A Short Bio of Kent Krugh

Personal:    
Born 1955 in Indiana.   Raised in north-west rural Ohio.
Married 1979 to Valerie W. of Ohio. Two daughters.
Lives north of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Attends Grace Evangelical Free Church

Education:
1977   B.S. in Physics from Ohio Northern University
1978   M.S. in Radiological Sciences from University of Cincinnati

Employment:
1978-1982  Associate Instructor and clinical Medical Physicist in Radiological Sciences at University of Cincinnati
1982-1991   Clinical Medical Physicist at The Jewish Hospital, Cincinnati
1991-present  Clinical Medical Physicist at Intercommunity Cancer Center, Cincinnati

Interests:  Jesus Christ, family, photography, music, travel, reading (lately about roses and gardening), gardening, gardening, gardening (roses, perennials, trees, shrubs). Have been growing roses since 1996.

A Much Wordier, and Potentially Very Boring Bio

Early Years

Kent Krugh was born in 1955 in Indiana and raised in rural northwest Ohio.  Growing up on his grandfather's farm afforded plenty of opportunity for watching things grow.  There are early memories of walking down the lane between the newly sown corn fields on warm, bright spring days with grandpa . He would take out his old pocketknife and dig down into the crusted-over earth in search of a few gold kernels of corn, looking for that new white root which meant germination had begun. Soon, the new corn plants would be "popping up all over the field" his grandpa would proudly exclaim.

Later on in spring his grandmother's long, straight row of peonies would produce plump and round, white and pink buds on top of fresh, dark green leaves.  The buds would be thick and heavy enough to start bending the plant towards the yard.  Dozens of ants, for some reason, were always busy scurrying around the ready-to-open flowers. Why?

His mother grew the healthiest plants indoors he ever saw. She had them by the large front window all in a row. She gave the wandering Jews, Swedish ivy, and Christmas cactus rainwater because she thought it surely is better for them than the hard well-water. Mom seemed to always be rooting something is a small glass near the kitchen sink like a carrot-top or that purple velvety-vine.

College and Career

Kent did well in school where math came easy, and English came very hard.  His physics teacher during senior year was such a cool and funny guy. He even took his students to the physics department of his alma mater near Lima: Ohio Northern University. Not knowing just what he wanted to do, Kent majored in Physics, struggled with calculus along the way, and met some good Baptist and Church of the Brethren friends. They kept him going to church and growing in his faith. A summer work-study program during 1976 at the physics department of the University of Cincinnati introduced him to the medical sciences as he did research on the "Effects of High Magnetic Fields on Frog Sartorius-muscle Contraction".  While wandering the halls of the Medical School where he did his daily frog dissections, he noticed a bulletin board with an advertisement for the Graduate Program in Radiological Sciences at the Univ. of Cincinnati. After a few phone calls and an interview, he applied to the Masters Degree program and earned the right in 1978 to call himself a Medical Radiation Physicist!

From 1978 until present Kent has been professionally employed as a clinical Medical Physicist in medical facilities that treat cancer patients with radiation.  He works closely with the physician to plan the radiation therapy, often using CT or MRI scans and computer modeling to optimize a patient's treatment-- hit the cancer hard with radiation while sparing the nearby healthy normal structures like eyes, kidneys, spinal cord, lungs etc.  He also is responsible for the measurement, data collection, calibration and quality control of the high energy linear accelerators used to treat the patient with high energy x-rays or electrons.  Kent also in closely involved with the treatment of prostate cancer by implanting radioactive "seeds" directly into the prostate gland using ultrasound guidance. He uses a computer to plan the placement of the radioactive seeds in the prostate, orders the seeds, assays the seeds, loads the seeds in needles, assists in surgically implanting the seeds, surveys the patients afterwards and then explains to them the radiation precautions they must follow. Seed implant therapy is very time intensive.

Family

His family means all to him.  Nothing, besides his Creator, is more important.  Val, his wife, is his best friend and without her, well, life would be very boring. [Switching to first person now and from the heart] She is the joy of my life, as are my two lovely daughters.  I am deeply devoted to them and their success. [Back to third person]  As far as pets, they have a female Shetland Sheepdog named Bailey, and, (the only other male in the household), a hampster named Dudley.

Gardening

About six years ago in 1993, Kent noticed a spectacular bouquet of hybrid tea roses one of the patients at the center had brought in from their own garden. Every couple months, as the patient came back for follow-up, another bunch of fragrant HTs would appear.  This is the most likely catalyst for the passion and, at times, obsession with roses.  It also has much to do with the tremendous variety of flower and plant form roses display.  And the history of roses and rose development and hybridization is fascinating. Enough there for a lifetime of wonder and study!

Kent lives and gardens in zone 6a on 2+ acres of woodland property, where his most used garden tool has been his chain saw.  It's a wonderful place to live. Woodpeckers cackle overhead, deer browse on young rose canes, robins tear up the mulch in search of earthworms, and Canadian geese soar by honking to one another. An entire family of five raccoons were trapped alive over a ten day period this summer during the drought. They were transported two and a half miles down the road to a farmer's cornfield near an old graveyard where the 'coons certainly didn't bother anybody at the graveyard, but the farmer's yield may have suffered somewhat!  Other favored plants found in the Woodland Rose Garden are: hosta, pulmonaria, ferns, hellebores, clematis, hammamellis, magnolias, tiarella, and Japanese maples.

~ picture of "Old Kent" , another picture of Bewildered "Old Kent"
~ "Dudly", the only other male in the house.
~ "Old Kent" and favorite Nephew



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last updated 2008 March 8