Wearing
jeans, a long sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a
'baseball'' hat to cover his balding head he looked like he just
stepped off a semi. In his black tux with his white bow tie he looked
like theconductor , choir director and professional singer he was. He
traveled around the world with the Robert Shaw Chorale, recorded 21
albums, appeared on the Dinah Shore, Arthur Godfrey, Perry Como TV
shows and appeared with the Fred Waring Pennsylvanians. For 21 years he
held the position Director of University Choirs for Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale, in Carbondale, Illinois. With all this when you met Robert Wilson Kingsbery you knew he was just a 'country boy from Mississippi'!

Robert,
Bob, Kingsbery, mainly "Dr. K", whatever name you called him you knew
he was a man's man, a guy you could always rely on and when he called
you "Sport" you felt honored.  Nothing could keep him from football,
especially Ole Miss, not even sex. He could be in the middle of sex but
he would have at least one eye on the TV watching a game.

I met Dr. K in the middle of Overton Park and there was an instant 'something'. No we weren't lovers or soul
mates but, if there is such a thing, soul brothers. He used my
townhouse as his base inMemphis whenever he could get away from Carbondale. He came and went and the second bedroom was his whenever he wanted or needed it.

One
of my most favorite memories of Dr. K was the night I took him to his
first ever performance of "A Chorus Line" in St. Louis at the Opera
House on April 7, 1978 and his reaction was exactly like mine the first
time I saw it. We were staying at the Holiday Inn where the cast was
staying. I don't know if it was that night he met Buddy Vest, who
played Zach, the director but 5 years later it was Buddy who gave Dr. K
tickets to see ACL celebrate becoming the longest running show on Broadway and he took me
to see it with him. In the picture on the left Buddy is in between me
and Dr. K.

Dr.
K taught me a lot about being a Southern gentleman and what the South
was about. We had madcap experiences all over Memphis, many X rated,
going to the Mid-South Fair, seeing the Royal Barge during the Cotton
Carnival, going to the theatre, including the night we saw Gig Young at
Memphis U, just some of the things I will be talking about in the next
Memphis post. Dr. K came to visit me almost every year when I moved to
Fort Lauderdale and I went to see him in Carbondale the year Bill and I drove up to St. Louis.

Chuck
called me to tell me that Dr. K had died at the age of 60. He had a
heart attack under circumstances that I won't go into but he died the
way he would have wanted to if he had a choice.

I miss Robert Wilson Kingsbery alias Dr. K, the good old country boy from Mississippi who never forgot his roots and treated everyone he
knew and/or met as a relative, a friend, an important person, someone
special and was a very special friend to me and I look at his picture everyday and remember the man, the person, the talent he was.