'Champion of Animals' honored at Worker's Memorial
Apr. 30—URBANA — In November 2000, Ken Chapman and his fourth-grade son, Kevin, were on a family camping trip to the Chapman Reservoir, not far from their home in Wichita, Kan., and were watching a flock of birds descend on the water far off in the distance.
The previous night, the family's plan to see a meteor shower was ruined by rain, but what happened next created a memory Ken remembers fondly now, three years after his son's death at the age of 30.
"Kevin said, 'Those are pelicans!'" Ken said with a smile. "I said, 'No, Kevin, this is Kansas.' He said, 'No, those are pelicans.'"
Ken grabbed his binoculars to get a closer look and correct his son, who regularly flipped through books about birds that his grandmother had given him or that he had checked out from the library.
"I pull out the binoculars and say, 'Those are pelicans,'" Ken said. "Pelicans in Kansas. I didn't realize."
Years later, that in-depth knowledge of birds doesn't seem so surprising. Kevin approached his interests with intensity, whether that meant working his love of nature into games of "Dungeons and Dragons" or designing T-shirts for the saxophone section of the band at Urbana High School, where he graduated in 2008.
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His passion for animals, though, began early. When the family moved to Kansas when Kevin was a preschooler, his brother, Kristopher, remembers that Kevin insisted on wallpaper with animal pawprints for his new room.
"He latched onto (animals) from a very young age," Kristopher said. "He was one of those dinosaur kids at 2, 3, 4 years old. It just kind of grew from there. There wasn't any question growing up that he wanted to do something that had to do with animals."
Science wasn't foreign to him, either. His father was a biology professor and his mother, Kena Jo, ran the chemistry lab at Parkland College for 18 years before both recently retired. He went on to study zoology at Southern Illinois University before earning his master's degree at Utah State. For his master's project, he studied the eating habits of pelicans.
After college, he worked various part-time jobs. He studied the ways bats interacted with wind turbines, discovering that they're killed not when they hit the massive blades but when the change in the air currents flips them over and disturbs their organs. He studied fish and birds throughout Illinois, Michigan, Oregon and Washington.
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In February 2020, Kevin was hired for his first full-time job by Shoener Environmental Inc., a firm that consults with companies as they make plans to build renewable-energy structures or develop land that was previously empty. Eventually, his parents said, the company planned to train Kevin in wetland delineation, which would allow him to judge if a planned area for development should be considered a protected wetland.
"His thing was, 'Wind energy is a good thing,'" his father said. "Big construction projects are going to happen, and they should be done in a way that protects the interests of animals."
On March 3, 2020, Kevin woke up before sunrise to head to Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, where he would fly in a four-seat plane with another ecologist and a pilot in order to monitor eagles' nests to see if they were active. If so, the land on which they sat would be legally protected.
A years-long investigation concluded that the plane likely stalled as it slowly circled a nest, causing it to fall to the ground at the edge of Interstate 55 in Bloomington, killing Chapman, fellow ecologist Matthew Hanson and pilot Mitch Janssen.
On Friday, Kevin was honored along with three other workers who died on the job at the Workers' Memorial at Dodds Park in Champaign, where their names have been engraved.
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Kena Jo apologized for the the clutter as she sat down for an interview Wednesday at the family's home in Urbana.
"We're moving Kevin's things out of his room, and it's taking awhile, because there are a lot of emotions attached to it," she said. "So, we're not doing it too fast."
They've gone through clothing, like his hoodie that says, "Dinosaurs Are Sweet"; his Batman-themed bottle opener and other items he made in his homemade smelting forge; and his "Game of Thrones"-themed beer glass.
Over the last three years, Kevin's family has remembered their son through their memories and the stories of others. They've seen photos of the elaborate costumes he'd make himself for Halloween and other parties, including a pelican costume he wore to an event with colleagues when he lived in Utah.
They heard from one of his Utah State professors, who told them that his pelican research was exceptional, and that his paper had been published in a journal. They've heard stories about how when he was serving as dungeon master during games of "Dungeons and Dragons," he'd add details to the world that reflected his intense interest in nature.
"He would go, 'This type of tree wouldn't be in this area. It would actually be over there,'" said his brother, Kristopher. "He'd get really into the details in what the nature in an imaginary world be like.
"He was so knowledgeable, and when he would get talking about something he was interested in, you could definitely tell how passionate he was about it. It was a lot like if you were talking to a teacher who was talking about a subject he was really passionate about."
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Kevin's intense focus made it so he could get by with minimal accommodations. At times, he'd sleep in his car if he needed to wake up early the next day and tend to a project. While studying pelicans, he stayed for months in a small trailer.
"It wasn't that he really enjoyed not sleeping in a bed, but he was willing to do it if it meant he was out there seeing things in nature," his brother said. "He didn't need much in terms of material requirements. He would get very absorbed into what he was focused on and not pay much attention to anything else around him."
His interest in wildlife was so intense that he chose to spend his working life protecting it.
"That was his thing," his father said. "He was a champion of animals."
