Description:
Kevin Hahn talks about his life growing up in Oklahoma.
Transcript:
Darren: Hello. I'm Darren Mahareth director of student life here at Oklahoma City Community College and I’m here with Kevin Hahn and he is a first semester student. He holds an associate's degree from another college and plans on continuing on to the University of Oklahoma. Good afternoon, Kevin.
Kevin: Good afternoon.
Darren: Tell me a little bit about yourself, your name, date of birth.
Kevin: My name is Kevin Hahn. I am 26 years old and my birthday was 2/20/81 born here in Oklahoma City. I know Midwest City Hospital. I forgot the name of the hospital, It’s where I was born. Ironically the same hospital my mother was born in she's an Oklahoma native. Father came from out of state. That's cool he found the right place to be.
Darren: awesome.
Kevin: As you said I have an associate's degree in another school. I was a student in Dallas for two years and decided I had to get back to Oklahoma because I just could not stand the way things happen in Dallas and I much preferred Oklahoma City.
Darren: Welcome back
Kevin: Good to be back, no lie.
Darren: Who would you say has been the most important person in your life and tell us about him or her.
Kevin: The most important person in my life is a very easy question to answer. It's my father Larry Hahn. I just, I don't know how to explain it. He's just been such a rock of stability in life, grew up in Colorado in a large family on a farm. And then somehow from that managed to go on to college and graduate with a master's in mathematics. Try to be a teacher before ending up down here in Oklahoma City at Tinker Air Force Base while he was working through the Tinker Air Force Base he spent 10 years as a youth pastor and local churches and about 15 years as a youth minister and local churches. All that work was always for free while working full-time and it just and somehow through all that. It was still family first, family was the most important to him. And I really always just kind of looked at the lessons that he taught that he was like. He felt very strongly about things and whenever he felt strongly about something. He made it a priority and while work was a priority to him and the work in the church was a priority to him and his family was a priority to him somehow through all that he never let any of the three slide.
Kevin: I'm really honestly have no idea if he had any hobbies for like 15- 20 years because he was so busy with those three things making sure that all of them prospered as well as they could and got his undivided attention and that's just always blown me away how easy it was for him to just push away the me time, push away the personal time and focus on the things that matter in life and that's something I've always strive to be more like him with.
Darren: This next question maybe you may have begun to answer, would you say your father has been the biggest influence in your life.
Kevin: Very easily the biggest influence on my life for the reasons I just said and things we talked about earlier. The reasons are one of the best examples of the qualities that he is displayed, you know about the whole making up your mind to do something and then supporting it a hundred ten percent regardless of the time efforts or the financial efforts, my father and mother when I was a child decided to build their own house due to we had 15 acres of land. They wanted a house and in their head, they had a house that they wanted. They wanted a Victorian style. They wanted this, they wanted that, you know, everyone picks their dream house that they want to make happen unfortunately. They were unable to find a building company that could do it within the financial restrictions that they had and it was one of those things where they got to the option of do what you want and have it the way you want it or succumb to the situation and take something less and be less satisfied with the results and they decided that this was their dream house, and they were going to make it happen. So they ended up, basically, we ended up building our own house. We got with a local company who sells kit houses. You pick a blueprint that you like and then they send you the lumber as you go and basically my parents approached them and said we have a house we'd like to build can we design it? And then you supply the materials and they said of course so my mother and father sit down and wrote up the blueprints for this house, neither of which have any architectural training, turn it into the company. They had there architecs go over to make sure it was structurally sound and safe and all they ended up liking it so much that they offer to supply the building supplies for free in exchange for the rights to the house to sell the rights of the blueprints similarly to other people. And that's where that ended up getting started and then over the next six years from about 90 to about 96, my mother father big sister grandfather built the house. The only person that we ever hired to do any work was a cabinet guy. The house is a three-story 3600 square foot home, it was a monster. Electrical and plumbing was dealt with by friends of the family, people from the church came out during the summer. We have big building parties and work on the house very kind of like we always joke that it was like the Amish barn raisings. Unfortunately, they did a lot faster than we did. Six years is a long time to work on anything let alone a house that you're living next door to and looking at it every day wondering honestly will this ever end and it really struck me how my father never got discouraged that I could tell. All the numerous setbacks we had we lost, probably six months of work once in a storm a lightning bolt hit the second floor at the time which was the top of the house and started a fire. We lost part of the building, but it was just one of those things where what we're doing is what we're doing and that's all there is to it. So six years later my parents had their dream house and we moved in. But that's like I said, that's the example of his ability to... this is what we want to do and we're going to do it and he was really good at just saying well, you know, it'd be cheaper it be easier just to stay where we are, get a smaller house, maybe moving to a small neighborhood, you know, but they chose what they wanted and they made it happen regardless of the sacrifices.
Darren: You talked a lot about the lessons you've learned in this process. How do you hope to transfer these lessons in the future?
Kevin: Well, hopefully number one lesson that I came away with hoping that I can transfer to the future is obviously I hope I can be half the father my father was to me. If I can somehow treat my kids the way that he treated me, give them the love and support that he somehow managed to supply through all these other things because he was still even through all this work, I mean it would have been really easy for them to say well, you know, we're working on the house that you can't play soccer but no, me and my sister were still involved in sports teams. He still came out to things. You know it was he was amazing at juggling priorities and keeping things moving on all fronts. And that's something that I've hoped and tried to accomplish in my life the ability to instead of having. Well, this is most important. This is second most important. This is third in the third thing kind of suffers. He was very good at keeping four, five things as most important and making sure that maybe the progress wasn't big but there was always progress. So that's kind of a lesson. I'd like to be able to carry on. You know, like hopefully be able to be successful in a business opportunity and yet still keep my children as the most important things in my life without letting anything else lack just like I said that ability to be there for everybody every time.
Darren: You've talked a lot about your father's impact. This experience has a family. At this point in your life what would you say you are the proudest of as far as your life goes in the things you have done?
Kevin: Honestly, what I would consider myself proudest of to this day is that stinking house. You know, it was Mom and Dad's plans. And you know, I spent six years same as my sister. We both, everyone the family spent six years of our lives sweating bleeding crying over that house that we put up and I mean we've talked to people about, you know, maybe you guys ought to sell that land because that's a lot of land, it's a lot of hassle, but the idea of selling it absolutely scared me to death that's my house. You know my friends and everything we talked about how we're gonna go over to my house, but it's not really your house. That's where you live. This is my house. I built this thing. I laid a foundation. I dug dirt to make a flat spot for my house and then I built my house. So that's really not something that like I said, it's not father's, not mother's it's all of ours. Aside from the house when I think I would probably be the proudest of is probably my most recent degree. When I was 19, 20, I went to college did not know what I was wanting did not do the best was not the best at making sure all my priority stayed in place and ended up leaving college until about 24 years of age and at 24 years decided it was time to finish what I started and managed to go back and finish an associate's degree. And now I'm pushing forward to OU to do the Bachelors overcoming the mistakes I made earlier in life now is what I'm proudest of because instead of accepting defeat I've pushed on, I've succeeded and you know, it was very painful. It was very frustrating being a 25 year old in college with a bunch of 18 year olds. It's a challenge, but it was something that the lesson got to me a little later in life, and I'm glad that I have taken the time to finish. I'm glad that I'm doing the things I'm doing now to finish that road.
Darren: So Kevin and listening to you sounds like you're applying some of those lessons that your father has taught you through the experiences of his leadership of your household and the building of this house. What do you hope your future holds for you?
Kevin: Honestly what I hope my future holds is I'd like to be like my father. Father and mother were both teachers, both educators here in the state of Oklahoma father worked with the church as a youth pastor for several years. I am currently working with a church here with the youth working with a group of Junior High kids giving back and really it's exciting being able to work with kids who may not have the best of homes may not have had a home situation that I had. I'm so blessed to have had what I had and it's nice to be able to like, I can't be their father obviously, but it's nice to know that there are things I've done I can see in these kid’s lives. Something I've done has made a difference where I can share with these kids the mistakes that I've made and hopefully they can avoid and then the other thing I like to do like my parents is my eventual goal is to graduate from OU with a master's so that I can begin teaching at either the collegiate level or the high school level while working in the freelance video industry, which is what my major is its video production. So I'd like to work in the local scene in Oklahoma, but at the same time I'd like to teach because amazing teachers both in my family and in my schooling have gotten me to where I am today and I would like other people to have the opportunity to have that so I would like to be able to turn around and teach in kind hopefully as well as I was taught.
Darren: Kevin is there anything else you'd like to share today to add to this bit of Oklahoma history?
Kevin: It may sound a little cliché but I absolutely love the state of Oklahoma. I love coming from Oklahoma. I do consider myself an Okie. The two years I spent living in Dallas it was hard to explain to kids because everybody knows Oklahoma and Texas have a large rivalry and it's almost impossible to get these people to realize that Oklahoma is the better state. And you know, it's one of those it's just there are certain things that Oklahoma has done have been part of the way, you know things happen here, you know, April 19 1995. I was in junior high. I remember that significantly, spent several weeks downtown serving meals cooking meals for the family for the rescue workers that were down there. That was something that when I went down and worked tried to help a little after the Katrina thing the atmosphere, I mean two different disasters, but the atmosphere is very different the way the people in New Orleans were trying to deal with their disaster and the way the people in Oklahoma City dealt with their disaster not to say that one was better than the other but it was... In New Orleans, there was a loss whereas in Oklahoma City, there was hope we accepted that the loss occurred and the very next reaction was well, how do we fix this? How do we build this better? How do we recoup what we've lost? We weren't as focused on the loss itself, but how to reclaim it, and it’s just things like that you know, just the making eye contact with people in the street in Oklahoma City. You can't do that in Dallas. You can't do that in New York City where I lived for a couple of months. That's something I really like about this. Oklahoma is a friendlier people we’re kinder people, we're more loving people and I could not honestly leave that for anything.
Darren: Great job Good luck.