Feature Sponsor Story: Rags to Riches

Rags to Riches

Hard Work and Determination Were Key for Kenneth Pfaff

by Debbie Neece, Bartlesville Area Jistory Museum

Sometimes it takes a community to save a child and Bartlesville has long been about community.

Kenneth Pfaff was not born to riches but through grit and determination, he overcame poverty to become a notable Family Practice and Emergency Medicine Physician as well as a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Reserve Medical Corps.

Pete and Fannie Pfaff struggled to raise five children during the depression and Oklahoma dust bowl days. Life was extremely difficult and the family moved often in search oil work. They settled in Bartlesville in 1928 and Ken, last of the five children, was born at the Memorial Hospital in 1930. Three years later, Fannie died of appendicitis, leaving three minor children: Emma (10), Thurman (7) and Kenneth (3). Their father could not care for the children so they were sent to the Methodist Children’s Orphanage in Newton, KS. Emma was adopted by a Bartlesville couple, while Thurman (12) and Kenneth (9) returned to Bartlesville and became one of five sets of brothers under the care of the Kiwanis Boys’ Club from 1939 until they lived at the Y.M.C.A., 1943-1949.

Ken was deeply humbled and appreciative of Jo Allyn Lowe and Fenton Bisel, role models who offered desperately needed mentoring guidance. He worked the front desk, dispensing towels and locker keys to pay for his Y.M.C.A. room and when Terry McGowan promoted boxing events at the Municipal Stadium, Ken boxed on the card as “Mickey McGowan.”

At sixteen-years-old, he dropped out of school to join the 82nd Airborne Division and received his parachute wings at seventeen with thirteen jumps to his record. He returned to Bartlesville, lived at the Y.M.C.A. and graduated from College High School in 1949. At eighteen, he stood before Washington County Judge J.T. Shipman, with Fenton Bisel at his side, petitioning the court for legal adult status granted to 21 year old adults. The petition was granted and Ken set forth on adulthood.

He returned to military service (1951-1953), married and had three children. While struggling to support his family, he completed his education at Denver’s University of Colorado School of Medicine, graduating in 1963 with his Doctor of Medicine degree. He was an A.B.F.P. board certified family medicine physician and certified in trauma and cardiac resuscitation, serving for thirty-three years. Service ran deep in his being. From 1990-1991, he was medical officer for the 82nd Cavalry (Mechanized) Heavy Tank Battalion, Oregon Army National Guard on twenty-fourhour standby for Desert Storm.

In Kenneth’s own words: “Through those hard depression years, with its day-to-day subsistence and poverty, the example of Jo Allyn Lowe, Fenton Bisel, Pop Brewer and many other community leaders who served on boards of civic groups and by their steadfast compassion leavened the harshness of life, and by the precept of their lives taught us that the highest calling in life is human service. In my life, that was the impossible dream of medical practice, the highest calling of all. What a wonderful gift these men gave to the children of Bartlesville. They exemplified the current concept in education—that no child shall be left behind.”

Kenneth Pfaff died in 2012 and I am proud to have been his friend … he left the world a better place.