Larry Wolfe
“Almost” a native Arizonan, Kim Whitney has lived in the Phoenix area nearly his entire life. He was born in Wichita, Kansas, but his family moved to Arizona when he was two. He remembers that their home near 20th and Bethany Home Road was considered to be out in the country and was not a part of Phoenix proper. After attending Camelback High as a freshman, he spent his sophomore year in Hawaii, then lived the next year and a half in El Paso, Texas before returning to Phoenix. (You might think Kim was a military brat with all those moves, but, in fact, his Dad was an executive with the Chrysler Corporation). Kim graduated from Camelback High before attending ASU where he earned a BS in Business Administration.
Sports was and is a big part of his family’s DNA; his Dad played football at Kansas State while an uncle played both football and basketball at Kansas University. Kim played basketball and baseball in high school, both in Phoenix and Hawaii. Shortly after graduating from college, he began his softball career, playing into his 40s before taking a hiatus. Coincidentally, he played with two other Sun Lakes players, Larry Kaufmann and Jack Strauss, during that period. He began playing in our recreational program about five years ago, first playing only on Saturdays while he was still working, then joining our league play last January.
A lifelong fan of the San Francisco Giants and Baltimore Colts, Kim is now a D-backs rooter as well. He says he picked the Giants and Colts as a youngster when Phoenix had no major league sports teams. His favorite players were the Giants’ Willie Mays and the Colts’ Johnny Unitas, not bad choices!
Kim spent his entire 38-year professional career in the insurance business, working in several Phoenix-area agencies before joining Chubb as a Marketing Representative. Chubb is the world’s largest publicly-traded property and casualty insurer with locations throughout the US and over fifty other countries.
Kim and Mary Beth, his love of 37 years, have a son and daughter and two grandkids (so far). All of the families live in the Phoenix area, so the Whitneys get to enjoy a lot of family time. Mary Beth is into charity work, woodworking and stained glass window painting while Kim says he’s new to the world of retirement and still needs to figure out what he wants to do (other than play softball).
They both do love to travel, having taken over 40 cruises throughout the years, including both ocean and river cruises. A partial list of their destinations includes Alaska, the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, Europe, the Mediterranean, South and Central America and Southeast Asia. It would probably be easier to list where they haven’t been!
Kim loves Sun Lakes softball and is looking forward to being able to fully participate in our program this year now that he’s in full retirement mode!