Keyne Parkinson Monson

Keyne Parkinson Monson

Edited Oral History

Dictated by KPM in the 80s and transcribed by his daughter Susan.

More information added by their son Brad and daughter Susan in 2016.

Dad’s name, Keyne, has an interesting story.  When his father, Walter Peter Monson was on an LDS mission in England in the early 1900s, he walked down a country lane in Cornwall, which is west of Plymouth.  He came to a small village called St. Keyne that had an old church with the same name.  He liked the name and gave that name to his next born son.

There is more to this story that has been discovered thanks to the Internet.  In Victorian times the holy well in St. Keyne had the reputation of conferring supremacy to the marriage partner who first drank from it following their nuptials in the Parrish church.  And even more interesting is the fact that the church is dedicated to Saint Keyne, one of the daughters of the legendary Welsh King Brychan.  There are now 4 generations of Keynes in the family, and we can all agree that the name carries a very proud and unique legacy.  Keyne’s early life is best told in his own words.  Following are some memories of his childhood.

“I was born March 21, 1916 in New York City while my dad was serving as Eastern States Mission President for the LDS Church in an area that is now Harlem.  The Mission Home was at 33 W. 126^th Street, and as far as I know I was born in the Mission Home.  The neighborhood slowly deteriorated, and the Church decided to move the mission headquarters.

“My father supervised the move into Brooklyn at Franklin and Gates Avenue.  There was a large 2-story house that served very well for the mission president’s family and guests.  My father supervised a chapel that was constructed next to the mission home.

“I have a few memories of my time in the mission home.  One was of a veranda outside a second-story window that was well fenced, and was an overhang above the entrance to the Mission Home.  Mother kept oblong Concord grape baskets there.  When there were no plants, the baskets were filled with clods of dirt.  I was just a tiny lad, perhaps two to three years old, and I got the clods of dirt and waited until I saw some or our missionaries walking up the sidewalk to enter our home.  As they walked under me, I dropped dirt clods on their heads, and I thought that was such great sport.

“My next recollections occurred in Salt Lake City where we moved after my father had been released as Eastern States Mission President.  We had a two-story house on 3327 S. 7^th East where we l ived for several years.  We had an apple orchard and there was a vacant lot on the left side facing the street that was used as a garden for corn and melons and whatnot.

“When we lived on 7^th East I fell off the roof onto the steps below and broke my leg.  Dr. Wilcox, our family doctor, came out and put me on the dining room table.  He told me, ‘This will hurt a little bit, but you’ll be all right.’  He maneuvered my broken leg into place while my brothers held me down.

I also remember Maurice [Keyne’s older brother] taking me to the Friday night movies.  That was a big event for me, and he had to read the subtitles to me.  That’s when I saw my first Charlie Chaplin film.

“We were poor in those days and I cried because the kitchen floor didn’t have linoleum.  I had toy cars that couldn’t roll over the wooden boards because they had been worn and the knots stood up, and Mother comforted me.

“About this time I had a strong brotherly love for my younger brother Richard.  He was frail and had leukemia and I didn’t understand what leukemia was about.  I didn’t loop upon him as sick, but as a nice young boy who needed protection.  I was big and strong and if anybody gave Richard a bad time they had to answer to me, and I got into a few scuffles over that.

“My next memories were when we moved to a 2-story house at 1888 South 11^th East in Salt Lake.  One evening during the Christmas holidays Mother sent Maurice and me to Sugar House to buy a quart of milk.  It was winter time and very icy and slippery I was holding an empty bottle and when I got out of the car and stepped over the curb I slipped and fell on the pavement.  The bottle broke into many pieces and I got a deep gash in my left wrist.  I was bleeding quite badly so we went into the drug store on the corner.  They looked at it and said they couldn’t do anything so they checked to see if Dr. Middleton was still in, whose office was upstairs.  Dr. Middleton had finished for the day but Maurice took me to his office and when he looked at my wrist he said, ‘We’ll have to take care of this right now.’  He put me on the table lying down, and he took off his coat and washed his hands.  I was bleeding profusely since one of the arteries had been severed.  He needed to give me some general anesthetic so he told Maurice to sit at the head of the table and he gave him a mask to hold over my nose and told him how to hold my head and how to drop the chloroform slowly onto the mask until I fell asleep.  Dr. Middleton stopped the bleeding and tied off and legated the artery, and I’ve often thought how grateful I am to that man.  There were two tendons in my wrist that controlled the movement of two of my fingers.  I couldn’t move them because the tendons were severed.  He sutured the tendons together, closed the wound and dressed it and I had the bandage on for ten days.  When he removed the bandage he was very pleased.  I had full motion of my fingers.  Perhaps it had something to do with me wanting to b a doctor later in my life, who knows?

“I went to Forest Grade [Elementary] School.  It was during my last year at Forest that mother died of leukemia.  I remember going to school one morning and as I started thinking about my mother I began sobbing and crying in the hallway.  The teacher called the principal, and when she came I was sobbing that my mother was dying in the hospital.  She put her arm around me and comforted me and had me come to her office.  She sat down and consoled me and tried to make me feel better.

“I graduated from Irving Junior High School in 1932 and then went on to East High School, graduating from there in 1934.”  End of Keyne’s oral history.

As a child and before the discovery of penicillin, Keyne developed an inner ear infection that resulted in complete deafness in his left ear.  He lived in a monaural world and never head stereophonic sound.  He compensated for it and many people likely never knew, but this may have been a factorin his deciding to specialize in treating hearing disorders later in his life.

At East High School Keyne was on the football and basketball teams.  He was also Senior Class president and graduated in 1934.  His father died less than a year after he graduated.  Keyne and Maurice lived together in their family home, but with both parents gone it was very difficult for them.  They relied on each other and that close bond continued throughout their lives.  They were not only brothers, but also best friends.  They remembered sharing the same dress shoes and were careful not to have dates on the same night.  Keyne attended the University of Utah, joined the Sigma Chi fraternity, and lived and worked in the fraternity house.  He attended the U for a semester or two and then dropped out to earn money and then went back to school.  Keyne eventually went to Washington DC to find a job.  He took classes at George Washington University when he could.  There he met Grant Kirkham, a Sigma Chi fraternity brother whose younger sister Gerry was visiting from Salt Lake City. 

Keyne proposed to Gerry on a starlit night while they were boating on the Patomac.  They were married in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple on September 12, 1942.  Gerry had been accepted to Mills College in Oakland to fulfill her mother’s dream of continuing her education, but the war years came with great uncertainty and Keyne had just accepted a government job in Spokane.  Her heart led her to make the best decision she would ever make – to marry a poor orphaned boy with big dreams in spite of the unpredictable future that lay ahead.

Their honeymoon was spent on a train going to Spokane WA.  At the train depot only a few hours after their wedding reception at the Lion House, Gerry ran into a sorority sister of hers who was sending her nephew off on the train by himself.  She asked Gerry if she would look out for the boy and of course she said yes.  Keyne wasn’t thrilled to have a child tagging along with them, but it all worked out.

While they were living in Spokane Keyne got his acceptance letter to new York University School of Medicine.  Their years in New York were lean and stressful, yet wonderful and exciting.  The U.S. Army paid the tuition for many medical students including Keyne’s, and students who failed a class were immediately deployed overseas to serve in the war.  Keyne remembered the pressure to pass his exams and he studied diligently for every one.  It was during the New York years that Brad was born (1944), followed by Susan (1947).  A highlight of Gerry’s time in New York was singing on the stage of Carnegie Hall with the New York Oratorio Society.

Keyne graduated from NYU School of Medicine in 1946, completed his postgraduate study in Otorhinolaryngology (Ear, Nose, and Throat) in 1948 and finished his residency in 1950.  He then moved the family (Gerry, Brad, and Susan with Craig on the way) to San Francisco where Keyne joined Lafe, his older brother, in Lafe’s busy Ear, Nose and Throat medical practice on Post Street.  Lafe was an established doctor and was very kind to help his younger brother get started.  Having two Dr. Monsons in the office proved to be confusing however, especially when a much younger Dr. Monson went into a treatment room when the patient was expecting to see the older Dr. Monson.

After a while Keyne decided to open up his own ENT practice, and being new to California, he didn’t know where he should settle down.  Lafe suggested that he seek advice from an old medical school friend of his, Cless Crockett, who had opened a successful family medical practice in what had been the small rural town of Hayward, California.  The town’s population had been rapidly growing, and when Keyne met with Cless he told him, “We need you.”  That is how the family came to live in Hayward, and how a life-long friendship was formed.  He built a medical office with two suites at 1363 B Street and rented the other half to a dentist.  Gerry was his office manager in the beginning, but with the addition of three more children (Craig in 1950, Doug in 1955, and David in 1960), she stayed home to raise their busy family.

Gerry was an active member of the community.  She sang in the La Golindrina community choir, was active in Questers (an organization that raised money to preserve and restore building of historic interest), and was a member of Cal State Hayward Affiliates and Eden Medical Auxiliary.  She was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, attending the Hayward 1^st Ward for over 50 years and where she held many volunteer church positions.  Gerry was a life-long learner, an avid reader, and she enjoyed taking classes at Cal State University in Hayward after raising their 5 children.  Gerry freely admitted to being a ‘culture vulture’ as evidenced by her love of poetry, art, music, history, archeology and architecture.  The Monson kids remember stopping at every historical monument on road trips to read about the history of the area.  They affectionately dubbed them Hysterical Monuments.  Keyne and Gerry often attended symphonies, ballets, and operas, and were patrons of the American Conservatory Theater.  But at the center of her life was her unselfish service to her family and friends.

In addition to having a successful medical practice, Keyne was also active in the community.  He was on the staff at St. Rose and Eden Hospitals for many years.  He was Chief of ENT Services at Eden and Laurel Grove Hospitals.  He partnered in building Laurel Grove Hospital.  He established a nationally recognized program for the Hayward Unified School District, which taught sign language and lip reading to hearing impaired students.  He also helped establish the California School for the Deaf in Fremont.  Keyne was an active member of the Hayward 1^st Ward where he held several positions, including Ward Clerk.  He loved attending sporting events and was an ardent fan of the Warriors, Giants and Raiders.  He enjoyed fishing but golf was his passion.  After 36 years of practicing medicine, he retired at the age of 70.  He spent his retirement years enjoying his family and friends, traveling, and playing golf.

Keyne passed away at their Hayward home on November 20, 2008 at the age of 92.  Gerry passed away at home three years later (almost to the day) on November 19, 2011 at the age of 89.  All is well in heaven now that they are together again.  Their love is eternal and their legacy is a blessing to us all.

[Kris' note: The Laurel Grove Hospital eventually sold to a group that converted it to a care center. Late in his life when Uncle Keyne was a very old man struggling with dementia, he received resident care at this facility. I wonder if the staff knew who he was.]