LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — It happened at Kenny Klein's funeral.
It happened in the parking lot.
It happened at the visitation.
It happened over dinner the night before.
It happened after the funeral at Tom and Allison O'Grady's house.
Every conversation Monday seemed to begin the same way.
"Let me tell you what Kenny did for me."
Over time, it started to hit me, why Kenny's death is so different from the passing of so many public people I've covered.
With Kenny, everybody is remembering the same man. But nobody was remembering the same story.
I can listen to tributes to Kenny all day with a dry eye. But when the stories begin, his humanity jumps back to life.
MORE | Read Eric Crawford's obituary column on Kenny Klein
Rick Pitino's story began with a chair.
He told everyone gathered at St. Raphael Church about a game at St. John's when Kenny wasn't in his usual chair to Pitino's left at the scorer's table. The table was overcrowded and Kenny, typically, had given up his seat.
Pitino wasn't having it. He grabbed the official and got him to wait a second. Literally held up the tipoff.
"Where's Kenny?" Pitino said. "Tell him to get the (expletive) down here."
This was the post-church edition of the story.
"We're not starting this game," Pitino said. "Get Kenny next to me."
They might seem an odd pairing, this New York-bred coach and his friend, born on a farm in Tennessee. But they worked together for 17 years at Louisville, went through everything, the highest highs and lowest lows, and when Pitino went to St. John's, he knew something was missing and he talked Klein into filling in when another SID fell ill.
For Klein, the gig was only supposed to be a few weeks. It wound up lasting the rest of his life.
St. John's gave Pitino a house to use as its basketball coach. He already has a house. He put Kenny in this one. Set him up. Would get him tickets to Broadway shows, tell him he had a guy who got him great seats. He bought the tickets but knew Kenny wouldn't take them unless he thought he had a guy. It worked that way. They laughed together, with each other and often at each other.
Klein's wife Donna was there with him. Who lived better than them? She was with the team. Behind the bench. On the road. And she still will be, when she wants to be.
"I spent 17 years with him, but we were inseparable the last two," Pitino said.
"I don't know how I'm going to face that empty chair," he said.
Then he paused.
"They love Kenny at St. John's," he said. "Kenny came in and changed everything. He organized everything. He put the house in order. People up there have unbelievable respect for him. He's great to the media. When I started at Louisville, I had no interest in doing an interview with Seth Davis, who was at Sports Illustrated. Kenny stayed after me. I sat down with him, and Seth has become a great friend, has texted me almost every day. None of that happens without Kenny."
Father Shayne Duvall's story started twenty-five years earlier.
He arrived at Louisville as a freshman work-study student in the sports information office. A year later, he lost his eligibility for the program. He thanked Kenny for the opportunity and prepared to leave.
"Hold on," Kenny told him. "Let me make a phone call."
Anyone Kenny ever promised to make a phone call for probably knows what came next.
A few minutes later, he walked back into the room.
"I've got you on our payroll. You don't have to leave."
Kathy Tronzo looked at the stunned freshman and told him Kenny had never done that for a student assistant before.
On Monday, that student stood at the altar as Father Shayne Duvall.
"We all have those stories," he said. "Those experiences of Kenny doing whatever he could do to make sure everyone who met him ... would be treated with the respect and dignity they deserved."
He was right.
MORE | "The Best of the Best:" The sports world reacts to the death of Kenny Klein
I turned around in the pew at the funeral and saw Eddie Gunter. He's retired and works as a volunteer at basketball and football games for the sports information department, handing out credentials. If Eddie didn't take care of me every time I forgot my pass, I'd have been fired long ago.
His wife has had some health setbacks, and he talked about Kenny texting him twice a week to check on her status.
"He was always checking in," Gunter said. "He's so busy and knows so many people, but here he's texting me to see how things are."
The night before the funeral, at dinner, Jody Demling pulled out his phone and showed us a text Kenny had sent while Jody lay in a hospital bed, unconscious, on a ventilator with COVID-19.
I thought about the texts Kenny sent me after my stroke in 2018. Or him showing up at the visitation when my mother died a couple of years ago.
I thought about the times he checked on Rick Bozich during a hospital stay.
All of those things were doubtless on our minds when we visited Kenny together for the last time in the hospital.
All of the text messages from Kenny that people have read to me over the past several days or posted on social media. All of the photos from all of the camera rolls.
After a while, you begin to wonder how Kenny ever found time to do the actual job everyone knew him for.
Then you realize those weren't separate things. To Kenny, they were the job. It was all life, all the time.
One of my favorite Kenny stories isn't about a coach or a Hall of Famer.
It's about a fan.
The first home game after Louisville's 2013 national championship banner came down, a fan named Jeffrey Oeswein made his own championship banner and unfurled it from the upper deck of the Yum! Center.
Security confiscated it.
Oeswein texted Matt Willinger, who was working down on press row for U of L. And somehow word reached Kenny, who was juggling the thousand details that accompany a college basketball game.
That didn't stop Kenny from calling security.
Before the game ended, security showed up and returned Oeswein's banner to him.
One banner. One fan. One act of decency in a building that held 20,000 people.
If you want to understand Kenny Klein, start there.
Then understand there were thousands more stories just like it.
Later Monday, after the funeral, in the gathering at the O'Grady home, they were told all day.
A social media post from St. John's coach Rick Pitino after the funeral for St. John's and longtime Louisville sports information director Kenny Klein. Donna Klein, Kenny's wife, is with Pitino. His post: "Tough day but we love this lady so much and will never forget Kenny Klein. Life can be so difficult for so many, but love endures."
In a basement room of the home, I walked in to find Ralph Willard, Richard Pitino, Steve Masielo, Jeff Walz, David Padgett, Peyton Siva, Fred Hina, Kevin Keatts, more Pitinos, a good many friends of Klein, Pitino and U of L, and countless other friends, too numerous to name.
Kelly Dickey wandered over beside me, looked around the room and said, "How much do you think we drag down the average net worth in here?"
I appreciated the laugh.
For a second, it was easy to imagine Kenny around the corner, Maker's in hand, enjoying the stories. Or maybe standing behind us, commiserating. I'm not the only one who will turn around expecting him in various places for a long time to come.
Some people are admired by thousands. Kenny Klein was loved one person at a time — a thousand times over.
To all of these people who drew so much joy from him, I know he drew just as much joy from them. I know that because he told me. The last time I saw him, it was virtually all he talked about.
I've struggled to make any sense of this tragedy, especially when I see the pain in people to whom he meant so much.
That may be as close as I can get.
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