🕯️ In loving memory · 🇺🇸 America at 250
🎖️ Kenneth Smith
U.S. Veteran • Family Patriarch • Keeper of the Market
🛒 Fifty-two years at Ken and Sons Market, 250 Avenue U, Seaside, Oregon (1967–2019). 🌲 My grandfather, and the reason I believe good health starts with a neighbor who shows up.
🛒 The Market on Avenue U
☀️ For more than fifty years, the lights came on every morning at the little market on Avenue U in Seaside, Oregon. My grandfather, Kenneth Smith, became its owner in 1967. “The opportunity came along here in Seaside, so we took it,” he told the Seaside Signal. He and my grandmother, Carolyn, kept that store serving their neighbors until he retired in 2019, fifty-two years later.
👨👩👧👦 Before him, the Biamont family had run the market under another name. Grandpa first called it Ken’s Shopping Center. Later, as his sons joined him behind the counter, it became Ken and Sons. It was a family store in every sense: children, in-laws, and grandchildren all worked there over the years. “They help make it what it is,” he said.
💪 The first seventeen years were hard. Seaside was small, and business rose and fell with the seasons. Grandpa kept going, and as the town grew, “things started going better and better.” Neighbors could walk to the store instead of crossing the highway. Visitors from nearby hotels and vacation rentals came back year after year, and generations of local families grew up shopping there. A 2018 Seaside Signal column called it a “friendly neighborhood market” and described Ken as “always cheerful and upbeat.”
📜 The Market Through the Years
| Before 1967 | 🏪 The Biamont family runs a neighborhood market at 250 Avenue U in Seaside, Oregon, under another name (reported as Ocean Vista Market). |
| 1967 | 🔑 Kenneth Smith becomes owner and proprietor and names it Ken’s Shopping Center. |
| The early years | 🌧️ About seventeen hard years. Seaside is small and seasonal, but Ken opens the doors every day. |
| Ken and Sons | 👨👦 As his sons join him, the store becomes Ken and Sons. Carolyn, the children, in-laws, and grandchildren all help run it. |
| Growing years | 📈 Tourism grows and “things started going better and better.” Locals walk over, and visitors return year after year. |
| 2018 | 📰 The Seaside Signal calls it a “friendly neighborhood market” and Ken “always cheerful and upbeat.” |
| September 2019 | 🤝 At 87, after 52 years, Ken retires. New owners Natasha Montero and Mike Hamilton take on “that ‘mom and pop’ torch,” and the store becomes Hamilton Market on September 9, 2019. |
| Today | 🌲 The market on Avenue U still serves the neighborhood, now as Seaside Market. |
Fifty-two years. One address. Open every single day.
🌱 What the Market Taught Me
🗝️ Grandpa once told me he opened the store every single day and never took a vacation. That faithfulness was his ministry. Long before I knew the words “lifestyle medicine,” I was learning them at his counter: put good food within reach of your neighbors, be dependable, be there when people need you, and greet everyone as if they matter, because they do.
🧸 Grandma Carolyn kept a small toy section in the store, because she believed children deserve joy. 🌼 At home she was always in the backyard tending her gardens. She understood flourishing from the Bible, and from her I learned what flourishing nursing really is: tending life with patience, until it grows.
🕊️ Grandpa and Grandma have both gone home to be with the Lord. Every time I put healthy food in someone’s hands, or show up for a patient who needs me, I am carrying the lamp they kept burning on Avenue U.
😄🌴 A Great Sense of Humor, and a Permanent Vacation
😂 Grandpa LOVED humor. A good laugh was never far away when he was around.
🌴 And here is the part that makes me smile: the man who opened his store every single day for fifty-two years and never once took a vacation loved the thought of going to paradise for a permanent vacation. Well, Grandpa, you finally got one. ☀️ No early mornings, no inventory, no closing time. I like to think you are enjoying every minute of it, and still telling a good joke.
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” (Proverbs 17:22) 💛
🇫🇷 “I Was in France” — From Avenue U to Normandy
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
🎖️ Grandpa told me he had served in France. I carried those words with me for years, the way grandchildren hold on to the few sentences their grandparents share about their years in uniform.
🌊 Years later, I visited Normandy with a French friend I first met in Quebec City. Normandy is where, on June 6, 1944, Allied soldiers came ashore to begin the liberation of France, and where thousands of young Americans never came home. Standing there, so far from Avenue U, I thought of my grandfather: of a young man in uniform, far from Oregon, and of everything he came home to build.
🪔 Whether a soldier’s boots touch French soil in war or in the uneasy peace that follows, the call is the same: to stand watch for people you may never meet. Grandpa answered that call. Then he came home and answered it again, every morning, for fifty-two years, unlocking the door on Avenue U so his neighbors would never go without.
📝 A note on the record: Grandpa’s exact dates and unit of military service are still being confirmed through his service records. Until they are, we honor him as he always deserved to be honored: as a U.S. Veteran, a family patriarch, and the keeper of the market.
⭐ 1776 • 2026 ⭐
🇺🇸 America at 250: A Lamp of Liberty, Passed Hand to Hand
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
🎆 In 2026, the United States of America marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, ordinary farmers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen staked their lives on a simple, dangerous idea: that freedom comes from God, not from kings, and that no ruler has the right to take it away.
🗽 Thomas Jefferson put it plainly in 1800: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Those words are carved inside the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., and they are still the right words for every generation that must decide, again, whether liberty is worth defending.
🔔 The Liberty Bell carries a line from Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Liberty is meant to be proclaimed, and then protected, for everyone.
🛒 My grandfather’s life fits inside that story. He put on his country’s uniform. Then he came home to Seaside, took over a small neighborhood market, made it a family business, and kept its doors open to his neighbors for fifty-two years. Freedom is not only won on battlefields. It is also kept, every ordinary morning, by people who show up for one another.
🫡 To Those Who Serve
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” (Galatians 5:1)
🇺🇸 Kitchen Monk™ stands with the men and women of the United States military, past and present: the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Guardians, and Coast Guardsmen who have answered the call. We also stand with the families who wait for them at home, and with the nurses, medics, and doctors who care for them when they are wounded.
🪔 From the patriots of 1776, to the Americans who came ashore in Normandy in 1944, to every veteran who simply did his duty and came home to build a life, the lamp of liberty has been carried by people willing to stand against tyranny in all its forms. Florence Nightingale taught the world that caring for soldiers is sacred work, and we honor those who serve by caring for them, their families, and the communities they come home to.
🎖️ To every veteran reading this: thank you.
Honoring Kenneth Smith, U.S. Veteran, and all who have served.
🌲 In loving memory of Kenneth and Carolyn Smith.
“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21)
📚 Sources
- Seaside Signal, “Ken and Sons bids fond farewell to grocery business” (Sept. 5, 2019)
- Seaside Signal, “Hamilton Market to debut in Seaside” (Aug. 28, 2019)
- Seaside Signal, “Friendly folks and just about all you need” (Nov. 8, 2018)
- Family memories are Nathanael’s own.
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. Mentioning the U.S. military, America250, or any organization here does not imply their sponsorship or endorsement.
