Our Differences

Not! Your Average Joe I chose to interview the City of Oakley Mayor, because I recently became interested in city government after completing the Oakley Leadership Academy training course last fall to familiarize myself with the operations of each city departments and the workings of our city government. I am involved in my community and have run into Kevin on several occasions at community events and fundraisers over the past ten years. I admire Kevin’s passion and dedication in making a difference in our community. I am eager to share with you his story and tell you about the obstacles and opportunities that made Kevin the lucky, successful man he is today. In Kevin’s story, it was the luck of being born at the right place and time, as Bill Gates, and his willingness to put in 10,000 hours of meaningful work. Reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”, I now have a different understanding as why a person’s cultural dimensions or birth-date can present them with special opportunities that can have significant impact on various aspects of a person’s success. Gladwell has convinced me that certain setbacks and challenges are not a prerequisite for a successful life, even though a successful person can appear to have had the Midas touch throughout life, success is not just earned on one’s individual merits; Kevin was presented with extraordinary lucky opportunities and series of lucky events in his life. Kevin was born in July 1955 in Hayward, Ca. He attended ordinary public schools and was, according to his mother, a B+ average student. Kevin’s mother, Mabel Ann, still lives in the suburban home, where he was raised and Kevin told me that his neighborhood where he grew up was filled with lots of post war kids in the 1950's and 1960's. Kevin’s dad, Kenneth Romick, was a chief draftsman and estimator for Herrick Iron Corp in Hayward. They built many of the high rises in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 60's and 70's. Kevin’s mother was a stay-at-home mother, who eventually morphed into a writer and publicist. She used to write a Sunday column for the Hayward Daily Review. She continues to write a blog today, Alzheimer’s 24-7 and is working on a book about caring for Alzheimer’s patients. Kevin’s paternal grandfather emigrated from Croatia as a child and met his grandmother in the Croatian side of town in Pueblo, Colorado. His maternal grandfather is English, Scottish, and Irish. His mom’s mother is Norwegian and Swedish. Kevin's grandparents settled in Pueblo in the early 1920's during a time that the town had been destroyed by severe flooding. Many Croatian families began settling in the town as Mormon missionaries as early as the early 1840's. The flooding and depression had effected the town pretty hard by the 1930's however it was the perfect time for his twenty year old grandfather to find work in the booming steel mills and the demand of modern architecture structures to replace old buildings. His grandparents had the advantage of living a town with a steel mill which experienced an even bigger boom during the 1940's because of WWII. In August of 1973, Kevin headed off to Ricks College, in Rexburg, Idaho, to study pre-law and play football. In early September, a few days prior to his first football game, he was in an automobile accident. According to reports, the car rolled end over end three and a half times, and during this time, Kevin was thrown from the vehicle. Kevin suffered numerous injuries and fractured his skull in three places. Kevin was in a coma for three days following the accident. Although there was no permanent brain damage, the brain was injured. As the brain healed, he suffered memory loss and for some inexplicable reason lost many of his childhood memories. He says he can remember people and places; just the memories associated with those people and places are gone. Kevin later attended Brigham Young University and studied Economics. He says he can’t recall the memories during this time as why he changed his career plans, as his brain was still healing in his twenties. After Kevin left college, he started working for a construction company in Utah, but being the California boy he is, Kevin did not last one Winter. He moved back to California and started working as a laborer, with a general contractor. One day, he was on top of a ladder on top of a single layer of scaffolding, and the ladder moved and he fell, breaking his elbow. Kevin took some time off to heal and then went back to work. He later had issues with the elbow that required surgery to remove bone fragments. Soon, more issues with the elbow required a second surgery. This time, the state department of rehabilitation (DOR), stepped in and told him that because of his injury he could not return to work in construction and classified Kevin as having a permanent disability and required him to select a new occupation. Kevin selected computer training from an eligible training provider list (ETPL) presented to him from the DOR. Kevin’s first job in computers was at Reynolds and Reynolds in Walnut Creek as a mainframe computer operator. Kevin stated that it was a great time to be in this field, in the mid-80's, since the personal computers hadn’t yet arrived, and there was room to grow and advance. Kevin shared with me that he was amazed at how easy it was to impress people, show up to work every day, on time and show a little initiative by taking on additional tasks, and that was all it took to quickly advance into management. Kevin met his wife, Mary Good, at Reynolds and Reynolds but didn’t ask her out until his last day on the job. Kevin is currently the Mayor of Oakley and has been on the Oakley City Council since 2004. Kevin never dreamed of being the Mayor of Oakley, but as the opportunity came, he took advantage of it. Kevin received The Oakley Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year Award in 2007. Kevin works full-time as a Manager of Mainframe Operations and Optimization for USS-POSCO, in Pittsburg, CA since March 1998. USS-POSCO is a successful steel manufacturing plant and currently employs over 700 employees, and nets over one billion in sales each year. Kevin is a community philanthropist and the co-founder and current president of Friends of Oakley. Friends of Oakley – founded in 2009-provides Christmas baskets during the holidays for over 300 families with food items and wrapped presents for children in the family up to the age of seventeen. Kevin also sits on boards of several other organizations: Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA), Eastern Contra Costa Transit Authority – Tri Delta Transit Authority (ECCDTA), Opportunity Junction, and The TRANSPLAN Committee. Kevin starts work between 6:30am and 7:00am at USS-POSCO until about 5pm. He shared with me that he never goes to bed early because after work, he normally has meetings or events with several of the organizations he belongs to and that he typically has his weekends scheduled tied up with community events. He has been active in most of these organizations since 1999. If you didn't get to know Kevin personally like I do, you might think that he has accomplished his success all on his own, but as Gladwell explains is the fact that there are hidden advantages, rare opportunities and culture legacies that allowed Kevin to work hard. Gladwell argues that people view success all wrong and then he explains how for some, there is hidden advantages behind success and or special opportunities and for some, hard work. Kevin believes that his persistence has allowed him to take the God-given talent and intelligence that he has been afforded and combine it with the education he has accumulated to reach his current status in life. Kevin’s advantage was that he was born in Alameda County in 1955; he was provided the opportunity to work with computers long before computers were accessible to the public, just like Bill Gates. Kevin is dedicated to his job and has the willingness to spend countless hours and efforts into several organizations in our community, all which have made him a true community Outliers. Kevin, like Bill Gates, had the advantage to use computers when they were new and put in 10,000 hours of hard work and gave him the skills to develop true grit. If Kevin hadn’t gotten into that car 43 years ago or climbed to the top of that ladder, his life would certainly be different today.