Would you have guessed that Andy Koehn, owner of Koehn & Koehn Jewelers, is an accomplished podcaster?
Andy uses podcasts for his business, but also has applied his audio/video talents to telling the story of one of the most tragic events in the history of West Bend. It is about his family.
I was the editor of the West Bend Daily News in 1972 when I got a news alert. It was June 15, and it was one those days you hate in the news business. Six members of the Kenny family and a young friend had been killed in an airplane explosion over Vietnam.
Everyone’s first thought was they had become victims of the on-going war in Vietnam. (Another war we should never have been involved in.)
That was not the case. Tom Kenny, CEO of the B.C. Ziegler Company, his wife Robbie, four of their six children and close friend Andy Pick were on a vacation tour of southeast Asia. Their oldest son, Tom Jr., had died in a car accident several years before the trip. Another son John stayed home with his wife and infant daughter.
At 29,000 feet, far above the war, a Cathay Pacific commercial plane exploded. Two and a half minutes later it crashed onto a Vietnamese hilltop. No one, including the 74 other passengers and crew, survived.
In his ongoing podcast, https://ahazyyellowfeeling.buzzsprout.com, Koehn, whose mother Janet was Tom’s sister, is haunted by those minutes and what must have been in the minds of his relatives and friend.
Their many friends and others in the vibrant Kenny family were stunned. The community went into shock. Some gathered at Regner Park to comfort one another.
Andy Koehn, a Kenny descendent, revisits the gravesite of the Kenny family at Holy Angels Cemetery.
Eventually the truth emerged. Lieutenant Somchai Chaiyasut of the Royal Thai Police Aviation Division, based at Don Muang airport in Bangkok, had purchased two tickets for seats over the wing, one for his fiancée and one for his daughter.
He had purchased a carry-on cosmetics case and filled it with a C4 explosive and a timer. It was supposed to explode over the sea, but a flight delay caused the crash over land. His girlfriend had carried it on board.
He had taken out a life insurance policy on each of them. Total face value: about $225,000.
“He killed 81 passengers for money,” Koehn said.
The lieutenant, whose family was highly connected in Thai politics, was arrested, taken to court and somehow got off the hook. Apparently, the judges wanted to avoid negative reflections on the Thai government and its biggest airport. Justice was not served.
Andy fondly remembers his family in West Bend. Tom Sr., an Annapolis grad, World War II and Korean war veteran, was the real deal as a business and community leader. His and wife Robbie’s home on Evergreen Street was the center of gravity for friends of all ages.
Daughter Kathleen (Khaki) had an eye for photography; Danny, a strapping young man, was an athlete; Mary Jane, full of freckles, was a cheerleader; Colleen, the youngest, was 13, sweet and petite. They were a beautiful family. Pick, a Yale swimmer, was a buddy of Danny.
The West Bend Daily News played a small part in the developing story.
As a journalist, I had the grim task of going to the Kenny cottage on Big Cedar Lake to talk to John. I knocked on the door and, despite his grief, he filled in missing facts about his family. The West Bend facts went out as part of the Associated Press report.
Two family members, Tom’s brother Pat Kenny and brother-in-law Dr. Randy McNally, flew to Saigon to identify the bodies and arrange for their return.
John Kenny, probably to avoid reminders of what he had lost, moved to California and spent his life there.
Believe it or not, news reports said the murderer emigrated to the United States and died here at the age of 41 of lung cancer.
The family, including John, who died 23 years ago, is buried together in Holy Angels Cemetery.
Fifty-four years later, think what that dynamic family could have contributed to the community and our country.
