The Men Who Built My Foundation
- Quiet Ink
- Nov 8
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 11
A Tribute to Leon Armantrout - Architect, Kenneth King - Civil Engineer, and Gary Poling - Landscape Architect, all whom I worked for as a teenager living in Redlands, CA.
The Walk Across the Street
The air was thick with the scent of cutting oil that afternoon — the kind that seeps into your clothes and stays long after the workday ends. I was 15, standing in a hardware store that had been on the same Redlands corner since 1890, trying to make peace with a pipe-threading machine that had just baptized me in grease. The oil splattered across my shirt was my breaking point.
Without thinking twice, I walked across the street to a modest brick office with Leon Armantrout-Architect stenciled on the door. I didn’t have a portfolio. I didn’t have a résumé. What I had was stubbornness — and an urge to build something that didn’t smell like steel and sweat. I decided I needed two jobs.
When I stepped inside, Leon looked up from a drafting table surrounded by sunlight. He didn’t ask for my qualifications. He just asked, “What can I do for you?” “I want to be an architect,” I said. He smiled. “Then you’re in the right place.” The next day, I was back for an interview. To my shock, he hired me. Before I knew it, I had a key to his office and a seat at the table. I wasn’t just allowed to dream — I was expected to.
Leon Armantrout — The Architect Who Designed With Light
Leon Armantrout was a mid-century modern architect who helped define the look and feel of Redlands. His office on Vine Street became a laboratory for light, shadow, and structure.
He designed everything from churches and homes to industrial buildings and the now-famous ESRI campus, where his award-winning Café building remains a model of balance between technology and nature.
Leon also rebuilt the Redlands United Methodist Church after the fire of 1967 — a project that fused his architectural precision with spiritual warmth.
Leon had an almost mystical relationship with daylight. One morning, he led me outside with a model of the Santa Clarita United Methodist Church and pointed toward the rising sun. “See this?” he said, rotating the model. “Architecture begins with how light enters space. Everything else follows.”
That day, I learned that light is not decoration — it is structure.
Within my first week, Leon trusted me to finish the church model, photograph it, and even help present it to the client. Imagine that — a teenager with a key to an architectural studio, presenting work beside a man who would go on to shape an entire city’s skyline.
Leon’s Redlands was a world of form and purpose. His portfolio ranged from the LA-Z-Boy Factory, to the Mitten Building renovation, to countless homes in Smiley Heights. He practiced architecture as an act of stewardship — preserving, improving, and enlightening.
When I look back, I realize Leon didn’t just give me a job; he handed me the blueprint of a life.
Kenneth King — The Engineer Who Made Water Dance
By the time I turned eighteen, my curiosity had grown restless again. That’s when I found Kenneth King, a civil engineer whose mind was as fluid as the projects he designed.
Kenneth was a Redlands native, born in nearby Mentone, and educated at UC Berkeley. He spent fifty years shaping the infrastructure of California — from residential pools to massive water-recreation projects, including attractions for Disneyland, Wild Rivers, and Raging Waters.
Working under him, I learned the language of flow: grades, hydraulics, and the poetry of controlled water. He taught me that water, like architecture, has personality — it can roar, ripple, or rest in silence. In addition to water the education in retaining walls, geology, footing design, patio design and more were invaluable lessons at such a young age.
King’s office, at 10 East Vine Street, was a place of calculation and imagination. My tasks ranged from tracing grading plans to studying the geometry of water slides. But beneath the math, there was art. Kenneth saw beauty in precision.
He often said, “If you shape water correctly, it will behave. If you fight it, it wins.”
That principle — respect what you control — would follow me through every design and every business decision that came after. Kenneth King engineered more than water systems; he engineered resilience.
Gary W. Poling — The Landscape Architect Who Gave Nature a Voice
At nineteen, I was hungry to complete the trinity — architecture, engineering, and now, landscape. That’s when I met Gary Poling, another Redlands visionary.
Gary wasn’t interested in decoration; he was interested in dialogue — the conversation between buildings and the land they stand on. Under his guidance, I began working on projects for the City of Loma Linda and the City of Redlands redevelopment, creating city street standards, Seccombe Park, Monroe Park, residential landscapes, and commercial site designs.
He was a mentor who trusted me with real responsibility before I even realized I was ready for it. While Leon had taught me to see light, and Kenneth had taught me to shape water, Gary taught me to listen — to wind, to soil, to space between the structures.
He used to say, “A building without landscape is only half a thought.
Together, those men — an architect, an engineer, and a landscape designer — formed the education I could never have bought in any university. They gave me not just skills, but faith: that if you show up with sincerity and work hard, doors open.
The Lessons They Left Me
Leon taught me to chase sunlight. Kenneth taught me to respect gravity. Gary taught me that everything grows if given care.
Through them, I learned that design isn’t just drafting — it’s devotion. It’s standing in the sun with a model, or bent over a blueprint at midnight, chasing the perfect balance between dream and discipline.
Redlands wasn’t just a place where I worked; it was a living textbook. The churches, civic centers, and streets I helped touch weren’t simply projects — they were promises kept between mentors and an eager kid who once walked across the street covered in oil.
A Debt That Can’t Be Repaid
Every building has a foundation — concrete, steel, or stone. Mine was built of three men’s patience and trust.
When I unlock my office door today, I still feel the weight of that first key Leon handed me. When I see water shimmer through a courtyard or a tree break through sunlight, I hear Kenneth and Gary whispering lessons that time can’t erase.
This story isn’t just about architecture. It’s about gratitude. About what happens when men of craft open their doors to a boy who didn’t yet know his worth — and teach him to see the world not as it is, but as it could be.
And so I design and build — every day
