The Kling file

Kevin Kling was born March 18, 1957, in Brookfield, Mo., and moved with his family to Minnesota in the early 1960s. They settled in Brooklyn Park, and then in Maple Grove.

Osseo High School, Gustavus Adolphus College

1 Kling was the first Eagle Scout in Maple Grove.

2 Kling and his partner, Mary Ludington, have a pony named Zeus.

3 Kling has won two Bush Foundation artist fellowships -- one in 1988 and one in 2003.

4 He's a legally ordained minister and has officiated at two dozen friends' weddings. "I responded to a Universal Life ad on a matchbook, but took it seriously and wrote a huge text about theology. They said: 'Just send in your nine bucks,' but I don't take it lightly at all."

Check out the 19-minute movie on the history of Minneapolis he created for the Mill City Museum in downtown Minneapolis. It shows there several times a day.

He heard a woman read Homer's entire "Odyssey" from sunset until dawn. "The night went in a wink. Reading it might be hard, but hearing aloud how it's constructed after hundreds of years or telling and retelling, that's what the oral tradition is all about."

"Boredom definitely made me who I am. I still love it. I was the kind of kid who stared out the window. You don't know where that kid is today. Probably neither does the kid."

"He's had so many things thrown in his path, but he always manages to somehow grow from it, and he constantly emerges more true to himself and more open to the world. Nothing deters him. It's unbelievably inspiring," said Steven Epp of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, an old college friend.

CURT BROWN