KIRO Cohorts Cavort (aka Lunch Together)

Nick Latham, Melissa Milburn, Ken Hatch

Recently husband, Ken Hatch, had the opportunity to get together with a couple of his team members from KIRO Broadcasting days, Melissa Milburn and Nick Latham.  They both served as his personal Executive Assistants and had broad responsibilities to support him and his work.  After being married to Ken for the past eighteen years, I completely understand why it took TWO of them!!

Nick lives in San Francisco now and Melissa lives on Mercer Island, so the three of them don't have many opportunities to reconnect and share old memories of their time together.  They finally had the chance to schedule lunch at John Howie Steak and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of their get-together.  Of course they all loved having "breakfast at lunch" when General Manager, Annie, brought them an order of the incredible deep-fried bacon and deviled eggs as a starter.

Melissa and Nick had fun remembering "Ken-isms" and want to plan another party where everyone gets to come and do their best rendition of a "Ken-ism".  A couple of examples they remembered was the way he points his finger when he is pontificating and one of his favorite phrases, "How can you be wrong when you are on the right side of right!?"

Though I wasn't part of the get-together, one of the funny stories that I'm sure they recounted was the year that friend Trudi Syferd, decided to anonymously gift Ken with "Twelve Days of Sheep" over what would normally be the "Twelve Days of Christmas" in recognition of his earlier birthday party that year, which was themed "Sheepish in Seattle".  Every day a new anonymous "sheep" gift arrived at his KIRO office and he would arrive to find it sitting in the middle of his desk.  Of course Nick and Melissa had to be "in" on the subterfuge to make it all work. 

Thinking about the Sheepish in Seattle party, that was a party worth remembering since it was a surprise birthday party.  When Ken arrived, he saw 100 people there greeting and staring at him, all with sheep masks on!  And Little Bo Peep (Mary Pennington) made a guest appearance in full costume in a Medina Police car with lights flashing and demanded the arrest of Ken for stealing her sheep.  Ken was handcuffed and led away towards the police car until pardoned just before the actual arrest.

People were instructed to bring "no gifts" unless they were "cheap sheep gifts" and the guests complied.  Never have I seen so many different sheep gifts before or since!  Wearing matching vests adorned with black sheep, part of the entertainment included Debi Giannola, Patty Barrier, Toni Hoffman, Jeri Rice and me performing a song rendition about sheep!?  Don't ask!

Another funny story was around nineteen years ago in December when Ken gave his infamous "values" speech at my birthday party at The Ruins.  It was a lovely surprise dinner party with around 40 friends there.  NIck had written Ken's remarks which I believe were supposed to be a toast to the Christmas season and a happy birthday wish to me.  Ken got rattled because he saw Jeff & Susan Brotman sitting at one of the front tables and decided that it might be inappropriate to toast Christmas because he was worried about offending Jeff (not that it really would have of course!).  So Ken's remarks went something like this, "I am so happy to toast you during this Thanksgiving (it wasn't) season of values which I value and are so valuable . . . value . . .blah, blah, blah . . . valuable values which are so valuable . . . value your friendship . . .value, value value!  The remarks went on and on and we really did need a hook to get him to sit down because he couldn't figure out how to conclude the remarks.  Nick turned to me redfaced and said, "That is NOT the speech that I wrote!"

Anyway, it sounds like they had fun remembering their time together and I look forward to joining them next time and hearing more of the old, inside stories!