The house that Kevin eventually bought was less than a mile away from Todd and Mary’s. It was on the same county road, but farther out of Bovill. His house was an earth-bermed passive solar design. It was situated on twenty-six acres. About half of the acreage was open, and suitable for hay cutting or pasture. The other half of the land was in second growth pines that averaged forty feet in height. Kevin would have preferred more land, since he eventually planned to pasture cattle, but he went ahead and bought it. The house was well built, and the price was right, at only $92,000. He paid cash.
Todd Gray was twenty-two years old when he and T.K. first formed the group. He was six-foot-two with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. He stayed slim, never letting his weight get over 185 pounds. By the time Todd entered college, his father was ready to retire. The owner of three hardware stores in the Chicago area, Phil Gray had amassed the magical million-dollar figure, and decided that he should slow down and take life easy. Just a year later, when Todd was a sophomore, his father died of a heart attack. Todd’s mother Elise was the classic TV mom. Dinner on the table at six o’clock. Laundry on Thursdays. Canning in the summer. Homemade candies for Christmas gifts in the winter. Years later, she still talked about Phil as if he were still alive. She died of cancer just after the turn of the century.
Todd graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in economics. Soon after gradua-tion, he landed a position with Bolton, Meyer, and Sloan, a major accounting firm with branches in metro areas throughout the country. It was at about the same time that Todd married Mary Krause, an Occupational Therapy major that he had met during his senior year at the University of Chicago. Mary appealed to Todd for many reasons. First, she was quite attractive. She had waist-length naturally blond hair, a cute smile, and a trim, compact body. Todd also liked the idea of dating a woman with a strong background in medicine.
As he explained to T.K., “She might be a good prospect for a medical specialist for the group.”
T.K. replied, “Naaaw, admit it. You like her ’cause she’s a total babe.”
Tom Kennedy was Todd’s roommate for all four years of college. As with so many college freshmen, Todd and T.K were assigned to the same dormitory room at random. They had never met before the day that they helped each other move in. They immediately became good friends. Tom, or “T.K.” as everyone (including his parents) called him, was reserved, polite, and soft-spoken. He was getting his Master’s degree in business administration.
Kennedy was the youngest son of a retired Air Force pilot. Upon retiring as a full colonel after thirty-two years of service, T.K.’s father took up calligraphy as a retirement hobby. This eventually developed into a second career, occupying at least twenty hours a week. He even taught calligraphy classes at a local junior college. His mother was a Spanish woman that T.K.’s father had met while stationed in Spain. His father died in 2008 of a heart attack. His mother died a year later, of leukemia.
His half-Spanish ancestry gave Tom black hair, a medium complexion, and piercing dark brown eyes. Because T.K. had been born prematurely, he only reached a height of five-feet-four. Even at his heaviest, when he was in training for wrestling in high school, T.K. weighed 140 pounds. Because of his small stature, when he was in college he was often mistaken for a high school student. He was “carded” when entering bars well into his thirties. To combat being mistaken for a child, T.K. grew a mustache during the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college.
After graduating, T.K. got a position as a management trainee with a Sears & Roebuck store in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He soon rose through the ranks, and in 2002, after a stint at the Sears corporate headquarters in Hoffmann Estates, he was made the general manager of the Sears store in Wheaton, Illinois.
T.K. was always shy around women. He never dated when he was in college, and he never married. Tom remained active in the Catholic Church. When he was young, he served as an altar boy. After college, he became a lay minister. He helped with communion and training altar boys. When T.K. was in high school, his father introduced him to target shooting.
He found that he greatly enjoyed engaging in a sport where his small stature was not a handicap. T.K. eventually became an active high power competitive shooter and achieved an expert classification. Although he practiced regularly and went to every match that he could, T.K. never got scores high enough to qualify him for a position on the state High Power team. His dream of shooting at the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, was never fulfilled.
T.K. was the oldest of the group members. He was also the first to get out of college and start making a good salary. This gave him the opportunity to become the first group member to get completely squared-away logistically.
Like any other dedicated survivalist, T.K. did not rest on his laurels after he had bought his “group standard” equipment. He continued with a well organized purchasing plan, putting away a large stock of storage food, ammunition, medical supplies, and a comprehensive personal library on survival and practical skills.
T.K.’s only unusual purchase was a crossbow. He bought a Benedict S.K. 1 with a 150-pound draw weight. He also bought several dozen aluminum broad head bolts, a fishing reel modification kit, fifteen spare strings, and a spare bow limb. At a group meeting in early 2008, T.K. mentioned casually that he had bought the bow. Dan Fong instantly pounced on him, asking him why he wanted a “medieval” weapon like a crossbow. Kennedy replied, “The crossbow isn’t any more impractical than your black powder guns, Dan. In fact, it has several advantages. First, it will give us the capability to hunt game silently. That could be a real advantage if we are out in the boonies and want to avoid detection. Second, crossbows are much more effective at killing game than traditional bows. That’s the reason that they are illegal for hunting in most states.
Third, I’ll never have to worry about running out of ammunition. Once I start to run low on bolts, I can start making my own. The last advantage is that it takes some ‘oomph’ to cock the darned thing. Practicing with it is more than just target practice, it is also good exercise.”
Mary Krause became a de facto member of the group when she became Mary Gray. At the time that they married, Mary knew that Todd was a member of a survival group, but had no idea how deeply involved he was, or the full ramifications of his membership. Mainly, she was surprised at the amount of money that Todd had “invested” in his survival preparations. In six years, he had spent more than $5,000 on guns and ammunition, $3,000 on storage food, $4,800 on buying and restoring a 1969 Dodge Power Wagon pickup, and $1,800 on various web gear, backpacks, sleeping bags, tents, et cetera.
To her dismay, Mary discovered a thickly padded clipboard that listed hundreds of additional items that Todd intended to buy. With his accountant’s mentality, Todd had itemized the purchases, compared prices from several suppliers, set priorities, and noted the sequence in which he planned to buy them. It was then that Mary realized that her plans for long vacations overseas would probably never come to fruition.
Just before marrying Todd, Mary landed a job as a sports medicine therapist at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. She truly enjoyed the healing arts.
Naturally, she became the group’s medic. In jest, she was sometimes referred to as the “Medical Honcho.”
In 2008, Todd was able to work out an arrangement with his manager to begin working half-time from home. In requesting the arrangement, Todd was very direct with his boss. He told him that his “forty-minute, each way, each day commute” was driving him crazy, and that it was “contributing to premature burnout.” His boss was upset when he heard Todd use the term “burnout,” as it had precipitated the loss of several good accountants in recent years.