Kenneth Poe Funeral Services

May 22, 2020

I came into the world late in the top of the ninth when I slid home on September 24, 1945, preventing my mother from the burden of extra innings.

My run broke up a scoreless shutout, but Manager Walter E. Taylor and his Co-captain, Bertha D. Taylor would score two more times with runs by Roy B. Taylor and Todd E. Taylor.

Fifty-eight years later, I was living in Saudi Arabia, in the twilight years of a rich, rewarding existence that consisted of the realization of multiple careers that had made my time on Earth a blessing filled with enough joyous occasions to satisfy the needs of ten people, let alone those of a single individual.

Living in Saudi Arabia for a year will change your perspectives of the world. Four distinct weather seasons, united with personal freedom and Southern hospitality had yielded to perpetual heat, checkpoints and anti-Americanism.

It was a long way from the carefree days at East Mecklenburg High School where my world was a baseball diamond and the closest thing to an international experience was a Friday night pizza at the Open Kitchen in Charlotte, NC.

In my senior year I was named Mecklenburg County’s high school baseball player of the year, and before I turned 18, I signed a contract to play baseball professionally for the Braves, who played in Milwaukee back then. My pro baseball career did not last very long, just four short years, but those were my halcyon days at a time when the world was turning ugly in the midst of an unpopular war that was raging in Viet Nam.

Though hardly what you would call distinguished, my baseball life did have a few high spots. The first pitcher I ever faced in a real game was Steve Carlton, and I played against Roger Staubach during the first game I ever played in Spring Training.

I led the Western Carolina League in stolen bases for two seasons, hit a total of 6 home runs (just a few hundred less than Barry Bonds), played against Barry's dad, Bobby, played for Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson for two seasons in the St Louis Cardinals organization and played all 29 innings in left field in the longest uninterrupted professional baseball history; a game we lost, 4-3 and one in which I went 1 for 13 at the plate, striking out twice and grounding into two double plays while watching my batting average drop a whopping 118 points from .368 to .250 in one night.

At midseason in 1969, my franchise doubled when Jane Olivia Kuester of Charlotte signed on as my teammate with a lifelong multi-year contract at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC.

Two years later, in 1971, the roster expanded again when Ashley Jane Taylor moved into the dugout.

Andrew Christopher Peabody Taylor joined our all-star roster in 1976. It was a line-up destined for greatness.

Ashley and her husband John Fielding Cantrell, realizing that with a moniker like "Fielding" it was necessary to maintain the tradition added Jacob William Cantrell in 1999, Sadie Taylor Cantrell in 2000 and Emma Claire Cantrell in 2002.

Andrew provided late inning heroics by bringing future draft picks to the squad when he and wife Allison Wagner Taylor scouted the up and coming star William Thomas Peabody Taylor in 2013 before bringing the most recent player to town, Olivia Adelaide Taylor to town in 2015.

If ever there was a true "Murderers Row" this was definitely it.

By the time I finished playing baseball and serving a stint in the United States Marine Corps Reserves, it had taken eight years to earn a BA degree in Communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I didn’t mind that it took me twice as long as everyone else because I already had a lifetime of memories.

While searching for a career in broadcasting, I became a middle school teacher in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System. At that time there were no cable television networks with 24/7 newscasts. MSNBC, CNN and ESPN didn’t exist. Former athletes were little more than dumb jocks who faded into society to live with their scrapbooks filled with yellowing newspaper clippings. I wanted to try something different by bringing a perspective to sports from an athlete’s point of view, and eventually WBTV, the CBS affiliate in Charlotte, gave me that opportunity. Today, athletes turned commentators are commonplace, but at that time, it was a unique idea.

For the next 11-years I worked as a sports anchor, reporter, videographer, editor and producer. A documentary I produced, Diamonds are not Forever, about life in minor league baseball and the struggles to make it to the Major Leagues, captured a National Association of Television Production Executives (NATPE) award presented by actor Lloyd Bridges in Los Angeles in 1976.

Later, I wrote and produced an hour-long documentary about the history of Charlotte Motor Speedway called Twenty-Five Years of Tradition that won a bronze medal at the prestigious International Film & Television Festival of New York.

At that time, Charlotte was struggling with growing pains. The city lived in the shadow of Atlanta, and it had an identity crisis. The biggest sports in town were NASCAR, the World Football League, Double-A baseball and the Charlotte Checkers minor league ice hockey team.

To make us feel better about ourselves, someone coined the mythical phrase that we were a “World Class City.”    

It was a great time to grow up together. There was an innocence then that has long since disappeared and, in many ways, been forgotten. But times change, and so do cities. Everything is upscale now. Contemporary. Edgy. Charlotte has created its own unique identity, and the Atlanta shadows have largely disappeared.

After leaving the sports department, I became co-host of a live morning television program called Good Morning with Charlotte broadcasting pioneer Jim Patterson, a producer for Top O'The Day, a live noontime news/magazine program and a creative director at WBTV for the next four years. It allowed me to expand my broadcasting skills, and in the process, discover there was, indeed, life after sports.

I cannot say precisely how or when it happened, but at some point, during those four years, my interests widened to far greater horizons. At first it was little more than infatuation, but before long, it evolved into a passion. So much so that I gave up my commercial television career to discover more about people and places of the world through the field of video production.

I wanted to explore the world and to write about what I found. In the end, I also discovered myself. From that point forward, my career became a paid education. I underwent a personal global renaissance. I felt like a modern-day Marco Polo.

I rode elephants in Thailand. Met the king and queen of Sweden. Did white water rafting above the Arctic Circle. Slept in Bedouin tents in Lawrence of Arabia’s desert. Flew in the cockpit of the Concorde as it landed at JFK. Rode in the cabs of high-speed trains in Europe and Japan. Interviewed artists who knew Einstein and Picasso. Herded reindeer in Lapland. Swam in the Dead Sea. I was in Normandy on September 11, 2001; a profoundly moving experience.

To satisfy my need to share thoughts about a rapidly changing global marketplace, I also taught World Destinations at Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) and wrote occasional travel commentaries for WFAE.

I never intended to go to Saudi Arabia. It just happened. I needed work, and they needed a writer. I gave up a year of my life to be a project coordinator, writer and editor for Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest supplier of oil and natural gas at the time.

I had always wanted to live in another country, to immerse myself into another culture and absorb it through the pores. Saudi Arabia would not have been my first choice, nor would it have been my tenth or even my one hundredth. But I did it, and I am glad. I did it in a year when our country went to war and our city went to the Super Bowl.

Perspectives. Given the opportunity, the world will offer bold new perspectives.

In twelve months, I learned much about the way the world sees Americans and how Americans see the world. The Middle East is far more complex than I ever imagined. I may have given up a year’s worth of comfort, but I also gained a lifetime worth of insights.

It’s a long way from those baseball fields of so long ago. Writing and travel became my passport instead. It was a personal gateway to knowledge, adventure and the far corners of the earth. I sampled life on the other side of the globe, and it is just possible that I understood it a little bit more at the end. Even so, life was, and is, far better on this side of the planet.

I published one book titled The Century Club about my dream to travel to 100 countries and the parameters I used in my quest. I fell short by 17, so I was not able to write the sequel which I had intended to call Turn of the Century. Visiting 83 different nations during the last four decades of my life was still an achievement and though I am disappointed, I was truly blessed with countless life altering experiences and depart with no regrets.

I wrote, but did not publish, two other books; one was a daily account of life in Saudi Arabia called Saudi Arabian Diary. The other was a collection of essays about my battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease titled Living with ALS. There was also a small book of thoughts and pictures titled Kiss The Day Goodbye...Softly which sold about 2,500 copies.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong; you can go home again. Charlotte and I grew up together.

Robert is survived by his wife of fifty-one years, Jane Kuester Taylor; children, Ashley Taylor Cantrell and husband, John and Andrew C. P. Taylor and former daughter-in-law, Allison Wagner Taylor; grandchildren, Jacob Cantrell, Sadie Cantrell, Emma Claire Cantrell, William Taylor and Olivia Taylor; many nieces and nephews.  He is also survived by his brothers, Roy "Skip" Taylor and wife, Sydney and Todd Taylor and wife, Jan; mother-in-law, Betty W. Kuester; sisters-in-law, Kitty Cox and husband, Elliott and Sally Shaw; brother-in-law, Alan Kuester and his wife, Nora.

A family service will be held at 11:00 AM on Friday, May 29, 2020 at Covenant Presbyterian Church. The family invites you to join them virtually at https://www.covenantpresby.org/live or https://www.facebook.com/CovenantPresby

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Joe Martin ALS Foundation, 100 N. Tryon Street, Suite 3420, Charlotte, NC 28202 or Covenant Presbyterian Church, Attn: Music Fund, 1000 East Morehead Street, Charlotte, NC 28204.

Arrangements are in the care of Kenneth W. Poe Funeral & Cremation Service, 1321 Berkeley Ave., Charlotte, NC 28204; (704) 641-7606. Online condolences can be shared at www.kennethpoeservices.com.