At the front of a dugout or the back of a Lake Wylie ambulance, he was there to help.

At some of the best and worst moments folks had in Lake Wylie, Ken Wilson was there.

Maybe it was a boy beside a box truck trying on his first set of shoulder pads, or a ballplayer making solid contact with a fastball. Maybe it was a life or death emergency.

“Those are the things that he was passionate about,” said Wilson’s wife of more than two decades, Sheela. “He was passionate about serving his community.”

Wilson, 54, died Feb. 11 after suffering in recent years from liver cancer, a complication from a viral infection sustained early in a decades-long career in emergency response.

“It’s not a job everybody is going to want to do,” said Dick Mann, president of River Hills/Lake Wylie EMS. “He was not afraid to go in and be the first one on scene. Sometimes to be the only one on scene.”

Mann and Wilson started working together years ago when Mann was with Piedmont Medical Center and Wilson with a volunteer unit in his native Smyrna. Wilson started as a volunteer fireman at 14. He was a lifetime member of the Smyrna Fire Department where he became assistant chief. He volunteered with York and Hickory Grove EMS units, and was a full-time paramedic in Cherokee, Chester and Richland counties, and in York County with Piedmont.

Wilson retired, naturally, to start volunteering on runs with the Lake Wylie outfit he eventually would lead for two years.

“He was with us for several years both as a paramedic and at one point, as head of the agency,” Mann said.

“We worked more than one call together. Very good, very knowledgeable. He was always ready to serve in a way that you’d expect of a paramedic, and in many cases exceeded what you’d expect.”

Wilson saw emergency response service as far too important to sit around and hope someone else would do it. Mann said the majority of calls he and Wilson worked weren’t life and death scenarios. But plenty were.

“Literally if you don’t do it, they might not make it until the ambulance gets there, and if you’re on the ambulance they may not make it to the hospital driving themselves in the car,” Mann said.

While emergency response is all about action in the moment, Wilson had an eye for seeing the future, too. Like when he married Sheela 22 years ago on Valentine’s Day.

"He always said that he'd never have for forget the day he got married," she said.

A more familiar example to many involves one of the larger groups in Lake Wylie, once just a dream several locals had for finding space for their children to play.

“Most recently his passion was kids and athletics,” Sheela Wilson said. “He thought that was a wonderful way to teach kids, to show them something good, to teach them and help them at being better individuals.”

Wilson was one of several founders of Lake Wylie Athletic Association. He led the group as president for seven years. He also served as board member, safety officer and treasurer. The association released a statement following Wilson’s death calling him “a champion of youth athletics for Lake Wylie.”

“Ken was passionate about baseball and making the program fun and engaging for the kids,” it read. “He worked tirelessly to improve the fields, so that the kids could have a quality experience when playing. In all his roles with LWAA, he always promoted learning fundamentals, providing a fun experience, and always ensuring that LWAA was for the kids.”

The association started back in 2007 with a baseball season in mind. President Jeff Grayson said the group has grown a little since. The most recent seasons fielded 36 basketball teams, 33 in soccer, 17 in baseball and three in a new softball program.

"Roughly 360 (players) in basketball, about the same amount in soccer,” Grayson said. “It goes up to 400 some seasons. Softball is brand new. There's about 250 kids for baseball.”

The growing association was a driving force behind a community sports park plan voters took a major step toward in November, finally fulfilling the vision those early founders brought — a permanent place to play.

Wilson loved the activity of youth sports, of so many people there having fun. He only left the group and the Lake Wylie area when his health demanded it.

"He's been suffering for a while,” Sheela said. “He was the kind of person that never met a stranger. And then as his health was getting worse, he just wanted to come back out to the country.”

The family moved to the other side of Clover a couple of years ago. Wilson "kind of wanted to become a gentleman farmer," Sheela Wilson said. He got back to his roots, and to what mattered so much to him in his life.

“It was all about the kids,” Sheela Wilson said. “He was a devoted father and a devoted grandfather. We have five grandchildren and they were the light of his life."

Years ago, Wilson spent time beside the practice fields at River Hills Community Church, fitting youth players for shoulder pads. Some parents showed their nerves. Few players did. Parents wanted to know what the league was doing to keep the boys safe. Wilson smiled.

Maybe they weren’t aware he spent decades keeping people as safe and well as anyone could, that he was prepared. That he focused not on the danger, but on how much those boys would learn and share by spending a season together.

A lesson he took to heart, for a lifetime.

This story was originally published February 17, 2017 at 4:38 PM with the headline "At the front of a dugout or the back of a Lake Wylie ambulance, he was there to help.."