Has It Really Been Forty-One Years?

‘Madison Graduates 180’.

One-hundred-eighty, according to the Mansfield News Journal.

Only 180? Can that be right?

Seems like a paltry number when compared to that June day in 1975 when I sat in one of the multitude of rows of green and white-clad graduates. I can’t remember the exact number in my graduating class, but I can tell you this: it was somewhere around four hundred fifty, give or take a dozen.

At that time, we were the largest class ever to graduate from Madison High School, which added ‘Comprehensive’ right after ‘Madison’ soon after we left. I don’t know why they did that, but it was right after they opened the new wing of the high school. The Class of ‘75’s record was broken a couple of years later, I believe by the Class of ’77.

And now they graduate one-hundred-eighty?

I remember these things about graduation: it was a beautiful day, warm but not hot. Big puffy white clouds set against a crystal blue sky. The ceremony seemed to take forever. I just wanted to walk across that platform in the middle of Ram Field, grab my diploma and get into the ‘real’ world. Leaving afterwards in my beat-up blue AMC Rambler, Rare Earth’s ‘I Just Want to Celebrate’ blaring from my 8-track tape player as I drove home with the windows down, longish hair waving in the breeze.

I had no clue what the next step would be.

Well, I did have somewhat of a plan. I knew college wasn’t for me; I’d just kind of breezed through my senior year because I’d only needed 3 1/2 credits to graduate. During one semester I had four study halls. Four, out of eight classes during the school day. I didn’t really apply myself to anything that year and couldn’t see the value of sitting in classrooms for another 4 years in college. That being said, here was the Grand Plan: if I didn’t have a full-time job by July 1^st I would enlist in the US Navy.

I got a full-time job eleven days before my deadline. I worked at Wolf Plumbing and Heating, installing seamless aluminum spouting on houses. Not very glamorous and definitely not a career.

After that I bounced around between a few jobs, got married at nineteen to my high school sweetheart ( we were too young and I was too immature ) before finally taking a position with the Ohio State Highway Patrol as a cadet/dispatcher.

That job set the hook.

Thus began my journey in the law enforcement world. I’d always dreamed of being a police officer, ever since I was a kid; the Blamers, who lived two doors away on Hout Road, had a couple of boys I hung out with…Dean Jr and Dale. If I wasn’t at their house they were at mine, and I’d heard a lot of cop tales from Dean Sr,, who was a Sergeant at Mansfield PD. He would come home from work and talk about things that had happened during his shift, exciting stuff for a thirteen year old to hear. I remember thinking wow, what a cool job! He gets to see everything that most people only read about in the newspaper!

I would find out during the thirty-one years I spent wearing a badge that that wasn’t always a good thing, that some of those things would cause sleepless nights and nightmares, memories that still haunt me to this day.

It’s been a very long journey from that June afternoon forty-one years ago and now, here I am so many decades removed from graduation day, living less than two hundred yards from where that stage sat that I couldn’t wait to walk across, retired.

What a ride it’s been.

Calvin Graham

Calvin L. Graham served aboard the USS South Dakota in World War II, having enlisted in the post-Pearl Harbor surge of volunteers. The brand-new battleship, designated BB 57, sailed from port in New York on March 20, 1942, completed fitting-out at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and then transited the Panama Canal en route to Pearl Harbor. She arrived there September 12.

The South Dakota’s crew were virtually all green sailors, with the exception of the section chiefs and command staff. Graham was the youngest aboard ship, assigned as a loader on a quad-40mm anti-aircraft mount. Once they sailed from Pearl, assigned as part of a task force which included the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the South Dakota met the Japanese at Santa Cruz Islands, downing twenty-six Japanese planes while protecting the Enterprise.

Eighteen days later the task force engaged in the Battle of Guadalcanal; during fierce fighting the South Dakota had significant damage inflicted from constant Japanese air attacks and ship bombardment. Seaman 2^nd Class Graham, though suffering wounds of his own from shrapnel fragments and burns to his arms, heroically saved several shipmates by dragging them to safety and administering first aid. For his actions Graham was awarded a Bronze Star with Combat ‘V’ ( for valor ) device, along with two Purple Hearts.

Calvin Graham was twelve years old.

That’s right, 12. Graham, one of seven children, had extreme hardship at home because of his alcoholic stepfather’s abuse of he, his siblings and his mother. Graham left the home with one of his brothers and ended up living in a boarding house, eventually joining the Navy by forging his mother’s signature on enlistment papers and claiming to be seventeen. Calvin Graham had told his mother that he was going to live with relatives one hundred fifty miles from their Houston, Texas home when he enlisted; she had no idea that her young son had been a hero in combat off Guadalcanal until she saw his name in the papers. Nora then contacted the Navy and told them what her son had done. Graham was released from service April 1^st, 1943.

Calvin Leon Graham died in 1992, having been the youngest military combatant for the United States during WW II.

Mopes Who Know They're Criminals

It’s happened to me more than a few times, yet it still surprises me. Twice during my career and then again just yesterday, I’ve had encounters with people I had arrested in the past who flat-out admitted they were criminals. I’m not talking about the guy who confesses to breaking the speed limit when you’re giving him a traffic citation; I am referring to those handful of individuals that tell you they make their living by committing crimes. Or used to.

The first time, in the mid-80s, I was working off-duty, uniformed security at the old Blue Goose on Park Avenue East. Back in the day, we were permitted to do that…work security in a liquor establishment. That’s not the case anymore, which is probably a good thing; the two quickest ways for a male copper to get into trouble is booze and women, of which both are plentiful in a bar environment.

The band, right at last call, starts playing their version of ‘Freebird’, the old Lynyrd Skynyrd tune…and it was pretty bad, too. Anyway, a guy I’ve known since middle school was a regular in the place; we’d played baseball together in school but I can’t exactly say that Pete ( not his real name ) and I were friends. Pete had a knack of always being in some sort of trouble in school and I tried to stay away from those type of people. That behavior carried on into adulthood for Pete; he’d been in prison more than once. You see, Pete was, at one time, one of the premier safe-crackers in about a four-state area. All of us in law enforcement knew him and what it was he did, and eventually he’d gotten caught somewhere in Kentucky.

This night, as usual, Pete was pretty drunk. He’d always spoken to me in a cordial manner but stayed away when he was with his pals; I suppose he didn’t want to damage his reputation in the criminal community. As the band drones on with the last song, Pete staggers over, bleary-eyed, and tells me he respects me, and that he wished he’d made better life-choices when he was younger ( not his exact words, but that was the gist of it ). He then starts crying and tells me that he’d recently ‘done something’ and was so ashamed that he wanted to die, that he never would have imagined doing something so horrible. I gently prodded him to tell me, careful not to make it appear I was interrogating him. Pete, arm around my shoulder, looks me square in the eye and says he can’t admit to it because he knows he’d go back to prison for a long time. “I can’t go back there. I’ll die first”, he told me, “…and I know you’ll have to do your job if I tell you. I know that you know I’m a criminal; I am, but I’ve never hurt anyone before.” Pete then staggered away.

It dawned on me what he was talking about; a month prior, a business had been burglarized during the nighttime by professionals; they’d defeated the alarm system and entered in such a manner that wouldn’t leave any trace of how they’d gotten in. When the crew was finished and were leaving the place, a woman who happened to live right next door came out of her home to let her little dog out. She saw them and they saw her. These scum bags then beat her badly enough to put her in the hospital, leaving her with the threat that they’d be back if she talked to the police. She didn’t out of fear for her life. Pete, in his drunken state, hadn’t given me anything that was useable in court and there was nothing else that could be used to even establish basis for questioning. I sent it up the chain but, as far as I know, nothing came of my encounter with Pete. 

I heard recently that he was in pretty bad shape health-wise; it is un-Christian for me to say this but I hope Pete is suffering every single day.

Then there was Larry. Law enforcement in this county had been dealing with Larry, his buddy and also a girlfriend seemingly every other week for some type of business burglary. Their specialty was stealing high-dollar lawn tractors. Not the Sears model you mow the yard with, but rather those bigger suckers that aren’t quite farm tractors but still cost a small fortune. Larry, too, had been in prison but he certainly hadn’t been rehabilitated. Later on, he and his friends moved on to bigger and worse crimes…drug trafficking, mainly cocaine. Not in small amounts, either. Larry eventually became a suspect in a yet-to-be-solved homicide but nothing concrete enough to charge him was ever developed.

I was attending a wedding reception in 2001, during the three-year span I was out of the cop business due to a pretty bad spinal injury; Larry was there, too, as he was somehow related to the groom. Larry had always been friendly with me during past encounters; he never took it personally when he’d been arrested. He came over and started talking to me, saying he’d heard I wasn’t on the job anymore because of my back. “That’s too bad, Clark, because I always liked you. You’re a good dude, not like some of those other cops. I was a criminal and it was your job to catch me; sometimes I won, sometimes you guys did.” We talked for another few minutes and that was it. I never saw him again. Larry died a few years ago when his heart just quit working, I’m sure because of all the coke in his system.

The last time was Friday, mid-morning; I was out metal detecting in a small city park located right next to a business. I was in the process of wrapping things up and had wandered over to check out the area around an old set of bleachers before walking the 30 yards to where I’d parked. Head down, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up; a black guy I’ll call ‘Harold’ was walking towards me. I knew the face but couldn’t remember his name, knowing only that I’d dealt with him on occasion while working for Mansfield PD.

“I know you…”, I said to him, which kind of took him aback.

“Know me? How you know me?”

When I answered that I knew his face and that I’d worked at MPD for a number of years, his face lit up. “Yeah, you’re Cigar!” ( pronounced ‘cee-gar' ; I almost always had one while I was working the street ).

We exchanged names and then it all came back. Harold hadn’t been a bad criminal, having only one 3^rd degree, non-violent felony on his record ( for which he got probation ) but several misdemeanor arrests. I remembered him because it seemed like that, every time we were sent to a disturbance at the old Jimmy’s Lounge on the square, Harold was there smiling his gap-toothed smile. After a bar fight at Jimmy’s one night I’d pulled him aside to question him as a witness. “I saw it, but I ain’t tellin’ nuthin’”, he’d said, “don’t wanna be no rat.” But after that time, if we had something happen and Harold was there, he made it a point to greet me by my then-street name. A few of those times Harold would give up a little information, too.

Harold and I talked for twenty minutes about the old days, with him asking about some of the guys I used to work with and me asking about the mopes he used to run with. As for him, Harold said he’d quit running the bars and was staying out of trouble, having taken on a full-time job at the business next door to the park. He’d come over to let me know that I was on the business’ property next to the bleachers. Again, I got the ‘you was a good dude’ number, with Harold admitting to me that he’d run afoul of the law on a few things but not gotten caught, except for the one felony. “I grew up”, Harold told me, “and wish I’d done it a lot sooner.”

It makes me feel good when criminals tell me I was a good cop back in the day, because I know it’s due to the way I treated them. Fairly. Everyone’s human and makes mistakes.

I just wish Pete had admitted to his disgusting crime that night so many decades ago, because I would have taken great pleasure in locking him away.

Working on new posts...

Apologies for the delay in material, BUT I'll have a new column soon. Meanwhile, enjoy this segment from my short story work-in-progress entitled 'Diver Down'....

   

   Riley Barron sat staring across his desk at the man seated on the other side.

   “Now what?”

   Flip Workman sighed. “Well, Mister Barron, you gotta get him, no matter what it takes. We can’t recover this cargo without him. He’s the most experienced deep-water diver I know of and we’re gonna need someone of his caliber if you wanna recover those 'items'. I mean, I can do it, but I’m gonna need help….help you can’t openly advertise for. If the wrong people were to get wind of this little operation, we could all end up in prison, at best…or dead.”

   Barron grunted. “You’re right, of course, when you say we can’t just go out and get a qualified deep-water guy. This entire operation…location and target…cannot be made public. When you say ‘no matter what’…”

   Workman leaned back in his chair, propped his worn cowboy boots on Barron’s desk and lit a cigarette. “You’re better off not knowing.”

   “Why?”

   Exhaling a cloud of smoke through his nose, Workman answered, “It’s called ‘plausible deniability’. If I were to employ…’unsavory tactics’, let’s say…you’d be protected. You wouldn’t know what was occurring because I’m a private contractor.”

   Barron’s face reddened. “I WILL NOT engage in any activity that will damage the reputation of this company, Mister Workman. None. If I get even the hint of something…”

   Workman didn’t let him finish. “Save it, Barron. We both know what you want to do is illegal…yet you were willing to take the risk of broaching the idea with me. The payday will be worth the risk, as long as we can recover the target. I’m telling you, to recover this target we need a diver who’s been in deep water more than a few times. We can’t advertise or make our need public because of what it is we want to do. I can do it, but I need someone with Sam Wade’s experience. I know him, I dove with him in the Navy and I know what he’s done in the past. He’s a specialist in saturation dives and this is right up his alley, since we don’t know a whole lot about the condition of the transport vessel. If you don’t let me find a way to get him on board with this, I’m out…and your sixteen million dollars will stay on the bottom of the ocean.”

   Barron stared at the man for a full ten seconds before he spoke, weighing the risk versus reward.

   “ ‘Plausible deniability’. It better be air-tight, Workman, or you’ll end up on the bottom inside a padlocked freezer. Just let me know when you’ll be ready to dive. Make it soon.” Riley Barron swiveled his chair to face the large window immediately behind his desk, signaling an end to the meeting.

Humbled and honored...

Eric Humble and staff at Mansfield Baptist Temple created a video to honor first responders during Sunday morning service this past weekend; in this video, Eric incorporated part of a column I recently wrote for the Mansfield News Journal.

I am very honored and humbled to have been a part in this effort.

You can see it here: https://vimeo.com/164997034

Cancer

“You have cancer.”

Three words. Three words that floored me.

Those words, spoken by my doctor, Melissa Becker, hit like a sledgehammer between the eyes. I felt fine, other than arthritis in my shoulders and a spine made cranky by the rods and screws in my lower back. I had absolutely no symptoms, no odd pain or discomfort...anywhere.

Yet I had cancer, a type that would have most likely killed me within fourteen months or so: small-cell renal carcinoma. If undetected, the cancer cells metastasize, or spread, to other organs, the most common being the lungs and liver. According to Dr. Becker, once the cancer spreads to those organs, survival of the disease diminishes greatly. In stage IV, the five-year survival rate is eight per cent. Pretty solemn numbers.

I was lucky, though.

In February of 2013 I had knee surgery; as part of post-operative protocol, an X-ray was taken of my lungs to ensure I wasn't developing pneumonia. When reviewed by a radiologist, the film revealed a very small spot in one of my lungs, which Dr. Becker later explained was most probably histoplasmosis, which is a type of fungal infection commonly found in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Histoplasmosis has something to do with bird and/or bat excrement; hundreds of thousands of people living in the aforementioned region have it and are unaware. The infection, in healthy adults, usually resolves itself, but as a precaution I would have a chest X-ray every six months, to ensure the spot wasn't growing or moving.

I was good with that...for 18 months. Then I reverted to stubbornness. Why spend the money for an X-ray if nothing at all had changed with that spot for a year and a half? When Dr. Becker's office called to remind me it was time for another film to be taken I blew it off, telling the office manager that I wasn't going to bother. I felt fine and couldn't see the sense in wasting the doctor's time or my money.

Big mistake.

Over the next two months I received several reminders from her office; finally Stephanie, one of my favorites on the good doctor's office staff, called and chewed on my male pride rather sternly. I relented and eventually had the X-ray taken.

It probably saved my life.

The film had caught the upper part of my left kidney and had shown some sort of growth; “It might be just a cyst, which isn't uncommon,” Dr. Becker had told me, “but let's get an MRI just to be sure. If it turns out to be a cyst, we won't do anything with it unless it starts causing problems.” The session was scheduled and completed a few days later.

I drove a school bus for fifteen years and often drove for after-school athletics events. I was doing just that the day following the MRI when my cell phone rang; of course, I couldn't answer that call while behind the wheel of the fifteen-ton vehicle filled with young lives, so the call went unanswered. Once we arrived at our destination and the student athletes had disembarked, I checked the voice mail that had been left. The message scared the hell out of me.

Paraphrasing, the message said that the doctor had made an appointment for me the next morning at 10 a.m., and that I should bring my wife with me. Later that evening, after I'd gotten home, I recounted the message to my wife. We both had the same thought:

This is not good.

The next morning we sat in an exam room and listened to Doctor Becker tell us those opening words. “BUT”, she said, “this is the best-case scenario you could have hoped for. We caught it very, very early. You'll lose a kidney, but you should be fine because the tumor hasn't gotten to the size where it would start to spread to other organs. Renal carcinoma usually doesn't manifest itself until it affects your liver and lungs...and by then, in most cases, it's too late.”

I was referred to a large group of nephrologists in Columbus and was seen by Dr. Pewitt. After reading my personal physician's notes and reviewing the X-ray and MRI films and associated radiology reports, he told us that no, I wouldn't lose the entire kidney, only the top third of it, since the tumor was still totally encapsulated within that part of the organ. Additionally, he related that he specialized in robotic procedures, which would mean three small incisions to remove the partial kidney and a much quicker healing period. However, there was an outside chance he and the surgeon who assisted him would have to resort to the standard large incision, which would be about a foot long just under the left rib cage, to complete the removal, dependent on a few variables.

As we left his office, I told my wife Stacy: “Count on the large incision.”

I just knew.

A week later Dr. Pewitt's surgery scheduler called; I was scheduled for June 30^th.

That was a 45-day wait. Forty-five days! I will tell you now that was the longest month-and-a-half of my life. I spent many, many nights during that time either lying awake in bed or retreating to my recliner in the living room because I couldn't sleep. Knowing that tumor was living and growing inside my body weighed heavily on my mind, and I did a lot of 'what if'-ing during those sleepless nights. And a lot of praying, too.

One night in particular, during a session between God and I at about four in the morning, I was hit with what I can only describe as a very calming, reassuring feeling, one that felt like a warmed blanket being wrapped around me. With that feeling came a still, small voice in my mind, heard by no one but me.

“You will be fine.”

From that night until they wheeled me into the operating room, laid me on that cold surgical table ( WHY are they always so cold? ) and started the IV that rendered me unconscious...I was calm. No worries, no 'what ifs'. I would be OK. God Himself had told me so.

When I awoke and came to some semblance of my senses, Stacy told me that, yes, I did have the standard, large incision ( I couldn't feel it yet ) because I'd started bleeding internally pretty badly during the robotic procedure. So much so that I was given six units of blood during the two-hour process. A surgical nurse had come out of the procedure room and told her the circumstances and the bleeding couldn't be controlled until they opened me up.

When she was telling me this she broke down. “I thought I was going to lose you”, she sobbed; it broke my heart to see my bride so emotionally distraught; it gave me a strange feeling of guilt. I never, ever want to be the reason my wife cries.

After three days in the Intensive Care Unit due to the blood loss I was transferred to a private room, where I convalesced without issue. Soon, I was released to go home.

The good news is, Dr. Pewitt and his team are extremely confident that the tumor was removed well before it had the opportunity to spread to other organs; testing and a follow-up visit with the doctor this past November revealed no sign of the RCC. My next visit is scheduled is December of this year.

I am a very blessed, lucky man. The Good Lord obviously has something yet for me to do on this earth.

Evaluating Life

I have a recurring dream that visits me every year or so; in it, I'm back in high school playing baseball. I can run like the wind, make strong throws and my eyesight is hawk-sharp. I'm in excellent physical shape and weigh 170 pounds. And I still have hair. A lot of it. When I wake from this dream there's a brief moment of depression...but then I realize how fortunate I am. I've had more than my share of illness, injury and surgery. I was a frequent flier in the local emergency room growing up, which started after ripping a hand wide open when I was six while trying to climb up onto the garage roof. Yes, I was that kid. Titanium knee: check. Rods and screws in my spine: Got 'em. Screw in my shoulder? Since 1972, courtesy of high school football. My right ankle was rebuilt in 1996 after an on-the-job injury, my body has had well over a thousand sutures, I've broken a thumb and two fingers, though not at the same time, and I had right kidney surgery in 1974 to repair a birth defect; that one almost killed me. During the procedure my left lung collapsed and post operative pneumonia developed in my right one. I've been in car crashes, cruiser accidents, knock-down, drag-out fights; I have arthritis in both thumbs and shoulders. Yes, there are aches and pains and some days are worse than others, but I am not complaining. Some would say that I have every right to, but that's not me. Pain lets me know I'm still alive, and I am thankful for it. I also survived cancer last year. It cost me half a kidney. Every day since the surgeon took that segment of kidney I count as a bonus. I'm on overtime. If it had gone undetected, my personal doctor said the cancer would have killed me by now. I am thankful for each sunrise. My Dad used to say "No matter how bad you think you have it, there's thousands of people who would gladly trade places with you", and "You're not the first to go through this and you won't be the last." There is truth in those words, truth that is incontrovertible, undeniable. Every time a negative event occurs I think of Dad's words. They've gotten me through some pretty dark times. I miss my Dad terribly. I don't need assistance getting out of bed, in and out of the shower or putting my clothes on. I can walk, drive and feed myself. Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States can't say the same. I'm retired, live in a modest home in a modest neighborhood and drive a twelve-year-old pickup truck with 123,00 miles and crank windows. I have a loving, God-fearing diamond of a wife who takes very good care of me, and I wouldn't take the world for her. She deserves better than me, and I strive daily to be the man she deserves. I certainly don't have all I want, but I DO have all I need. For that, I am extremely thankful. I am grateful for the life I have. Aches, pains and all