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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Courage surfaces through man's life A column in this space several weeks ago about apocryphal stories reconnected me with a man with remarkable courage. In that column I wrote about two stories I heard 50 years ago in Klamath Falls -- tales that sounded like they could have happened, but nobody seemed to know for sure. Several callers responded to the tale about about a young newspaper photographer who rode his Model T Ford into an irrigation canal. They confirmed that the incident happened, and that the driver was indeed Wes Guderian, who later went on to win awards as a photographer for The Oregonian in Portland. One of my callers was Kenn Knackstedt, a Medford photographer for more than 30 years before he retired. Kenn was a freelance photojournalist for the Mail Tribune after World War II, and he met Wes Guderian many times when both were shooting news pictures in Southern Oregon and Northern California. I first met Kenn at a fire or flood or some other disaster -- I can't remember which one -- and we soon became good friends. Kenn took up photography as a hobby when he was just a teenager. After high school, he joined the Army and served in Japan. When he returned home, he did what many young people in this area did in those day -- he took a job in a lumber mill. He had always dreamed of a career as a professional photographer, but he put that on the back burner. Then he was injured on the job when a piece of wood struck him in the head. The blow left him with a damaged right eye and reduced hearing in his right ear. Kenn decided to become a photographer and enrolled in the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. He returned to Medford in 1957, opened a studio in his home, and proceeded to photograph everything from weddings and highly technical industrial equipment to breaking news. Kenn had purchased a lot next to his folks' house when he was still in high school, and it was there that he and his bride, Betty, built what eventually became a 3,000-square foot studio and home. He also did a lot of traveling around Oregon. Once in the 1960s, when hijacking airliners was all the rage, Kenn took a plane from Portland to Medford, and noticed the crew members giving him the once-over. He had a large collection of carry-on luggage, including his trusty 4-by-5 press camera, in one of his bags. When the flight ended, one of the crew members told him that his luggage and other factors fit a "profile" of what a hijacker might look like. Kenn and I covered many news events together, such as the 1964 Christmas flood and the fire that destroyed the old Medford Hotel. He worked enough for The Associated Press he had a machine in his studio that allowed him to send photographs by wire directly to the news agency. Kenn loved to fly, and he was also a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association. He came by his love of adventure from his dad, Theodore (also known as T.E. or Purky) Knackstedt, who in his youth was a wing-walker for an air circus. T.E. later became the high-voltage engineering specialist for California-Oregon Power Company, the predecessor to Pacific Power. Kenn's courage these days is remarkable. It's not the kind that appears on the battlefield when soldiers are charge uphill into enemy gunfire. Kenn's courage is the kind that surfaces among some people who suffer from a physical problem that can't be cured. For them, there is only one real question -- how do I get through the day? Kenn had his first stroke in 1989. A second one came in 1992. Now his speech is a little hard to understand and he gets around slowly with the aid of a walker. But Kenn overlooks his physical limitations as much as he can, and gets through the day. We are all just an "incident" away from being in Kenn's situation. I wonder how much courage I would have? (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA