RED KOHNKE
MARY ANN AND RED KOHNKE (CENTER, FAR RIGHT) WITH AMERICAN PRESS EMPLOYEE SAM GUILLORY (FAR LEFT)
Red Kohnke was born in 1930 New Orleans and weathered his youth there. The product of a harder era in a big city, Red spent his early years molded by the heart of Louisiana’s largest metropolis. He read prolifically throughout his life, even as a child. By age 11, he and his friends would sell sodas at the Tulane games and use the change they earned to buy cigarettes, which they smoked under the stadium. This resulted in a life-long, heavy smoking habit and likely contributed his early death.
As a young adult, Red began writing and working for the New Orleans Picayune. Always drawn to the outdoors, he fell in love with covering the New Orleans Big Game Rodeo, and his sense of adventure encouraged him to seize any opportunity that came his way. He embraced the era’s advancements in photography and learned all he could about the modern cameras of the time, ultimately becoming an award-winning artist and well-known photojournalist as well as a gifted writer. He went to typeset and engraving school in Chicago, and that skillset opened the door to papers across the country.
In 1957, Kohnke came to SWLA to cover the damage from Hurricane Audrey and was the first to photo-document the dead bodies at the Port of Lake Charles on workboats ferrying the morose cargo up from storm-decimated Cameron.
After covering the storm, Red found a home in our area and spent 49 years as a department head overseeing engraving and writing the column Outdoors for the American Press. He married Mary Ann, a St. Pat’s RN, and the couple reared two children in the Lake Area.
I met Red as a child and had the privilege of getting to know him to some extent as a young adult. He and I both served two terms as president of the SWLA Fishing Club, and obviously we both have had the honor of writing outdoors in this beautiful area. Both avid outdoorsmen, we each have a younger son and older daughter a little over a year apart. Both of us prioritized bringing our children up outside.
The similarities end there. Red was a real journalist, a consummate newspaper man, an old-school treasure from a bygone era. Bill Shearman, secondgeneration member of the family that long owned the American Press, wrote a beautiful tribute to Red after his death in 2002. Like so many readers of our area, Red served as a bridge to the Shearman family’s outdoor adventures too.
Kohnke was an avid fisherman who loved and consistently participated in our Fourth of July Rodeo, The New Orleans Big Game Rodeo, and The Intracoastal City Tarpon Rodeo. In May of 1965, Mary Ann won the Lady’s Division with the largest fish of the tournament. She loved to fish, too, but was often plagued with seasickness. As a nurse, she was able to work with doctors to create a special “concoction” which allowed her to push through. It was suggested I not ask. (Hey, it was the mid-‘60s; who knows?)
Red’s son, Buddy Kohnke, talking about his dad, is quick to describe a normal family man whose ordinary SWLA life was full of larger-than-life events. Red loved to cook and eat. I guess we have that in common, too. Occurrences as basic as the family frying fish for dinner would end up with pictures of the children in a national magazine article about making king mackerel balls.
Buddy got to travel with his father fly fishing for trout in Ireland and on trips to Colorado. Often, it was hunting or fishing here. Buddy recalls at one point they all got new Faulk Duck calls. Red had helped the owner write and prepare some promotional material and got compensated with a lifetime supply. Buddy relayed a fond memory of he and his father having to outrun multiple storms while speck fishing 10 miles south of Cameron. “Dad loved the excitement of it. That might have been one of his last trips,” Buddy said.
RED’S BOAT ‘THE MISS PRINt’ … WITH IT’S SIGNATURE BACKWARDS “N”
Red was a member of the Outdoor Writer’s Association of America in an age where the line between outdoor writer and outdoor legend was thin. His contemporaries in the small world of OWAA would have included Lee and Joan Wulff, Mark Sosin, Lefty Kreh and Stu Apte. Many of the East Coast and Florida writers are in the International Gamefish Association Hall of Fame. The Gulf Coast and West Coast guys were never recognized with the respect they deserved. Red was instrumental in bringing many National Outdoor Writer’s and South East Outdoor Writer’s Association conferences to the lake area. This helped put our estuary, our outdoor tourism and the area’s numerous guides on the map, so to speak. It contributed greatly to the development of our coastal leisure economy. Many national and regional outdoor organizations still consistently gather in our area to enjoy our natural resources.
Red was also an early voice for conservation in our area. Even things as simple as picking up trash and plastic were new concepts in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Late in life he developed a distain for the ‘90s jet ski fad and was vocal about it.
Red had a sense of humor about his life and the character he played within it. He christened his boat, a beautiful red 20- foot SeaCraft, The Miss Print. The “N” was backwards — a subtle joke to those who knew him. Buddy says the guy who was doing the lettering couldn’t wait to get the boat off his property. Random people driving down the road kept stopping in his shop to helpfully point out the anomaly assuming he had made a mistake.
There’s a spinoff of The Office streaming online called The Paper. The premise is built around a middle-aged paper products salesman who receives a golden ticket within his company. He uses the rare opportunity to revive a failing Toledo newspaper.
Within the first few episodes, I became incredibly cognizant of how privileged I am to be able to still be published “in print” during this strange era of digital media.
Now in my 50s, I feel like a dinosaur most days, anyway. As a young man, I had aspirations of being the next Ernest Hemingway or Jack London.
As a young adult, I was into Kerouac, Brautigan, Salinger and Hunter S. Thompson. But when I matured as a writer and as a man, I realized my playful writing style, love of the outdoors, coastal lifestyle, and sense of humor mixed with an increasing veil of nostalgia may better equate to the writings of Carl Hiaasen or John Geirach.
This disposable age serves to magnify the value of and the need to celebrate the men that came before us, the writers who served our area so well for decades with love and dedication through the faint aroma of fresh paper and bleeding ink.
Red Kohnke was Southwest Louisiana Outdoors. It’s an honor to remember his spirit,
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