In Memory of Rick Ketcher

Richard Theron Ketcher Jr. Born July 26th, 1947. Died September 1st, 2025. Rick was preceded in death by his father (Richard Ketcher), mother (Dorothy (Hartung) Ketcher), and brother (Mike). He is survived by his brother, David (Janis (Otte) Ketcher), and by his nieces Dana Ketcher (Ryan Tokarz), Sara Lemke (Eric), and Janelle Ketcher (Kyle Jordan) and nephews Alex Miller and Evan (Laura) Miller. 

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In high school Rick was a three sport athlete and went to Simpson college on a football scholarship. After college, where he was known as “two hundred and twenty pounds of twisting turning steel,” he was given an audition with the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers found they didn’t need all that twisting turning steel and his time in training camp was short lived. 

Soon after the tryout Rick was ordered to to report to his induction center where he was deemed physically fit and was loaded onto a bus and shipped off to Viet Nam. During his tour of Viet Nam Rick distinguished himself as a valiant warrior and was awarded the Bronze Star with the ‘V’ Device for heroism in combat after he raced across an open field in an intense firefight to hoist a fellow soldier, who laid wounded and stuck, onto his shoulders and brought him back to the relative safety of his entrenched platoon. He was later awarded the prestigious Silver Star (a medal just below the Medal of Honor), again for his heroics when the camp’s perimeter was breached and he engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat. This battle nearly cost Rick his life. He woke out of a coma in a hospital in Japan.

After he recovered from his injuries he was released from the military and Rick took an airline job in Los Angeles for a short time but was attracted to the mountains of California and the glitter of the gambling industry in North Lake Tahoe. There he managed to secure a job working on the casino floor in a small Tahoe casino. While back in Simpson College Rick discovered he had a knack for playing poker and poker became his game of choice in the local Nevada casinos. Because he had established himself as a consistently winning player, in the late 1970’s, Rick took the leap, gave up his job and began playing poker for a living. Shortly after making the decision to become a poker professional, Rick and two friends went on a transformational road trip to Great Falls, Montana to play poker in a big annual game at the Montana State Fair. It was during that trip Rick realized he could travel, see new places, meet new people and pay his way playing poker. That opened up a new dimension in his life.

For the next forty years, Rick made a solid living playing the game he loved and lived his life on his own terms. He was widely respected as an excellent poker player but moreover as a man of the highest character with the greatest integrity. At one point he owned a beautiful home with a spectacular, panoramic view of Lake Tahoe. For years he was a terrific outfielder on a top local softball team as well as on numerous traveling tournament teams. Though he never married, Rick had several serious romantic relationships that evolved into significant lifelong friendships. Many of his pals remained closely connected to Rick long after he left Tahoe. Each year Rick and his core group of friends would gather for a Super Bowl reunion at various locations between the Mendocino Coast in the north and Mexico to the south. 

Rick’s passing will leave a huge hole in the hearts of so many who were touched by his caring nature, his kindness and the sparkle that always entered a room at the same time he did.

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Please share your stories of Rick in the comments below. Thank you to Glen Garrod for writing this obituary — please consider buying his book Missouri & Me: A Poker Odyssey which includes a full chapter on Rick.

COLLECTIVE EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH, DYING & GRIEF THROUGH CREATIVITY

The following resources are projects, artworks, and reflections on the intersection of death, dying and grief through multiple perspectives or through collective experience. Please email me at j@janelleketcher.com if you have any suggestions of resources that can be added!

AIDS Memorial Quilt

The Quilt was conceived in November of 1985 by long-time San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual candlelight march honoring these men. While planning the 1985 march, he learned that over 1,000 San Franciscans had been lost to AIDS. He asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS. At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on ladders taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. The wall of names looked like a patchwork quilt.

Inspired by this sight, Jones and friends made plans for a larger memorial.  A little over a year later, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the disease. This meeting of devoted friends and lovers served as the foundation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Photo from National AIDS Memorial Website

PHONE OF THE WIND

Positioned atop a grassy hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a phone booth in Otsuchi, Japan allows living people to call their dead relatives and loved ones. Called the “phone of the wind,” the disconnected rotary phone positioned inside a glass booth allows callers to send verbal messages to those they’ve lost, which the wind then carries away.

Wikimedia Commons

After the End

Candy Chang and James A. Reeves’ After the End is a public installation in Green-Wood Cemetery’s Historic Chapel dedicated to contemplating loss in all forms—the loss of loved ones, relationships, health, and worlds we once knew—as well as the practices that have helped us endure. Candy Chang and James A. Reeves invite visitors to anonymously share their experience on a scroll and place it upon an illuminated altar. Lit from within, each response embodies the form of a devotional candle, and together they create an evolving field of light. Visitors can read the handwritten reflections in the altar or sit in the apse and watch an ever-growing cycle of projected reflections above while oriented towards the greater community. Set to an original ambient score by Stephen Baker, the space gathers the multiplicity of ways we weather the difficult transitions in our lives. Inspired by the role of light in religious ceremonies and the visions of science fiction, After the End offers a refuge that reminds us we are not alone as we mourn the end of one reality and enter the next.

Photo from artist’s website by Walter Wlodarczyk

Memorialize the Movement

Memorialize the Movement is an ongoing initiative to collect and preserve the plywood protest art that was created in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020. Their goal is to create a safe and inclusive permanent space for people to reflect on the events that occurred during the summer of 2020 and ensure that we keep this Civil Rights movement going through this art.

Image from Unicorn Riot

BEFORE I DIE

Before I Die is a global art project that invites people to reflect on death and share their personal aspirations in public. Originally created by Candy Chang in New Orleans after the death of a loved one, there are now over 5,000 walls around the world.

Photo from Before I Die

Ghost Bikes

Ethan Brooks’s short documentary, "Ghost Bike," is the story of Brooklyn resident Mirza Molberg, who began volunteering with his local ghost bike project in 2011. In 2016, his girlfriend, Lauren Davis, was fatally struck by a car on her bicycle en route to work. Hours after the accident, Molberg stopped at the site of Davis’s death. “There was no evidence [of the accident],” he said. “I created Lauren’s ghost bike the following week.” Much like the spectral bikes themselves, the film renders a personal tragedy universal.

THE ARTISTS’ GRIEF DECK

A response to the COVID-19 pandemic, The ARTISTS’ GRIEF DECK is a set of 60 medium format ‘flashcards’ that are individually designed by artists, sometimes in collaboration with grief workers. One side displays an original artwork, created by artists from around the world responding to our open call, and on the reverse is a ‘grieving prompt.’ These are memorial and processual actions that give the individual something to do – a gesture, a tiny performance, a movement, an act of mindfulness – in memoriam for someone or something whose loss they are grieving. As a toolkit, the decks have been disbursed for free to grief workers and community organizations, and can be purchased here.

Water Ballet

Friends honor artist’s last wishes with water ballet in a Seattle kiddie pool. Some prefer funerals, some prefer having their ashes scattered, but local artist Briar Bates chose a different way to commemorate her death — instructing her friends to perform a water ballet in the wading pool at Volunteer Park. Read the full story here.