri, but I picked it up again when we returned to Los Angeles a decade later. My daughter Jennifer was ten years old and, having grown up seeing photos of some of my work, announced she wanted to be in commercials too. I called Al for advice.
“Kathi, you were always my teenage all-American girl. Now you’re the all-American mother. When Jennifer goes on auditions, you ought to try out for the mom parts.”
He was right, and for a number of years, I worked alongside each one of my children. McDonald’s, Shredded Wheat, Kodak, we loved all the commercials we worked on together.
My true vocational passion was architecture, and if I’d had the opportunity, I would have chosen it as my professional field. Marrying and having babies at such a young age put completing my college degree on the back burner, and when Patrick and I moved to Springfield, Missouri, there wasn’t a university close by that taught or offered architecture.
I was first exposed to construction when my parents built their dream home designed by the renowned architect Cliff May. I remember as an eight-year-old looking over the plans with them and being intrigued by how Mr. May’s sketches were developing into the home I was going to live in for most of my childhood. As I got older and subscribed to Seventeen and Teen Magazine, I was also thumbing through house plan magazines at the grocery store, always intrigued with the different styles and dreaming about creating plans of my own.
While pregnant with Brooke, I’d pop the kids in the car and drive through every existing neighborhood in Springfield looking for the perfect buildable lot. “Oh no, not again,” Jennifer and Kevin would cry. I had inherited a little money from my parents and wanted to use it to build a speculative house, or “spec house” in the industry lingo. One day I spotted the perfect lot and couldn’t wait to get home to tell Patrick all about it.
“Patrick, I found it,” I excitedly told him as he walked in from work one evening.
“Daddy, now we don’t have to sit in the car all day. Mommy found a lot,” said Kevin’s tiny voice echoing my enthusiasm.
The expression “ignorance is bliss” found a home with me. Never for a moment did I hesitate or worry about my newfound career. The ink wasn’t dry on the purchase contract when I was at the local lumberyard buying a paperback book titled something like How to Build a House in 10 Easy Steps. It became my bible.
I met with our local banker who gave me a construction loan. Something which probably wouldn’t happen so easily today. As papers were being drawn up, we shared a promise and a friendly handshake; today that would be replaced with mounds of requirements in legal documents.
Jennifer and Kevin loved mommy’s job because when not in school they spent the entire day on the job site with me playing on the dirt piles, hammering boards together, and discovering how fun it was to run through a house in framing. Seeing a roofer holding six-month-old Brooke as I climbed up a ladder to inspect his work was the norm, right along with the voice saying, “Kathi, hurry up. The other guys are going to tease me for holding a baby on the job.”
“Oh, don’t worry. They all do it,” I’d laughingly reply. I was Kathi Contractor and loving it.
Every Friday, with baby Brooke on my hip and the other two in tow, I made my weekly construction draw at the savings and loan to pay the subcontractors. My biggest compliment came when the president of the bank called me into his office and said, “Kathi, you are the only builder we have that has come in under budget and on time. Would you consider building out some homes under construction we’ve foreclosed on?”
I felt a rush of pride and quickly prayed, Please God, don’t let my cheeks turn pink again. It’s so embarrassing. “Thank you so much,” I replied, “but with three babies, I don’t have the time to take on any more projects. I’d rather stick to one home at a time.”
Over the years, I did build several more spec homes in Missouri, and I even ventured down into Mexico when I’d gotten my sea legs. It’s a passion I will always foster and one that I’m grateful to have been able to explore and make some money with. I strongly believed that it was good for my children to grow up seeing both their parents work hard and strive to be successful in both their roles as professionals and as parents. And based on the wonderful adults and parents they have become, I will own that we did a pretty darn good job.
I will never regret my twenty-seven years with Patrick. Those years were filled with many wonderful moments and, yes, many challenges. We had three fantastic children together and now share eight grandchildren. It isn’t the dozen I’d dreamed of; it’s even better. The reality is—Patrick and I were just too darn young, and even a dozen fantastic children wouldn’t have made our marriage the right path for us.
My kids are such a reflection of Patrick and me. All our warts and flaws, but they got the good stuff too. It’s hard to see my mirror image misbehaving or disagreeing, but I gave them the best th
ing I possibly could—the strength to disagree and the confidence to put themselves out there, even if it means misbehaving sometimes. I’m so proud of them and the way they are now raising their children. Kevin can be so strict. I tease him that he must know all the stuff I didn’t catch.
After Patrick and I divorced, it was a new era for me. My kids were raised, for the most part. The difficult periods of family illnesses and deaths were behind me. It was a new carefree, happy time in my life.
2
UNFORGETTABLE
“And forever more that’s how you’ll stay.”
—Nat King and Natalie Cole
People often ask me where Don Koll and I first met. I was with my family in Cabo San Lucas on vacation and was introduced to him as the owner of the Palmilla Hotel. He stuck so vividly in my memory because of how his kind smile and friendly demeanor made him seem so young. At that time in my life, I envisioned hotel owners as old and stuffy. Over the years, I noticed that he always did look younger than his age. I even remember what he was wearing—a short-sleeved white shirt with khaki pants. It was the late 1980s, and I didn’t meet him again for a couple of years. He didn’t remember meeting me that first time, but his charisma stayed with me.
Flash forward ten years. I was separated from Patrick and finding my way on my own for the first time in my life. I was lucky to be surrounded by supportive, loving friends and children whose love extended beyond their parents’ marriage license.
At the end of an exceptionally exhausting day, I walked into my home and noticed my answering machine blinking. The message was from my friend Barbara Thornhill saying, “Kathi, call me. This is about your love life.”
What the heck was she thinking about? I wondered. I was newly separated and not quite ready to think of a “love life.” Just as I was about to return her call my phone rang. It was Don Koll. He knew I was going through a divorce and had called me a number of times asking if I needed any advice. I think it was an excuse on his side, and I found out later I was right. He was about to go to an event in Washington, DC, and had called Barbara and her then-husband Gary Wilson to see if he could attend some of the events with them. He had run into them the previous year and thought they would be attending again. Apparently Barbara asked him who his date would be, and he said, “I won’t have a date. I’ll be alone.” Barbara said, “If I were you, I’d ask Kathi Smith. If you don’t, someone else will.”
