Pursuing a passion from Sioux City to Gorey
American football enthusiast Klatt has added added immense value to Co. Wexford
ON THE face of it, there seems to be very little to connect Sioux City, the fourth largest metropolis in the U.S. state of Iowa, and little old Gorey.
One is a moderately sized, American city, big enough to keep ticking over while smaller country towns fell into disrepair, yet not large enough to gain traction against bigger sprawling urban areas like Chicago to the east or the Twin Cities to the north.
Unlike Sioux City, which has seen its population remain largely stagnant since the 1940s, Gorey had been sucked into the commuter belt in the last couple of decades, going from sleepy small town to a popular destination for those working in the capital who can’t afford sky-high Dublin prices.
But trends need setters. Long before it was popular for movers from the big cities to descend on Wexford’s third biggest town, Gorey got an import from the tallgrass prairie who has added far more value to the community than probably even he could have imagined.
Kevin Klatt moved to Sioux City when he was five and spent his formative years there. It became home, it became the place of sweet memories, of quintessential middle America. It was diners and donut shops, it was pharmacies with apothecary cabinets and soda pop machines.
‘I always tell people that if I could pick anywhere in the world to grow up again, if I could go back and do it all again, I’d go straight back to the neighbourhood I grew up in in Sioux City,’ Kevin enthused.
‘Absolutely brilliant place, really really good people, friendly, hard working, no airs and graces, everybody went out [and] earned a living, the kids went to school, played a lot of sports, you know, played outside.
‘Doors weren’t locked, there was always something to do because it was a big enough city that there was always something going on, plenty of places to go out for dinner. It was just a really really, I would consider, idyllic, childhood to be honest.’
Football, of the American variety, was pretty much always part of Kevin’s life. From the age of five his father had him and his brother out on the lawn, practicing tackling drills, preparing them for challenges that would start in high school.
‘I would have been 14 or 15 and that’s the first time you could put on pads, so four years you could play American football in high school back then and that was it,’ he explained.
‘They had what they called Junior high school teams which would be your freshman year, then they would have a sophomore team as well, and then after that you kicked it up to Junior and Senior year with playing for the varsity team.’
As a multi-sport high school athlete (Kevin played basketball, baseball and also ran track), he certainly kept himself busy. It therefore came as no surprise when Kevin agreed to head east across the state to N.C.A.A. Division 3’s Wartburg College.
Unfortunately, Kevin’s collegiate football career didn’t last long, despite working his way from fifth string quarter-back to QB2, as he explained: ‘I was running the second unit and we had a practice one day, we were doing two-a-day at that stage (two sessions), it was August just before the season was starting.
‘I called an option to the right, so I came down the line of scrimmage and the defensive end, who was a Senior, he was on the starting defence. I faked the pitch and he bit on the fake and I turned it up field and gained about 15 yards.
‘The coach blew the whistle and he went over to the defensive end and he picked him up and he screamed in his face: “you would let a freshman do that to you and you expect to be a starting defensive end” and he went absolutely mad at him after it. I made the absolute rookie error, I went back to the huddle and I said same play.
‘We go down, I fake the hand-off, starting down the line and I see this guy, his name’s Charlie Enright, coming towards
me and he committed too soon. I turned and pitched the ball, and the ball carrier picked up another 15 yards because there was nobody left out there to stop the run. 'But what happened was, as I turned my head to make the pitch, Charlie launched kind of from the ground up and the crown of his helmet launched at my left jaw and snapped it in two.
tell the coach and I practice that afternoon, but I couldn’t eat breakfast and I went to the coach here”. straight to the dentist and ray and he said, ‘yeah, two’, so that had me again. When I came back quarterbacks were allowed to season started, so I was where I couldn’t work my playing position. disappointing and I didn’t year, I just felt that I’d badly so I didn’t play I played was when I
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in January of ‘79 and have that much for me me travel around and wanted to do. was living in Dublin at the time, wrote to me and said she was doing a show in this little town called Gorey.
‘She was doing “Annie Get Your Gun” and her mother, my grandmother, was coming over to see it at the end of April, [so she asked] why didn’t I pop over to see the show? So I thought that would be a great idea so I came over at the end of April.
‘The first night that I was there, I went back stage at the intermission to, you know, thank my aunt for the seats and say well done, and sharing her dressing-room was a young lady who I found very pretty and very nice.
‘My aunt introduced me and that was Mary. I went back the next night with my grandmother and the opening number. Out come the dancers and Mary was front and centre, and I pointed up to her and I said to my grandmother, that’s the girl I met last night.
‘Mary saw me pointing at her and she looked down and she smiled and she winked and, as true as I’m sitting here, I turned to my grandmother and I said I’m going to marry that girl, and I asked her out a couple days later.
‘She said yes and, to make a long story short, I proposed on our third date, and then I had to go home back to the States to go to work. I didn’t see her for six months, and I flew her to the States to meet the parents.
‘I didn’t see her for another six months until the wedding. So she came to the States and she tried it for ten months, but Mary is the eldest of eight children and when she left, all seven brothers and sisters were still at home.
‘Three grandparents [were] living pretty much in the same street, and three months after we got married she got pregnant with our first.
‘The closer she came to having the baby, the more she wanted to come home, so after ten months in the States I said, right I’ll give it a try, I’ll try Ireland out. That was March 1, 1981, and I’ve been here ever since.’
While Kevin has become very much part of Gorey with his expanding family over almost 40 years, working an array of different jobs before owning his own company, there was still the hankering for football.
He came back to play the game for one brief season with the Dublin Celts, winning the Shamrock Bowl as the starting quarter-back. Klatt went 13 for 18, for 205 yards and three touchdowns as his side won 43-25.
But that was it for a long time with the sport he loved, although he kept in touch with what was going on with his Chicago Bears from televisioon (Iowa doesn’t have its own NFL team so many veer towards the Bears, Vikings or the Packers from neighbouring states).
Eventually John Lynch and Artur Guz came calling at the back end of 2015. They were in the process of setting up the Wexford Eagles. Lynch had been friends with Klatt’s son since they were children, so he was no stranger to the Iowan.
What started out as talking a look, helping them out in the initial stages, soon morphed into Klatt taking on the role of
Eagles’ head coach.
Kevin is clearly energised by the whole club, and they are a reflection of their leader as they continue to build a successful organisation.
There has been plenty of play-off heartbreak for the Eagles in their first four seasons. They have developed remarkably, but the rub of the green has just eluded them when it comes to end of season silverware.
Still, Klatt is in no doubt about the character of the group he leads. ‘I’ve been involved in team sports of one description or another for 50 years, and I have never, ever worked with a bunch of guys like the Eagles,’ he said.
‘Talk about guys from very diverse backgrounds, very different people when they are off the pitch.
‘Those guys get on the field [and] they just gelled, there’s no agro, there’s no politics, there’s no fighting, they are really, really truly the nicest group of guys you could ever hope to work with.’
After impressing with the Eagles, Klatt was scooped up to help with the Irish national team in various roles.
He walked away on good terms but, from hearing Kevin talk, things were always more complicated with Ireland than the laid-back, hard-working Wexford boys.
Klatt had high hopes for the Eagles to get back onto the field for their fifth season in the coming months, but unfortunately the entire Irish American football season has now been cancelled.
He’s taking all the precautions to keep himself and his family safe in Gorey but worries about his parents, both in their late eighties, back home in Iowa.
It’s a sobering thought to end this chat with a fascinating individual. From growing up in idyllic Sioux City to not being able to get back to where it all began, restricted from travelling and left hoping and praying that his parents avoid the danger around us.
To walk down those homely streets again, to bring those memories of a wee five-year-old out on the lawn getting that first taste of football, to live those moments with mom and pop again, we can all only hope and pray that the chance comes around once more real soon for Kevin Klatt.