Margaret Ellen Bradford found herself at the Mustard Seed Cafe in Highland Square on Friday for a second time at the same table.
A couple of weeks earlier, she gathered with friends to plan a half-mile march down Market Street to protest President-elect Donald Trump and hatred toward gays, minorities and the marginalized. The Nov. 15 event was a success: 1,150 people, no incidents and no injuries.
Four days later, though, a mysterious man in military garb walked into a Highland Square coffee shop and asked to talk to the march’s coordinators. Ranting, he said he wished to continue to speak out against hate.
No one knew at the time he was a Purple Heart veteran — only that he was acting unhinged, and speaking of a gun he wasn’t afraid to use.
The man left the coffee shop and handed his cellphone to a stranger. “Record,” he said before dousing himself in gasoline and flicking a cigarette lighter.
First responders later took the lighter from his hands. Police found no gun.
Bradford, a stay-at-home mother and activist, feels slightly responsible for triggering in the man an emotion she has felt before. At 16, before she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, she slit her wrist in a bathroom inside her first foster home and slipped into unconsciousness for more than a week.
As she laid out crayons and pens and paper and envelopes Friday on that same table in the Mustard Seed Cafe, she explained that soon good people would arrive to write letters wishing a speedy recovery to the unknown soldier who lit himself on fire. Until then, she had only her thoughts to keep her company.
“What if our actions drove him to this dark, dark place?” asked Bradford, 24. “I like to think that’s not the case. But we’re worried that if he marched with us, did our protest trigger it? It’s almost a very selfish thought. But there is a deep need to find a reason.
“And we may never know.”
Unknown soldier
The small group of well-wishers thought the man on fire might be a van driver at a local elementary school, or maybe he was a lawyer.
The truth? He is Kenn Gilchrist, 69, a husband and father who moved into a modest home on Copley Road in 2012. Today, he’s at Akron Children’s Hospital with third-degree burns that start at his chest and move down, covering 60 percent of his body.
As America heals from a rancorous and divisive election, Gilchrist faces at least two months of hospitalization before starting a “long road to recovery,” said a friend of the family.
In the community, though, residents are trying to make sense of what happened. “A lot of people only know him as the man on fire. And there’s so much more to him,” Bradford said.
Gilchrist has led a life worth celebrating — a talented singer, he’s been writing an autobiographical musical about it for years.
He’s an orphan from Cleveland who grew up in a Nebraska boys home. He’s a gentle giant, an All-American football player with the voice of a choirboy. He’s private, but volunteers at the historical society while mentoring Pee Wee football players.
He’s a Christian and a soldier.
Gilchrist’s family is distraught and praying for his recovery as they ask for privacy.
“I need to speak with my husband first,” said his wife, Veronica “Ronnie” Gilchrist. “And right now, he can’t speak.”
If you want to know her husband, she said, talk to Michael Miller. “In some ways, he knows him better than I do.”
Old friends
Miller met Gilchrist 40 years ago in California.
The men were cops in San Mateo, 15 miles south of San Francisco. They were partners and roommates.
“He was a fine police officer,” said Miller, now a private attorney in Santa Rosa, Calif. “He was really good at knowing who the bad guys were and dealing with them in a fair way.”
Gilchrist recognized despair in a way that few could. He had just returned from his second tour in Vietnam.
“I can’t emphasize enough that Kenn is an absolute true patriot,” said Miller, who was drafted as the war ended but never served. Gilchrist, on the other hand, volunteered and did two tours.
Miller stopped short of trying to explain why his friend nearly burned himself to death. “He is passionate and resolute in his beliefs. I can’t speak to Kenn’s motivations for what he’s done. We just know that he’s been very upset with all the discord and hate that’s been going on.”
While singing the national anthem at a Wyoming Cemetery on Memorial Day in 2006, Gilchrist told a local reporter of the pain he felt when America ignores the sacrifices of veterans. “That just hurts, especially during a time of war,” he said. “Sacrifice is one of the building blocks of manhood.”
Gilchrist exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, Miller said. He couldn’t sleep. He was anxious.
The veteran quit the police force in the 1980s and sang for a brief stint in the San Francisco Opera before moving to Wyoming, where he lived as a cowboy.
Orphan to soldier
Gilchrist was born in Cleveland in 1947.
An orphan, he was raised by his grandmother. After her death, he attended Father Flanagan’s Boys Town in Omaha, Neb. There, men who served in World War II taught disadvantaged youths the meaning of service, or as Flanagan’s motto goes: “the outstanding Christian character … [To] let the spirit of love permeate all your actions with your fellow man.”
In serving, Gilchrist excelled.
He was a leader in student government. He sang in concert choir, joined the pep club and was a cheerleader while lettering in football, track, wrestling and basketball. He made the Omaha All-Metro All-Star team as a junior and the Nebraska All-State football team as a senior. He was also named a high school All-American by Scholastic Magazine in 1964. He was “the state’s best linebacker and a crisp blocker,” a Nebraska sports writer opined as Gilchrist graduated in 1965 and headed off to the University of Wyoming on a football scholarship.
Less than a year into college, Gilchrist enlisted in the Marines as the Vietnam war escalated.
While on patrol in his second tour, shrapnel from an explosion ripped through his thigh, sending him home as the war was winding down.
After San Francisco and the stresses of police work, Gilchrist took his wife to Wyoming — to a more peaceful chapter in his life. There, he retired as a parole officer.
“Kenn’s always been a cowboy,” said Miller. “A little bit of reclusiveness and the cowboy life and open space and the ability to afford a home.”
Cowboy comes home
After retiring, Gilchrist found a cheap house near his hometown of Cleveland.
He moved his wife to Akron in 2012. Almost immediately, he was across the street at the Summit County Historical Society, picking up a paintbrush or litter. No one ever asked him to help. He just did.
“He was just so thoughtful,” said Leianne Neff Heppner, president and CEO of the historical society. “He really is a great person, and absolutely not someone to be afraid of. This guy would give you the shirt off his back.”
Gilchrist accepted no tokens of appreciation for his charity work. He rarely talked about himself. “When you asked about him, he would talk about you again,” Neff Heppner said.
At the society, he would talk up the Pee Wee football team he helped coach at Perkins Park. The team made the championships this year, he would say.
In July, the society stocked Perkins Stone Mansion with sheep to capture the world of local abolitionist John Brown.
Neff Heppner said the police had been tipped about a suspicious car parked near the sheep the morning after they arrived. It belonged to Gilchrist. He had parked it in front of the sheep and pointed what resembled a camera at the flock to ward against thieves.
“Like usual, Kenn would go a step ahead and a step above,” Neff Hepner said.
Gilchrist’s greatest contribution, though, has been to other veterans. Neff Heppner’s father served in the Army. He, too, was wounded in Vietnam. He could always be found with Gilchrist, parking cars at the organization’s events and talking in private the way only soldiers do.
Speaking before the holiday, Neff Heppner cried knowing that she would have to tell her father over Thanksgiving dinner how there was no one for his good friend to turn to in his greatest time of need.
“My dad is not going to be able to handle it. Kenn was very good for my dad, for someone to talk to who had similar experiences.”
Time traveling
Miller took Gilchrist back to Vietnam three years ago. The men stay close, catching up when Gilchrist comes out to California to visit his wife’s family or when Miller — “a baseball fan on a quest to see all the parks” — stops in Cincinnati for a Reds game.
While in Vietnam, Gilchrist reconnected with a land he’d watched ravaged by war. In pictures, he is standing tall.
Next, the men traveled to China — where more than 140 Tibetan protesters have self-immolated since 2009 to make the ultimate protest against oppressive Chinese occupation. In a video there, Gilchrist — in his mid-60s — rips off a set of push-ups with ease, his thick arms pulsating as he stares fearlessly through the glass floor of the 1,535-foot tall Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai.
He finishes, then turns and smiles — full of life.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .