BEING MARK KENNIS

The Local Celeb Has Launched A New Television Program, Continuing His Quest
To Make A Difference.

Mark Kennis hasn't been stoned in 18 months and he couldn't care less.
"Well that may be putting it a little strong," he says, laughing and
slapping his knee. "But I've managed without it. I've had to."

Kennis is a television personality, the star of the types of shows most
people flip by on their way to bigger networks and better-known programs.
His face is familiar on Channel 4, as well as on Channel 15, where he
interviews regular Iowans doing regular Iowa things on his new show, "Iowa
People." He likes to get his fingers in the soil, so to speak, likes to
spend time with the salt of the earth. He runs a magazine. He keeps tabs on
his family. He toils.

He's a big guy with big ideas.

Up until the. spring of 1999, when Drug Enforcement Administration agents
and Polk County sheriff deputies raided his Grimes home on suspicion of
narcotics-related activity, Kennis was smoking marijuana every day, all day
long. Seventeen years of diarrhea, high blood pressure, diabetes, a heart
attack and a serious weight problem had left him searching for relief. He
had smoked pot before when life had thrown him a curve, so he figured he'd
try it again.

"Instead of getting up in the morning and having breakfast, I'd roast a
bowl (of marijuana)," he says. "It made me feel like a new man, redeemed."

"I did it for medical reasons, but I also did it for emotionons, too. I was
depressed from being too big and being ridiculed for it all the time."
Kennis also says smoking marijuana helped him tap into his creative vein.

He grew tired of bigger people being the butt of jokes on shows like "Late
Night with David Letterman," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Married
... With Children." And since pot not only helped him lose nearly 100
pounds, but gave him confidence he'd never had before, he launched the
public access show "Big People News" to give larger folks a forum in which
to discuss issues pertinent to their lives. Three years and 315 shows
later, "Big People News" remains a public access mainstay.

Kennis has loved television ever since the age of 8 when he and his Cub
Scout troop from Grimes visited Des Moines to be on a news program.

"My mom saw me that day. She had gone to the neighbors to watch," he says.
"And the very next night we had television at our house.

"She was divorced from my father and couldn't afford it. But she got it for
me."

Kennis fondly recalls night after night and even day after day of watching
television in his mother's living room.

"If I was at home, I was watching TV," he says, grinning.

Kennis points to a photograph on the wall of his own living room. It's of
him and Jerry Mathers.

"There's me and the Beaver," he says proudly. "He was like a huge part of
my childhood family, and meeting him was a huge thrill."

Television was going to be Kennis' ticket from the very beginning. But when
he was 19, he found himself homeless, sleeping on a cardboard box behind
the Manpower office in downtown Des Moines. He hadn't gotten far, and he
was going nowhere fast. He describes being the first guy in line for daily
jobs every morning at Manpower. He'd dig ditches, load feed bags, do
whatever it took in order to get back on his feet.

"I was really down, really hurting," he says from his living room.
Children's pictures colored in crayon cover the walls and a mountain of
toys sits in one corner. "I had no direction."

Kennis, however, met up with a couple who turned him on to marijuana, got
him absolutely ripped, he says.

"That day was the first time I felt God. I'd heard about him and read about
him, but I'd never truly felt him until that day."

Using the GI Bill, Kennis enrolled at the Brown Institute Broadcast School
in Minneapolis and began to pursue his dream of being on television. He
took whatever job he could to keep the dream alive and worked others to
make ends meet.

Mark Kennis breaks into song, closing his eyes.

I need the Lord's power just to get out of bed. I need the Lord's power to
get my daily bread.

"Why not legalize pot?" he asks. "God gave it to us as a beautiful gift,
and we should be thankful for it. It's a miracle that makes our minds go
and our bodies go. It opens doors.

"I mean, it's considered acceptable to go out and get drunk and be
aggressive or fight or be mean, yet marijuana is illegal. Why? Most people
who smoke just want to sit around and chill and laugh. Marijuana was put on
this earth to help people by taking their pain away. We really need to
think about this more clearly."

Lois Kennis says her husband an idea man.

"I've been married to him for 26 years, and he has a good idea every day,"
she says. Lois is her husband's business partner in television, but focuses
more on their magazine, Iowa Lady, which publishes feature stories about
small businesses around the state Iowa women own or might like to visit.

Lois says her husband has his ups and downs, like anybody else. But he's
always looking for ways to help make life better for people around him.

"He wants to truly make a difference in the world," she says He doesn't
want his life on earth to be a waste.

Kennis' voice is gruff. He says sometimes in the morning he can barely
talk. He has run for governor and president of the United States, never
concerning himself much with local issues. He seeks national - perhaps even
worldwide - audience, and dreams of a mass which does not necessarily love
him, but listens to him. He is looking for a national sponsor for "Iowa
People" (which airs the first Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m. on Channel
15), a Maytag or a Pella Windows or perhaps The Principal Financial Group,
an Iowa business with a big name, so he can get his message out and let the
world meet Iowans, the people he truly adores.

Lois says her husband is simply kind and doesn't have a bad bone in his
entire body.

"I love people," he says matter-of-factly. "I love being out there meeting
them and introducing them to the world. There isn't a soul I find that
isn't interesting in one way or another.

Kennis points at his head. He says there's a lot going on "up there," says
he finally has the direction in his life he's constantly been searching
for. Sure the daily obstacles get in his way and he has to do some
battling, but he's at peace and he's happy.

"Confucius said a true gentleman knows his shortcomings, and I definitely
know mine," he says. "We've gone through some hard times. We almost lost
everything. But surviving, just surviving has helped build character. Life
is such an experience, you know."

Mark Kennis breaks into song, a wince on his face.

It's been a long, long journey. But I'm coming up on the finish line.

He just might be right.