People lover Kent Chetlain had the gift of gab and prose

At noon on Saturday, a memorial service in a unique place will take place to honor the passing of a unique man who had a unique set of interests and passions.

Illinois-born Kent Chetlain, who died Dec. 4 at age 90, was a Manatee County amateur historian, a journalist with the Bradenton Herald in the 1960s and other local newspapers, a former Manatee County commissioner, an announcer for Pittsburgh Pirates games at McKechnie Field in the 1960s and a passionate reader, bicycle rider, dog lover, husband, father and grandfather, Mr. Chetlain’s son, Paul, 53, said Thursday.

Mr. Chetlain’s celebration of life service will be held in the most appropriate place his family could think for a unique man — the historical church in the Manatee Village Historical Park, 1404 Manatee Ave. E., Bradenton.

“My dad never discussed his final arrangements except to have some of his ashes placed in the Gulf of Mexico and some in Galena, Illinois,” Paul Chetlain said. “But we thought a celebration service at the Manatee Village Historical Park would be a fitting setting for him. He would be very pleased. He was a lifetime member of the Manatee Historical Society. He wrote so many articles on Manatee County history. We’ve got bins of articles he wrote and saved on all types of subjects.”

Mr. Chetlain died of natural causes at Inspired Living at Lakewood Ranch.

“My dad was a happy person,” Paul Chetlain said. “He never had a lot of money, but he loved what he did.”

Mary Lou Zoback, Mr. Chetlain’s eldest child, is a geophysicist who lives in California with her husband. But when Zoback was a teen, in the mid-1960s, she often accompanied her dad to what is now LECOM Park but what was then McKechnie Field in Bradenton, where Mr. Chetlain not only covered Pittsburgh Pirates spring training games for the Bradenton Herald but was the announcer to pick up a few extra dollars, Zoback said.

Mr. Chetlain would give his daughter 50 cents for operating the electronic scoreboard at McKechnie Field during the spring training games, which required that she got the balls and strikes right. She remembers that once she got distracted and missed an umpire’s ball or strike call, which caused the umpire to look up at the press box and put his hands on his hips.

“The things I remember most about my dad were the character traits he instilled in all of us, which were honesty, integrity and the value of hard work,” Zoback said. “He worked hard his entire life. We didn’t have a lot, but we got great lessons of life from him. He was the model of the value of hard work.”

All four of Mr. Chetlain’s children seem to have benefited from his mentoring.

Zoback is a geophysicist; Kent III, his son, is a CPA in Brandon; and Paul Chetlain, who lives in Northwest Bradenton, is director of operations for Lakewood Ranch Town Hall. Mr. Chetlain’s youngest child, Anna Chetlain, lives in St. Petersburg and is a medical technologist.

This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 3:45 PM with the headline "People lover Kent Chetlain had the gift of gab and prose."