Back In Time With A Brother In Blue

Rotator cuff surgery is not a pleasant experience; just ask medically-retired former Mansfield Police Sergeant Keith Coleman.

Or me.

Keith's accumulated a variety of nicknames through the years, from Bubba to Biscuit to Keefus and plain old KC. He's a good-natured man with a hearty laugh, who now makes his way in this world as a registered nurse.

That's right, RN. After being forced to retire from law enforcement due to a rare blood condition, KC went back to college and earned a nursing degree. He's in the Oncology department at an area hospital, caring for patients requiring chemotherapy, among other things.

My old pal, an avid golfer, tore his left shoulder muscle swinging a golf club last summer and recently had it repaired; he's wearing a wedged sling on his left arm, one that holds his forearm away from his body so as to aid the repaired muscle's proper healing. I had the same procedure back in '17 on my right shoulder and it's no fun.

Getting old, you see, isn't for sissies.

Knowing he can't yet drive, I picked him up yesterday for an excursion to the city building and then lunch at Coney Island on the square. I figured I'd give his lovely wife  Lisa a little break from having KC under foot around the house as he recuperates.

We never made it to lunch.

The purpose of our trip to Mansfield's muni building was to visit with a few long-time friends not yet retired, folks we'd both worked with back in the day and hadn't seen for awhile.

I parked my GMC in the lower east lot at a metered space, immediately realizing I had absolutely no change with which to feed it. "Hey, the next one beside it has an hour and twenty-four minutes left on it", Keith observed, and so I maneuvered into that spot. Problem solved.

Not. Keith and I spent well over twice that amount of time wandering the halls of MPD.

Our first stop was the second floor where command staff offices are. The first thing I missed was seeing Nettie Ballard's always-smiling face behind the glass at the receptionist's desk. It also required an explanation of who we were and why we were there to the gal manning that post, as she had no idea of the years KC and I had put in at the police department.

Before it was said and done, we were in Assistant Chief Joe Petrycki's office, along with Chief Keith Porch, Captain Shari Robertson, Captain Doug Noblet, Lt. Jason Bammann and Lt. Mike Napier. Needless to say, stories, laughter and good-natured ribbing  were in abundance. A little pang of nostalgia began to faintly glow deep in my chest, much like the coals of a beginning fire in the heat stove that sits in my living room here at Black Gold Homestead. And, just as in the stove, it would eventually glow white-hot.

Shari, or 'Sis', as I call her, joined us as we moved from place to place, after Keith and I first made a stop in the radio rom. Lewanda Curry was the lone person the two of us knew in the communications center and, being her usual self, smilingly chided us for not bringing her an order of hot wings. Apparently Lew has moved on from the apple-pie-and-ice-cream she used to ask for when I was a patrol sergeant back in the mid-90s. She's one of those bubbly gals who can eat anything and not gain an ounce.

Next stop was the detective bureau, where we found Dave Scheurer, still plugging away as he nears retirement; then it was into the elevator to the first floor. Would we even know anyone there anymore?

Of course we would, as we invaded the sanctum known as the traffic bureau. Sgt. Paul Lumadue was in, dealing with the ever-present myriad of tasks and complaints over parking tickets and faulty meters. Shari then led us pair of dinosaurs through the brown, electronically-locked heavy steel door into the patrol bureau; this was where things got a little weird. Nearly every face roaming those halls was unbeknownst to us, though Shari made sure to introduce Keith and I and explain that we'd been sergeants back in the day. She got into the routine of asking each officer, as we were shaking hands with them, what their badge number was, then telling them mine had been 135 and KC's 139. Those kids' badges ranged anywhere from the mid-200s to 313, the newest guy on the department. Talk about feeling ancient...some of those folks hadn't been born yet when the two of us were driving patrol cars and locking up mopes.

We ran into Tony Tambasco, who still runs the crime lab and was always a part of our Pittsburgh hockey trip crews, and Cindy Reed, a lab technician Keith and I had both worked with who still loves to laugh. Even Sgt. Andy Boor, who I worked with on night shift, made an appearance and it was great seeing him after all these years.

Stopping in Capt. Doug Noblet's office (he's the patrol bureau commander now) to chat a little further, I was shocked to see a guy who'd been on my afternoon shift squad in the late 1990s, now-Lieutenant Chad Brubaker, one of the funniest guys I know. I say 'shocked' because Chad had undergone an extensive body transition since I'd last seen him and had lost probably sixty or 70 pounds. Chad's the day shift watch commander.

On the way back to tour where the old jail had been, I told Keith we had to make a swing through the locker room. I wondered aloud if the linoleum that had been on the floor back when he and I had lockers next to each other was still there; you see, KC once had his revolver go off (that's how long it's been, we were still carrying Smith and Wesson 686 wheel guns) as he checked the firing pin function, a routine all of us did prior to holstering and hitting the streets. The accidental discharge caused his bullet to gouge out a chunk of linoleum before it ricocheted into the ceiling at the far end of the locker room.

It was still there, that gouge, and I had KC pose for a picture with it. He's taken a lot of good-natured heat due to that incident over the years and I just couldn't pass up the photo op.

A little further down the hall and a sharp right turn took us into the cell area....or at least where they used to be. Part of the jail had been merged with Tony's crime lab; it's also where we found Jerry Botdorf. Jerry started out as a dispatcher/police aide way back when; he took the city's civil service test for the police department, finished very high and, for reasons that are still a mystery to me, was passed over. That had to be a crushing blow, but I'll say this: he sure bounced back much higher than those who rejected him. Jerry went on to spend a career in the Ohio State Highway Patrol, rising to the rank of Lieutenant before retiring, then was hired by the city to run its communications center. He's since transferred to the crime lab. "Less stress", he laughingly told us.

The rest of the old jail had been converted to a gym area; the big 16-man cell, the felony cell and the women's cell were all gone. Both individual cells were still standing, now securing equipment used by special operations, and the stark, dank drunk tank was still there, with its concrete cots and floor sloped to a center drain.

KC and I both posed for pictures with Shari in the jail control room, which used to be called the 'inner jail', then strolled back up the hallway into the roll call room, where we'd gather at the beginning of a shift to go over incident reports from the preceding two shifts and bulletins and memos from the second floor. It, too, had undergone a transformation of sorts. The bulletin board was still there but our open mail boxes had been replaced by individual metal ones which could be locked. A large-screen digital monitor was mounted on a wall behind a small, elevated platform where shift supervisors sit while reading the reports aloud.

Being in that room, where every shift of my time at Mansfield PD started, brought back a flood of memories: Brian Kerr, a muscular Marine, darting from his chair and flying across the room after the praying mantis we'd found on the brick wall in the police compound crawled up out of his styrofoam coffee cup....he was scared to death of bugs. All of the jokes now-retired Sgt. Jan Wendling told. Lt. Billy Howard's yearly fall admonishment to be careful driving on wet, leaf-covered roadways because they'd be just as slick as ice. Capt. Dan Brant's ninety-minute long roll calls. Being disgusted when a fellow officer sitting in front of me obviously hadn't showered before work, as she had a thick, sweaty dirt streak on the back of her neck. Another officer (male) who had an aversion to soap and water, generally smelling bad. Being able to smoke in roll call. I could go on, but maybe that'll be for another blog post.

The last stop on our trip down memory lane was on the 9th floor, in Safety Director Lori Cope's office. Lori, a few decades ago, was an auxiliary officer who came in and rode patrol with me; we've been friends ever since. She was hired by the police department and served 9 years, I believe, before being forced into early retirement due to injuries received in a cruiser accident.

KC and I cooled our heels as we waited for Lori to return from a late lunch...and it was worth the wait. The three of us chatted and shared memories, both good and not so good, for I don't know how long. All told, Keith and I spent over three tremendously nostalgic hours in the municipal building, staying so long that we decided to have lunch another day.

And I paid the traffic ticket for overtime parking that was waiting for me on the windshield of my truck.

With Capt. Shari Robertson

                                                  Keith pointing to the damage he caused

                                                    With Safety Director Lori Cope

You Want Frustration? Apply For Healthcare As A Retired Cop

I don't want to rant here....but I'm going to. For those who'd rather not read angry words today, feel free to navigate to another page where there's sunshine, butterflies, rainbows and unicorns, because there ain't gonna be any of that here.

Having turned sixty-three on the 27th of last month and being retired through Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund, the time of year has come where decisions need to be made concerning healthcare coverage, with the current pre-Medicare enrollment period ending after December fifteenth.

Last year, OPF decided to opt out of providing affordable (emphasis on 'affordable') health coverage for its retired members, changing course to a third-party vendor.

It was, and apparently still is, a disaster...especially for those of us under age 65.

This third-party vendor, Aon, made available a very short list of health plans to me, all through Medical Mutual; I couldn't go out and find my own plan, which would have disqualified me for a $685 monthly stipend to help cover premium costs, nor could I enroll on my wife's plan, provided by her employer.

I paid $1313 every month for healthcare in 2019, aided by the OPF stipend, but the coverage was terrible. The yearly deductible is $6500, and not a single one of my current physicians is in network.

"But that $685 a month from OPF..." you say? Well, that has a cap. These last three months of 2019 took $3,939 directly out of my rather shallow pockets. I'm retired on total disability, you see, and secondary employment would endanger my pension, so getting another job isn't an option. Besides, my lower spine couldn't take the added demands.

Which brings us to today.

OPF changed its rules regarding the stipend this year, I'm sure due to the howling of us retired pre-Medicare coppers and hose-draggers. Now we can go out on the open market...but our outside plans must be compatible with those outlined in stipulations set forth by the (Un)Affordable Care Act back in 2008. As an aside, back when that went into effect, my monthly premiums more than doubled; you know, so you, I and every other working stiff could pay for the healthcare of those streaming across our borders illegally and those in our population that are able-bodied but refuse to find gainful employment, choosing rather to remain on the generational government dole.

My current health plan's premium will increase to over $1500 a month in 2020, a plan that I didn't use at all in 2019. Everything was out-of-pocket; doctor's visits and prescription drugs. I skimped on my scrips in order to make a supply last longer and only saw Doc Becker twice, both times a six-month checkup for my diabetes. Other ailments that popped up, which should have included seeing Doc Becker? Nahh...

So, as our last few days of searching for something that resembles a decent health insurance plan (which, like the aforementioned unicorns, doesn't exist) dwindles from days to hours to minutes, I pause to wonder where this madness will end; why, after giving 31 years of my life to serving the public and putting myself in harm's way for the good of the citizenry, I can't afford my yearly December checkup with my cancer specialist. Why I have to endure pain of varying degrees daily in my metal-reinforced lower spine, metal knee, shoulders and hands, all due to on-the-job injuries. Why I can't afford a nine hundred dollar invoice that comes with getting pain-relieving injections in those hands and shoulders. I have to sleep in my recliner nightly in order to sleep at all; can't sleep on my back or sides anymore.

It all just makes me want to throw up my hands and quit, stop the checkups and medication and take my chances. We all have a number attached to our lives, a number unbeknownst to us that, sooner or later, will come up.

The Good Lord willing, mine will be much later rather than sooner...provided He guides my bride and I to that unicorn healthcare plan.

I Am Amazed

Two weeks ago my wife was in Riverside Methodist's cardiovascular intensive care unit, a little over twelve hours removed from laying unconscious on an operating room table with her sternum separated and heart stopped.

Yesterday she helped me clean the house.

Nothing strenuous, mind you; dusting furniture, washing dishes and the like. Still, up and around, doing normal household chores.

She's getting back to being the Energizer Bunny. Never sitting still for too long, always doing something, but I am keeping a very close eye on her. Stacy is well aware that she'll yet have physical limitations for some time and knows not to overdo things.

I am amazed, both by modern medicine and my bride's ability to bounce back.

We were very fortunate on surgery day; the surgeon was able to repair her balky mitral valve rather than replace it entirely. I didn't particularly care for the possibility that she might have a pig's heart valve in place of the one God gave her.

Currently she's sitting at the dining room table, reading her morning devotionals while picking at a blueberry muffin and sipping on a hot cup of Tim Horton's black gold. Her home visit nurse stopped in yesterday, checked her over and was very satisfied with her progress; same with this past Monday's visit to her surgeon's office in Columbus.

One thing Stacy isn't happy about is her recent weight gain...a whopping four pounds. There's good reason for it, though: every day since she came home a mere four days after cardiac surgery, friends and family have stopped by and dropped off all manner of food. It either means she has a lot of people who love her or they were afraid she'd wither away due to my lack of culinary skills.

You can only survive for so long on bologna sandwiches and hot dogs.

We have certainly been very blessed throughout this chapter of our lives and will be eternally grateful to everyone who's made this journey with us.

God, my friends, is very good.

Absent For A Reason

You've no doubt noticed a paucity of posts on this page; for that, I apologize.

But there's a reason. Several, actually, but none more sobering than what I am about to share.

Our home, in which we've resided nearly a year now, has taken a lot of love and work to get it to where we want it, though we still aren't finished. Patience has truly been a virtue; however at times it seemed as though our projects might have been a little too much for us to handle.

Just getting it habitational last January was huge in itself. Our brick 1930 farm house, which had been the original dwelling for the surrounding acreage, had been empty for nearly two years. It had no heat, the water supply was negligible, yard and fields overgrown and strewn with any manner of trash and junk, much of the electrical system in dire need of rewiring....there was much to do.

To this point, we've done it. As I put this entry together, contractors are installing the exterior stove pipe for our coal stove, which will supplant propane as our primary heat source. The grounds are finally in the condition that I want, phase one of the landscaping is finished, the deck's been resurfaced and painted, all our vegetation has been trimmed and cleaned out, we've eliminated two low brick walls that held moisture against the foundation, the second bath upstairs is nearly finished, plumbing issues have been resolved...there's much more we've accomplished but I won't bore you with details.

Suffice it to say, we love our little slice of heaven south of the city, surrounded by corn fields and nature. It couldn't have been done without my red-headed angel of a wife, Stacy.

Later this week, Stacy will have her heart stopped so surgeons can repair it. I am scared to death.

Two years ago her physician informed us that she has a heart murmur, that it wasn't all that bad but he wanted to "keep an eye on it." Since then Stacy has been having irregular episodes of her heart pounding; not faster, just beating harder. She's also noticed that she sometimes gets winded easily.

We consulted with a cardiac specialist in Columbus, who ran another round of testing; the results were not what we wanted to hear. This specialist in turn passed Stacy on to one of his partners, whose specific skill is heart valve replacements. The bottom line is, he wants to repair the mitral valve, which controls blood flow from one chamber of the heart to another. Worst case scenario would involve replacing the troubled valve entirely.

As a result, she'll be placed on a heart/lung machine, during which time my angel's heart will stop working on its own while the problem is corrected, an evolution that may last in the ballpark of three hours.

It will be the absolute longest hours of my life. Please, if you talk to the Lord, ask Him to guide the surgeons' hands.

I cannot make it without her.

                                                           

Overnight Rain Recalls A 37-Year-Old Memory

Having worked midnight shift for most of my career, I'm often up and around long before the rising sun colors the morning sky. This morning it was 0400; surprising, because most of yesterday was spent driving home from Easley, South Carolina after a 4-day visit with Mom, my sister Chris and brother Jim. I was exhausted, having began my Sunday at 0315; I also prefer driving during the very early morning, as there's no traffic to speak of and the all-night AM radio talk stations abound.

Drinking my usual cup of Tim Horton's black gold, I sat in my very comfortable old leather recliner, reading the bottom-of-the-screen running banner rather than hearing the talking heads on the twenty-four-hour news station that flickered on the TV screen; I keep the volume very low so as not to awaken my bride as she sleeps in our upstairs bedroom. The stillness was only broken by the soft snoring of my old pal Roscoe as he dozed on a blanket in Stacy's recliner.

It began to rain; it had been, off and on through the night, but this time the rain was a steady downpour, its volume heightened as it fell on the vast rows of corn that stand in the field across the road. I strolled out into the sun porch, where its north-facing, large window was partially opened, to better hear the rain's song as it fell on the orderly rows, the descending sheets visible in the light cast by a lone street lamp keeping silent vigil on the corner.

Standing and staring, coffee mug in hand, my mind's eye whisked me back to late spring of 1982, when I was but a young pup at Ontario PD, recalling a night very much akin to the scene just outside my window.

I had been at the State Patrol academy on 17th Street in Columbus, which sits directly across from the Ohio State Fairgrounds, attending a week-long course on traffic crash investigations. Believe me, there's nobody better at accident investigation than our State Highway Patrol and, as I weaved my white cruiser through the pre-rush hour traffic northbound on I-71, I wondered how I'd ever get to sleep when I got home an hour later; I was due in at midnight for my shift.

My rest was fitful, and a mere 90 minutes before the alarm went off at 2300 did I fall into 'true' sleep. Pat Benatar on Cleveland's WGCL jarred me awake, asking me to hit her with my best shot from my bedside clock-radio; I showered, shaved, dressed and crammed a couple of slices of turkey down my throat as I headed out the door a half hour later.

It was raining heavily.

Wonderful, I thought as I wheeled my cruiser into the rear lot of the old station/village hall on Park Avenue West. I'll have to remember to get my rain coat out of the trunk and also throw the waterproof cover on my eight-point hat.

No policeman ever, past or present, likes working in the rain.

I exchanged good-natured insults with the guys on the outgoing afternoon shift, read the radio log and checked my mailbox for messages as I downed a 12-ounce soft drink; finishing, I headed out to the cruiser and signed on the air in the steadily-falling rain with a simple "112, signal 2", wondering how I'd ever pass the time in the next eight hours. The rain would slacken traffic passing through the village which, at that time of night, had only Denny's Restaurant as an attraction, and I would be bored out of my mind.

How wrong I was.

At 0100 hours, a mere ten hours after successfully completing OSHP's accident investigation course, I was dispatched to a semi tractor-trailer versus car accident at the intersection of West Fourth Street and Rock Road.

It was a fatal accident, the very first I'd ever seen but, over the next three decades, far from the last.

As I slid to a stop on arrival, what I saw nearly overwhelmed the senses: the tractor trailer was just past the intersection, the rear end of the trailer blocking the westbound lane of Fourth. The car that was struck was twenty yards into a field on the northwest corner of the intersection, its back end sitting on the rear axle, as both rear wheels had been snapped off from the force of the commercial rig slamming into it as the car attempted to cross West Fourth in front of it. The right rear passenger area  of the car was crushed inward, two of its occupants milling aimlessly outside it, no doubt dazed by the impact. A female was screaming/wailing; Springfield Township fire and rescue apparatus, sirens blaring, rolled up, along with several firemen who arrived in personal vehicles, having responded directly to the scene from their homes. As I ran up to the car, mindless of the cursed rain and mud, a young female who'd been a passenger clutched my raincoat, screaming, "JIMMY'S NOT MOVING!"

The rain became torrential.

There had been four occupants of the car when the accident occurred, the crash resultant, I'd discover later, of the drunken teen driver's attempt at playing 'chicken' with the truck as it approached from the east. As the westbound commercial vehicle neared, the car's driver floored the accelerator and shot out in front of the truck, the rig's right front bumper striking the passenger side of the car just back of the door post.

'Jimmy', the sixteen-year-old right rear passenger who'd snuck out of his house after his parents had gone to bed, took a direct hit from the behemoth truck. He lay slumped to his left, a lone trickle of blood fleeing the corner of his mouth; aside from that, he looked as if he were merely asleep. Later examination by the coroner would find that he'd died of internal bleeding, caused by organ laceration when jagged broken ribs were driven inward by the force of impact.

One other passenger, if I recall correctly, suffered a broken hip.

The panting of Roscoe joining me on the sun porch broke that nightmarish memory and the events of the rest of that terrible, rainy night...

...and the thought that I would never again, for the rest of my days, be faced with similar horrors took its place.

For that, I thank God.

All Seriousness Aside...

Sometimes you get to the point where you just don't want to think about current events and all the negativity that comes with them. That being the case, let's lighten things up...

There's a little shop here in Mansfield that serves specialty coffee and tea, along with baked goods, occasional live music and local art. It's called Relax, It's Just Coffee and is located on North Main Street. I've never been there, but the name got me to thinking about maybe opening my own little shop, with one caveat:

It's only clientele will be senior citizens. I'd call it 'Relax, It's Just Arthritis.' Our main offerings would be ibuprofen, ice packs and analgesic creams.

On our way back from Nashville/Lebanon/Murfreesboro, TN last Sunday, Stacy and I stopped at the Sunbury exit off I-71 to grab a bite to eat. As we made our way around to KFC, we saw two semi tractor-trailers parked behind the restaurant, marked 'ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball'. Voila! The Tribe is playing on ESPN right now and I'm bouncing between the Browns and the Indians on the tube. I must say, though, that I can barely tolerate SNB on ESPN; between the field mics being way too loud and an 'analyst' who never set foot on a professional baseball field popping off about what players are doing wrong, well....I'll only watch because it's the Indians. That would be like me critiquing an airline pilot on whose plane I was flying.

...and what's up with on-field halftime shows during seemingly every NFL primetime game? Last I really watched any No Fun League games, celebrity singers lip-synching songs only happened at the Super Bowl.

...and does anyone really care that alleged (innocent until proven guilty, unless you're a conservative) sexual predator Antonio Brown says he won't be playing in the NFL anymore? How will I ever sleep knowing that?

Stacy and I have been grandparents for nine months now. It is awesome. Our little granddaughter Mila is at that age where she's curious about everything and gets into anything. When I'm holding her while she consumes her bottle, she likes to reach up and grab Papaw's beard while watching Sesame Street (hey, whatever happened to Bert and Ernie?). Then there's moments like this:

Have a great night, everyone!

Is America Forgetting?

Never Forget.

Soon after Islamic terrorists hijacked planes loaded with passengers and flew them into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., as well as United flight 93, whose passengers fought back and caused their aircraft to crash in a field in southwest Pennsylvania, America took up that slogan.

It was on everything from billboards, t-shirts and coffee mugs to bumper stickers, key chains and magazine covers. Suddenly, divisiveness disappeared and all of America came together. Through our grief, we became stronger.

Today, eighteen years later, it seems a large segment of our society has forgotten.

Broadcast media memorializing September 11, 2001 and those lost on that terrible day varied from channel to channel; locally, one print media outlet posted two stories online connected to that day: one a hand-me-down from USA Today and the other dealing with 4th-graders making lunches for local police, fire and ems personnel.

Two stories, then it's move on to adopted cats and rescued deer.

It kind of feels like the line from Islamic Democratic Socialist Representative Ilhan Omar a few weeks ago: "Some people did something", referring to the sons of Satan who hijacked the planes and killed over 3,000 innocent civilians and civil servants.

Today's era of fragile feelings and micro-aggression makes people hesitant to mention the words 'Islamic' and 'terrorists', though in Omar's case, what she said was a premeditated slight to freedom-loving Americans.

As I drove through the county today, federal, state and municipal offices all had their flags lowered; sadly, very few private residences and businesses followed suit.

Where has out patriotism and remembrance of that horrible day gone? What happened to all the cars, and pickup  trucks especially, flying American flags as they traveled our roads and highways? Would today's 'look-at-me, I'm-offended' prima donna athletes dare to kneel during the playing of our national anthem eighteen years ago?

I think not.

The United States gravely needs to regain its unity and shed the hatred and profanity-laced name calling that is becoming prevalent in the 24-hour news cycle.

We need to do it NOW, without the terror-driven impetus of monsters flying planes into buildings.