Spartan Profiles: Kenn Cross
ULTIMATE COUNTRY HOME
How can you find a niche in life if you have two equally compelling talents and interests—carpentry, and country music? Well, things worked out just right for Kenn Cross, ’87, who loves building custom homes, developing real estate and performing country music. After 10 years of designing, building and selling “turnkey” homes in Florida, Cross followed his dream of becoming an entertainer in country music by moving to Nashville, TN.
Talk about timing. CMT, the largest country music cable channel, was about to launch the CMT Ultimate Country Home, a weekly show in which country stars design various rooms of a dream house that would be given away, at show’s end, to a lucky viewer. Who better to serve as the show’s carpenter than Kenn? “It was so perfect,” says Kenn. “It turned out to be the highest rated show ever. Our web site was bombarded. I was getting 30 questions a day.” He loved the more than 20 artists he met. “Not one disappointed me,” he says, adding that at show’s end he wrote each a poem and gave them a sterling silver and white gold cross “to show my gratitude.”
A native of Troy, Kenn never considered any other college but MSU. “MSU was choice even without visiting the campus,” he recalls. “I was impressed with the reputation of its landscape architecture program. When you meet alumni from the program, you could see from their eyes how proud they were of their alma mater.” He was greatly influenced by professors like Tony Bauer, Duane Mezga and Kurt Westerguard. “I was never great at drawing but I was very creative,” he recalls. “When they approved my project, that was all I needed for self-confidence.”
Now recognized more and more on the street, Kenn has decided on yet another career move. He is moving to San Diego and looking at projects with such cable channels as HGTV, TLC and DIY.
