Andy King – on his passing

Andy King

I’m not sure when I first met Andy. It had to be at one of the American Kiteflier Conventions. Then I went over to England in ’83 and saw him at the Kite Store. We stayed up late at a restaurant and noticed the staff was sweeping the floor and turning chairs over and putting them on top of tables. Time to go.

Andy and the Decorators came to many of the AKA conventions. There are many memories of late nights and silliness. 

But the memory that I hold dearest was the time he came to the Hawaii convention. Corey and I, along with Andy decided to go for a swim in the hotel pool. It had just closed. So what? We began a synchronized swim to our vocalizing “Tiny Bubbles.” It was at this point that a lady came to the edge of the pool and told us that they had just dumped a bunch of chemicals in the pool and perhaps we ought to get out. This was followed by a hotel staff member telling us, very kindly, that the pool was closed. He was backed up by two very wide Samoan gentlemen in cheap cutaway FBI type sports jackets.

We decided it was time to exit the pool and have a drink poolside.

We saw the very gorgeous Carol Kanopski, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend. All three women were dressed for the Saturday night banquet. All were gorgeous and dressed in tube tops and mini-skirts. We called for them to come join us. They did. People were hooting out of the hotel windows at Corey, who was literally slobbering.

It was a great afternoon.

Andy was the epitome and spirit of kiting in the 80s. Two line kites were making their debut. We were thrilled by team flying and the antics around all that. Then came power kiting, buggying and quad-line kites. It was a thrilling time in kiting.

Andy’s spirit, and understanding of the essence what it all meant was essential to understanding the movement. Folks have moved on. Specializing or abandoning the sport and the pastime. It’s not the same. Or maybe, it is and we have moved on. 

In the past few years I heard reports that Andy was not the same. Not the person we knew. I reached out sparingly on facebook. Once someone is gone it’s easy to ask yourself if you could have done more. Of course you could have, if you had known. But we all have our lives to live, our path to select. Each one is different. Each one the same.

Rest in Peace Andy, 

PS I don’t have a picture of Andy, but I do have one of me and Katie and Alex when we went to visit him in London at the time of the great restaurant caper.