🌲 Kenneth & Carolyn Smith 🌲

🛒 Grandpa Kenneth: the market was his clinic

🎖️ Kenneth Smith was a veteran and a bodybuilder, strong in body and steady in character. 🏪 With my grandmother Carolyn, he ran Ken and Sons Select Market on Avenue U in Seaside, Oregon (today known as Seaside Market).

🥕 Behind that counter, I first learned lifestyle medicine, long before I knew its name. Grandpa brought healthy food to our local community. 🤝 He was dependable, and he was reachable. People knew where to find him and knew he would be there. He loved everyone, and he wanted everyone to flourish.

🔑 Grandpa told me he opened the store every single day, and that he never took a vacation. The doors were open because he was there, and he was there because his neighbors were counting on him.

💡 That is the whole idea, simply put: good food, within reach, offered by someone who cares. His example is why Kitchen Monk is building the Lifestyle Medicine Grocery Store Initiative.

🌼 Grandma Carolyn: the gardener of our family

🇸🇪 My Swedish grandmother, Carolyn Smith, built and kept the market alongside Grandpa for all those years. 🕊️ In time, she followed him home to heaven.

🌻 Grandma was always out in the yard, tending the gardens in the backyard. She understood flourishing, and she understood where it comes from: the Bible. Long before I became a nurse practitioner, she taught me what flourishing nursing really is. You show up, you tend what’s growing, and you keep coming back.

🧸 Grandma always made sure the store had a cheerful toy section. She knew children deserve some joy, even if it was only for the few minutes they spent visiting her grocery store. That’s how much she loved children, me included. I was lucky to be one of them.

😊 Today we’d call that positive psychology. Grandma just called it love.

🏪 The history of Ken and Sons Select Market

Here is the story of the store on Avenue U, from public records and local news, with my family’s own memories marked as ours.

• 🏗️ 1951: the store first opens in Seaside as part of the Ocean Vista Shopping Center, under earlier owners.
• 🌲 1967: Ken and Carolyn Smith take over the store and make it their own, renaming it Ken and Sons Select Market.
• 🔑 About 50 years: a family-run neighborhood market. (Family memory) Grandpa opens the doors every single day and never takes a vacation, and Grandma keeps a toy section stocked so every child who visits finds a little joy.
• 📰 2018: the Seaside Signal profiles Ken and Sons as a friendly, family-run neighborhood market where locals find just about everything they need.
• 🤝 2019: after more than five decades, the Smith family sells the store. It continues as Hamilton Market.
• 🏪 2023: new owners rename it Seaside Market, and the store on Avenue U keeps serving the town.

📚 Dates and ownership history come from the Seaside Signal, credited and linked below. The daily openings, the toy section and the gardens are our family’s own memories.

🛡️ Two Flourishing EVERgreen Guardians™

🌍 Mother Teresa served the poorest of Calcutta by showing up, day after day, with love. My grandparents did their own West Coast version in a small Oregon beach town.

• 🛒 Grandpa Ken: one open door, every single day, for about fifty years. No title, no stage, just a grocer who never stopped tending his neighbors.
• 🌻 Grandma Carolyn: gardens tended in the backyard, faith rooted in the Bible, and a toy section so every child who walked in found some joy.

🌲 That is why Kitchen Monk honors Kenneth Smith and Carolyn Smith as Flourishing EVERgreen Guardians™, in memoriam, alongside our Honorary EVERgreen Guardians.

🌱 What a community tended with care can become

Ken and Carolyn didn’t hold a title in health care. They practiced it anyway, in the most ordinary place a town has. Here is what I learned from them:

• 🥬 Put good food where people already are. Health starts on the shelf and at the table, not only in the clinic.
• 🔑 Be dependable. Open the door every day. A community flourishes around people who show up.
• 🚪 Be reachable. Care that people can’t reach isn’t care yet.
• 🧸 Make room for joy. Children deserve delight, even in a quick trip to the store.
• 🌻 Tend the garden. Flourishing grows from daily care, rooted in faith.
• 🫶 Love everyone. Want every neighbor to flourish, not just some.
• ⏳ Stay for the long haul. Fifty years of small, faithful days add up to a legacy.

🌲 A garden doesn’t flourish by accident. Someone waters it, weeds it, and comes back tomorrow. That is what my grandparents did for Seaside, and it’s what Kitchen Monk™ hopes to do for every community it reaches.

For Kenneth and Carolyn Smith, who tended a community with care.
Your roots hold us still. 🌲
— Nathanael Elijah Smith, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM

This tribute reflects my family and my Christian faith. Kitchen Monk’s food, health, and community resources are for everyone, of every faith and background.