In 1990, I naively asked Mr. Denton. . . “If you could be any kind of butterfly, what species would you choose?” Twenty-five years later when the Museum asked for a Bio to accompany his California Butterfly Collection, I would remember that his reply indeed matched his life.

Fittingly, he was born with the Hollywood stars at The Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, California, the premier medical facility of its time. Cocooned for nine months, on September 20th, 1946, proud parents, Ken and Phyllis, would name their newborn son Kenneth George Denton, Jr.

Growing up in Hollywood, there were frequent trips to Griffith Park, the Hollywood Bowl and the much anticipated yearly adventures at the YMCA summer camp. But it was his father who taught him how to be patient and “…let nature come to you.” When camping, they would sit quietly in the Yosemite meadows and wait for a deer to timidly pass by. He showed him the wonderment of raising caterpillars in a jar and how not to anger the huge black bee in Grandmother Helen’s garden, a place he would often wander into when his mother was at the MGM studios working part-time in the choreography department.

Even as a very young lad he had a passion for collecting. Fossils, skulls, beetles; any insect was game. His mother not only encouraged his passion of collecting but, who on many occasions, endured the escape of Ken’s live assortment of caterpillars, snakes, beetles, tarantulas . . . and the story of the mouse is hysterical!

At 8 years old, the sudden death of his father would change his life, his family and his destiny. Eventually, his mother would remarry and that would move Ken from the Hollywood Hills to Long Beach. Fast forward 8 years, after little brother Robert came, after military school, Hughes middle school, a move to Corona del Mar and the family in a heated custody battle, Ken would now find his precious first butterfly collection held hostage. With the assemblage truly at risk, his dear Aunt Delorus flew in and rescued it. Later, Gordon Marsh at U.C.I. would keep it safe and maintained while the family and this young lepidopterist was in transition.

It was during these years at Harbor High in Newport Beach that, where previously in Long Beach his bus tickets would take him to the Pike Amusement Park or the water slides of The Plunge, now with no buses, the poor lad was stuck between “the surf and the turf!” After months of surfing longboards, one day he wandered into the nearby San Joaquin Hills to explore. He would canvas vast fields of green and gold that extended from the Newport Coast to Trabuco Canyon, where wildflowers blanketed the hills above the Back Bay marshes. Hikes to nearby Indian caves near Signal Peak, summertime lunches beside still ponds under the sycamore trees in Buck Gully – it was all so alluring. Unfortunately, most all these places are now lost to concrete freeways, toll roads and the urban spread. However, it was during these wonderful probes that one afternoon he was surprisingly attacked by a “Jurassic Wasp” (Pepsis Formosan). Determined to capture it, he enlisted the advice of his mother. She introduced her son to John W. Johnson, Sr. A biology teacher and neighbor, it was Mr. Johnson who handed him his first net and said “Go catch it and bring it back to me! . . .” instinctively not showing Ken the several already pinned in the next room. Mr. Johnson would mentor, teach and share his love and knowledge of insects, spiders, bugs and butterflies with this wide-eyed and protean young man. Mentor and friend, John W. Johnson, Sr., mentor Erich C. Walter and later, John R. Johnson, (aka Junior), would all play a crucial part in this California Butterfly Collection donation.