If Ken Harvey didn’t get a phone call from his grandchildren by 9:15 p.m. to tell him good night, he’d be the one to call and he was never the first to hang up.
“Goodbye,” he’d tell his 10-year-old grandson, Anthony. “Goodbye,” Anthony would say back. “Adios,” he’d say. “Adios,” Anthony would repeat.
Hasta luego. Hasta luego. Anthony would giggle as the game continued. Arrivederci. Arrivederci. You hang up first.
The hardest part of losing Harvey, who died Friday at the age of 70 from COVID-19, was that his family couldn’t be there, though perhaps a saving grace was that Harvey had learned how to video chat from those nightly calls and could still connect with them in that small way, said one of his two sons, Jason.
A 28-year veteran of the Waukegan Fire Department and a current Wadsworth village trustee, Harvey was taken Friday from Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville to Salata Funeral Home in Gurnee, with area police and fire departments lining the route to mark his passing.
It was something “we never expected and are so appreciative of,” said his son, Rob, a current Waukegan firefighter who was also infected by the novel coronavirus late last month when treating a patient in the back of an ambulance.
His family has been struggling with grieving — all of them in isolation from one another, unable to even hug.
“For me, the hardest part is that we weren’t there,” said his wife, Cindy, who would have celebrated her 49th wedding anniversary with Ken in August. “He was always there for us, no matter what. When we talk coronavirus and what it’s done to our world, there are not words to express the pain, the hurt.”
She’s been incredibly touched, though, by the tokens left outside their Wadsworth home by those whose lives have been impacted by Ken — flowers, a box of candy, a spaghetti dinner with garlic bread.
“Your heart bleeds because you can’t do what you want to do, and what you think you need to do,” she said.
With gatherings prohibited and social distancing the new normal, Harvey’s family is still figuring out how they’re going to honor their father, who was a Vietnam veteran, a provider who always worked multiple jobs to make sure they had everything they wanted and a father and grandfather who attended every concert and practice that he could, Rob Harvey said.
“I know we’re not going to be able to have the proper ceremony that he deserved,” Jason Harvey said. “But I can make sure he is represented, that everyone understands … that he had a wonderful life with a wonderful family, that he did such a good job molding all of us. He gave us the tools to get through this. His love for his family is unprecedented, and my mom is such an absolute rock.”
A big man with a deep voice, Ken Harvey looked intimidating, but with his grandchildren, Tori, 16, and Anthony, 10, he was a marshmallow, a big teddy bear and “like butter on a hot skillet,” said his daughter-in-law, Tanya. He helped provide daycare for the two, and would attend every event he could.
He was the same with his own boys, Jason and Rob, sitting front and center at every concert of Bella Cain, the country band led by Rob, a drummer and vocalist, and for which Jason worked on the crew.
“Everyone knew he was,” Tanya said. “Everyone knew him as Rob and Jason’s dad.”
The Waukegan Fire Department also defined so much of Ken Harvey’s life, his family said.
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In the early 1970s, Ken Harvey took the Waukegan Fire Department’s firefighter test with a friend on “kind of a dare,” his wife said. He got the job, but his friend didn’t, and shortly after began to study to become a paramedic, part of the second ever class of paramedics in Illinois.
Harvey “is my mentor, friend, brother and huge personal cheerleader,” said George Bridges, the current fire chief who went to school with Harvey’s sons and worked under Harvey when he was a captain. “He is a proven leader that cared for everyone around him. Captain Harvey, Rob Harvey and I were blessed to work on the department together. … He has left his mark on our department and the Bridges family forever.”
When Steve Lenzi, now the department’s fire marshal, joined the department in 1993, Harvey had just transitioned back to being a captain from a stint as deputy chief.
“He was larger than life,” Lenzi said. “You knew if you were called in, you were going to get it. The thing was after he was done chewing you out, he’d still make sure you were good. He took so many of us under his wing.”
It’s been about 18 years since Harvey retired from the department, but Lenzi said it doesn’t feel like that. Harvey remained a presence — in large part because his son Rob continues to work there.
Rob Harvey said he was lucky to have gotten to work alongside his father, even sharing a rig with him a few times.
“He just did things right,” Rob Harvey said. “Everything he did, he gave it 100%. He wanted to make things better for everybody.”
Everything had been going really well until about two week ago, his wife said. He had a bit of a cold, but Cindy Harvey worried that something more could be wrong. Something felt off about it.
Harvey didn’t seem to be eating well. He couldn’t taste the pizza she made. She wondered if it could be the coronavirus.
A few days later, he spoke to the doctor. The symptoms did sound like COVID-19, the doctor told him, and so they decided to try and get him tested.
But things went south first: He started feeling weak, throwing up his breakfast one day and struggling to get back into bed. She asked him if he was going to call the paramedics or if she was.
At Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Harvey was tested and it was confirmed he had the novel coronavirus.
“That was the beginning of our nightmare,” she said. “We’ve never had to go through anything like this without being together. We had to do everything by the telephone. It became so difficult because I couldn’t be there, couldn’t hold his hand, couldn’t rub his face, couldn’t tell him that everything was going to be OK.”
Harvey entered the hospital on a Thursday. By the following Monday, he was on a ventilator. Friday he was gone.
While Ken Harvey had some of the underlying conditions common for a 70-year-old man, Rob Harvey emphasized that it was COVID-19 that took his dad.
“This is unexpected,” he said. “It’s tragic. We would not be sitting here talking for any of those other things.”
