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Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009

Mike Tharp: What makes an editor want to go to work each day?

And you wonder why I can't wait to get to work in the morning?

I'm up at 5 every weekday. In the newsroom by 7. Connie Hodges, our office manager, is the only who beats me in.

In the first hour Tuesday, I fielded three of what could only be termed hostile phone calls. People were PO'd at several oversights and mistakes and omissions. Didn't help my mood that they were right. We'd screwed up.

At 8 a.m. I got another phone call. By this time, I was PO'd myself.

It was Joe Dylina. Said we'd talked about some stuff before, did I have five minutes to see him? What about, Mr. Dylina? Well, just some of the columns you've written.

Here's where I'd usually suggest the caller write a letter to the editor. Instead, I told him I'd be around till 11. He said he'd come by.

At 9, he arrived at the front counter. On a walker. Clearly 88 years old, which he'd told me. Which is why I'd said yes to meeting him. Baseball cap with a law enforcement decal on it. Hunched over, but able to deliver the kind of handshake our dad told us boys always to offer -- firm and look the other person in the eye.

We walked slowly back to my office. He sat down. We swapped yarns for a couple minutes. His Navy service. Corrections policies at Atwater's federal prison. My Army service.

Then he reached for a cardboard package resting on his walker. "Here's why I really came."

He placed the 2-foot-long by 3-inch-high triangle-shaped, rubber band-wrapped package on my desk.

I removed the rubber bands and opened it.

There, on a base of myrtlewood (said to grow only in Jerusalem and Oregon) in letters carved from oak was my name:

Mike Tharp.

Even an oak dot over the "i."

I leaned back and took a deep breath. I didn't cry till that night when I told my daughter Dylann about it.

In the office I had to fight to keep control. An old man I'd never met had just given me a gift that will stay on my desk for the rest of my life.

I managed the politeness and gratitude our folks had taught us. Then I grabbed a notebook and started asking him questions so I could write the answers. Keep at bay the feelings building behind my eyelids.

Roundup, Mont.-born and raised, Joe served in the Navy for three and a half years, protecting merchant ships from predatory German U-boats. He was a visual signalman.

Still in the service, he started carving a 36-inch-long destroyer. Hadn't finished it by the time he mustered out after the war. Spent a career in prison corrections as an officer and administrator. McNeil Island, Wash. -- not good for his wife's respiratory ailments. Inglewood, Colo. El Reno, Okla. Wound up at Lompoc. Finished carving the destroyer.

Built two bedrooms and all the cabinets in their house. Retired in '71 from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Lived in Grants Pass, Ore., until they moved to Dos Palos in '97.

His wife fell down in a local store. Broke her hip. He took care of her for the next three years. Michelle Mann, wife of the Dos Palos police chief and a neighbor, dropped by every day to visit. Always stood on the porch.

"She sure gave me a great lift," he recalled.

His wife died. After that, "I wanted to do something I wanted to do -- not something I had to do," he explained.

Met Paule Yoshihara, a single mother with three kids living in northeast Merced. Their place needed fixin'. He fixed it. They got married. She works as a nurse at Mercy.

He needs the walker "only for stability." His hands, as you'd expect from a woodworker and a man who had to subdue prisoners for a living, feel strong enough to crack walnuts.

If Paule hears something drop while he's in the backyard or his shop, she shouts, "Are you OK?"

"So far, it's been the object," he says.

Son Tim from his first marriage is a dentist in Merced. Son Steve is a superior court judge in San Mateo.

"I've talked more than five minutes," Joe says, reaching for his walker. We leave the office, the newsroom, the Sun-Star building. He walks to his white Toyota truck. American flags fly from both sides of the doors. He places the basket from the walker into a clean beige-carpeted rear deck. A cane goes on top.

He folds up the walker and puts it next to the basket. Takes out the cane and walks to the driver's side door. Shakes my hand again, as a man does. Gets in. Drives off.

I go back to the office.

I look at "Mike Tharp" carved in oak and myrtlewood, resting on the front of my desk.

It will be there till I die.

And you wonder why I can't wait to get to work in the morning.

Executive Editor Mike Tharp can be reached at (209) 385-2456 or mtharp@mercedsun-star.com.