(Usually, when you've known somebody for half-a -century, and even if that person has touched your life over those years, your memories of that relationship and what it meant, only gets to see the light of day..sail the seas, so to speak...after that person has set sail on that endless journey we'll all take one of these days. (My bags are packed).
Well, here are a few of my memories over these years with a friend...a brother journalist...no, lets send out a correction to the composing room, make that just.. brother.)
(A few years ago I had a website and this is one of the pieces I posted.I think it deserves to see the light of day again.)
If I wrote a "Most Unforgettably Character" piece for the Readers' Digest, it could only be one person:
My friend Doral.
We have been through life's muddy and clear waters for almost 50 years--sometimes dog-paddling, sometimes sinking to the bottom and getting ourselves caked with the silt.
Sometimes battling the rapids to keep from going over the edge of the dam.
But, somehow, each time, we seem to make it to shore, dry off, and get our feet wet again.
I first met him 50 plus years ago. I was ending 45 months in the Air Force and had joined the newspaper staff in my hometown of Bluefield, W.Va.--my first daily newspaper job.
I earned the great big sum of $45 a week before taxes for a six-day--10 hour-a-day effort as one of only two or three reporters covering a large area for the morning newspaper.
And, I found after a few weeks, if I didn't stay clear of a phone on my day of rest, I'd get called in.
Doral was acting news-city editor because the fellow who normally did the job was off helping some guy run for the U.S. senate.
On this paper the news-city editor designed the paper each day, selected and edited the stories. With the help of an assistant, he also wrote headlines.
And I found Doral--with his energy and enthusiasm (that has never dimmed for his work, regardless of what he's doing) took the pressures of that job and the deadline he faced each night, in stride--like a swimmer in the Olympics doing the breast-stroke.
My second or third day on the job, rewriting handouts and such, he came over and asked if I had ever written an obituary?
I told him no which was the truth.
But he told me to take the calls from the funeral homes that night..and be sure and be alert for any good, gory new story.
"Just do the best you can."
Many of our best little tidbits came from the funeral homes. How did he die? Oh, out chopping wood and the ax slipped...or he was roofing his house and touched a bare electrical wire.
And so I took the calls--six or eight, maybe a few more.
Nothing exciting that night.
I wrote them as I had remembered from my journalism correspondence course, and from those that I'd read in the newspaper.
Turned them in.
Doral read them, then came over and stood in front of my desk.
"You lied to me," he said.
"YOU have written obits before!"
And that began our long friendship. Maybe friendship isn't the right word. As the years progressed, it was more like a brother-to-brother relationship.
On that first job, he was helpful, cheerful and any criticism of a man on the job, was constructive...perhaps the lead was in the third paragraph, or maybe another quote was needed...maybe the balance wasn't there when there was a controversy.
His background included war correspondent and serving a term in the legislature. But that blood in his body was pure ink...newspaper ink.
While at the paper, he met and married Susie--a young lady who had been a year ahead of me in high school.
It was that old whirlwind courtship--5 days and the knot was tied.
He said it was because the paper needed a society editor badly.
And when they returned from their honeymoon, she took the job.
And they moved onto the top of a mountain---literally--in a house that was at one time the home of the caretaker of the newspaper's radio station towers that stood out again the sky...on the highest peak in those hills.
Unfortunately the well wasn't working. So no water.
That didn't deter this couple.
They took their showers in the pressman's shower at the paper and filled jugs of water to take back up the mountain.
Now Doral likes his beer...especially one during his evening meal.
But on the news editor's job, he couldn't get away to one of the nearby restaurants...because at that time he was designing page one and doing all those chores that go with it.
The managing editor frowned on beer being brought into the office. (Even though, one of my chores turned out to be going to the state liquor store each Saturday and picking up a couple fifths of gin for the managing editor).
So, when I went out for a bite, Doral would ask me to bring back something for him...including a cup of buttermilk.
I would get his order filled, pour a bottle of beer (3.2) into a large cup and take it back to the office.
That lasted for a couple of months until the ME happened to pass the desk and get a glimpse of the "buttermilk" in the cup.
I think the only times Doral appeared to be treading water and trying not to blow bubbles, was when the ME would come back from a movie about 10:30 or 11 p.m., look over the page one dummy and shake his head and change the play on stories, thus forcing Doral to redraw the page, reorder and rewriting the headlines, still trying to make the deadline an hour or so away.
Doral went back to reporting when the news editor came back from a failed senatorial campaign.
By this time, I had also become the morning newspaper's photographer. Seems there was one photographer, Bub, for the morning and afternoon papers (both owned by the same family).
Bub was married to Marion, a reporter for the afternoon sheet.
He would let something slip about a story I or Doral were doing as A Sunday piece, and she'd come out with something Saturday afternoon to take off the edge.
So I grabbed one of the old 4-by-5 Speed Graphic cameras and began taking my own pictures. Doral did the same.
And then I would develop and print them.
And the system the paper had was a horse-and-buggy operation.
There was no timer in the darkroom, so you put your film in the developer, rushed outside to time it, then ran back in when the time was up and completed the process.
But there was an enlarger that had auto focus.
Then, when you went to dry the prints, you put them on a ferrotype tin, went upstairs to engraving and with tongs, shook them over open gas flames until they popped up dry.
About this time, the paper decided to do a series on small towns around the area. Doral drew the assignment.
He would come back with 50 or so pictures...that I had to develop and print each week for the Sunday feature.
And in between on those days I was stuck in the darkroom, I had my police and city hall beat to cover and my own pictures to take.
But if I really got stuck, Doral was right there to take some of the work off me, even if it meant he'd have to stay over an hour or so.
We both developed a great relationship with the local police. They seem to trust us...even the state police. And when they had an outing, such as a cookout at one sergeant's home, we were the only non cops invited. And they expected no favors...but they knew we would be honest in our reporting.
(An aside: Today, such a relationship and trust would be suspect by the paranoid powers who are all seeing and all-knowing--at least in their narrow minds.)
When my father passed away, it was really my first throat choking, fist clinching feeling of helplessness with death.
Doral was there at the house where my Dad was laid out. And his presence, I feel now, helped me through that crisis.
And then one day, Doral told me he was giving notice...he had applied for and gotten the job of managing editor on an Ohio paper.
And I felt I was losing a good friend--two good friends, he and Susie.
By this time, I was making $50 a week. I had a second child that the hospital wasn't going to release until I paid the $150 bill. I had to go to the paper and borrow the money and had it almost paid back.
I asked Doral if there were any other openings.
He called the publisher.
And I was hired.
Then we set about figuring out how we were going to get my family and our furniture to the Ohio town. (It was a long trip, the turnpike only went 44 miles and the rest of the way was two lanes...slow and time-consuming)
Doral borrowed a truck from Susie's father who ran a local car-truck dealership. I got my downstairs neighbor, a railroad brakeman to drive it.
He got a relative to go along.
So we went up on the mountain and loaded up Doral and Susie's furniture--then to my house and my belongings.
And we set out.
About a fourth of the way there, the truck broke down while going through a little town. My neighbor would have to spend the night there before the truck could be fixed.
We left the truck and drove on, Doral and Sue in their car, my wife and kids and I in ours.
When we arrived at the Ohio town, the house that I was supposed to rent (the publisher had found a house for each of us) was not available. And the furniture was arrived any time.
So quick check of the want ads and I wound up with an old house about a mile from the paper, across the river. Just in time.
And thus started new jobs--which would last four months before the paper went out of business, leaving us sinking into the murky waters.
Right away, we were both short on money. Some of the two weeks pay I collected before I left went to pay off the rest of that hospital bill.
So Doral went to a loan company and borrowed $300. He gave me half with no strings attached.
It would be years later before I could pay him back.
With our outstanding bills taken care of, we dig in at the paper...work, work, work, but in those days as tiring as it was, it was also fun, fun, and fun.
We spent 12-15 hours a day writing stories, taking pictures (of course Doral was designing page one) but he wanted in on the real action and after the afternoon paper went to press about 11 a.m., he'd cover stories, take pictures...do whatever had to be done.
The city editor began ordering me around, which Doral didn't like.
So he made me News Editor, taking me out of the city editor's hands.
He gave me a daily column, decided since we were in farm country, I would also take on the duties of farm editor...going out and interviewing a farmer, taking pictures for a weekly feature.
An Aside: I told this city editor one day that he better hope this newspaper survived, because I didn't think he would ever get another newspaper job. He didn't. He wound up working for one of those small loan companies that were so prevalent in those days.)
We were trying to boost circulation in a three-newspaper town--two afternoon and one morning.
Our newspaper had a great history. Seems a local millionaire wanted an ad in one of the other papers (both owned by the same family). It was refused.
So the building that housed our paper went up in about 48 days, was equipped and staffed (and so the story goes, when the presses arrived, they couldn't get them through the door, so a wall was torn down and then rebuilt.)
And it was tooth-and-nail journalism for a while. One story has it that the owner of our paper was photographed coming out of a house with a less than a nice reputation. So our paper dig up the fact that that house was owned by the folks that owned the opposition papers.
Of course, when we arrived, this paper was in decline, losing circulation and advertising. And the owner had died.
We had little time for personal lives. Occasionally he and Sue would come over to my house for supper and a couple of beers.
Right across the street from me was a bar and carryout. Doral and I went to to get some beer.
Now Doral is probably 5 or 6 years older than I am. And I was 23 at the time. But the guy behind the counter wouldn't sell us the beer until he saw an ID from Doral that he was over 21!
Circulation had gone up about a thousand. We seemed to be making an impact...the surf was up and we were skimming along on top of the waves...
Then the publisher of the sister paper appeared on the scene. A barracuda concerned with his survival.
So, it was shortly after the first of the year, the rough seas hit the fan.
On a Saturday morning, Doral and I were called into the publisher's office and told to leave a 2-by-10 inch hole on page one for an important announcement.
An a half-hour before the paper was to roll, the the publisher handed Doral copy for the hole:
The paper had been sold to the opposition...this day it went to Davy Jones Locker!
As soon as the paper was locked up, Doral and I headed for the Capitol City to look for possible jobs.
But who are you going to see on a Saturday?
Back at the paper, we tried the doors.
The locks had been changed and there were armed guards.
So much for cleaning out our desks.
I had to have a job as soon as possible with two little mouths to feed.
So I called my old ME.
And was hired back with a $10 raise--$60 a week!
But Doral and Sue could wait for brighter prospects.
And so we parted company...for the moment.
It was probably 3 months later that I again heard from Doral.
Seems one of our out-of-work reporters applied for a job on a small paper in far northeastern Ohio, giving Doral as a reference.
Doral gave the guy good credentials but told the business manager, he had an even better person in mind.
So I got a call from that business manager. And he called my three references and talked to them for a half-hour.
The job sounded great.
Leaving the family behind with just a few bucks to tide them over, I left for the new job.
But when I got there, I found the business manager had lied.
I was paid $5 a week less and would be working half a day more.
And the "new" editor (the old editor had had a heart attack and was in the hospital) was some kid 6 months out of Ohio State, and if you worked for him, well-off he had been leading an Army platoon...friendly fire would have taken care of him.
So after 5 days, I told the editor to get himself another flounder, and wound up on the other side of Cleveland as a reporter and photographer--not so sure my old buddy Doral had really done me a good deed.
But it really turned out great.
The new job led me into the editing end of the business.
And for 14 or so months, except for living quarters (this in the boom days of steel and shipbuilding), I was happy. I had a good job...two days off and a raise to $100 a week!
I was a guppy happily swimming around the tank.
Doral appeared in my life again.
He was in the capitol city on the old Citizen--along with the fellow who had been news editor, Wink, when we were in that old mountain state.
There was a copyeditor's job open if I wanted to apply for it.
And both he and Wink had already gone to bat for me.
I applied.
And thus, we were swimming in the same bit of ocean again.
By this time, he and Sue had their first child.
Baby-sitters were hard to come by at times and Sue was also working.
So my wife began baby-sitting Carter--and that's how I finally was able to pay back the money he had given me in Zanesville.
Some days I would pick him up to go to work. He would be tardy (later I found out he's a bear to awake in the mornings) and when we arrived at the paper...with a couple of minutes to go before we might get a raised eyebrow from the managing editor...I'd park where ever I could find a space on the street.
And, most times I didn't get a chance to move the car, and I'd find a parking ticket on my windshield.
Came the day when our paper merged with the morning paper down the street.
So our hours changed from day to night.... the tides shifted.
But we were still in the same bit of ocean.
In the meantime, Doral, on the side, became the publisher of a weekly newspaper in the suburb where he lived.
An aside: I think this was in that time frame. I could be off a year or two. After all, you do get a bit waterlogged as the years go by and you're starring into the murky depths of your life.
I wrote a piece or two for the paper.
One concerned the Highway Patrol. I had taken a part-time job with the patrol, editing their magazine. And they were pushing for a raise for the legislature.
Unfortunately, I couldn't just write an editorial urging such action (copies of the magazine went to all legislators) but if a newspaper was to print an editorial saying the raise was needed, well....
Doral was very obliging...I wrote the editorial, he printed it, I reprinted it.....
Midwife? Doral almost became one!
My mother-in-law had arrived. My mother was visiting. So I took her back to West Virginia--my wife assuring me that the baby would not arrive until I got back the next day from the six or so hour trip.
Didn't happen that way.
Seems that afternoon, while I was on the road, the baby decided to shake things up a bit.
My wife called Doral at the paper.
He got there in record time. He put her in his car and drove to the gasoline station at the entrance of our development. That's where the emergency squad was headquarters. He didn't want the ambulance pulling up to the house with siren and lights blazing because he realized that would really upset our two little girls.
He rode in the ambulance to the hospital and stayed with Dot until the delivery room (the baby's appearance was so close, she bypassed the labor room).
And again, at some point, between lighthouses, we parted company.
He went with the afternoon paper in the Capitol City and I moved on to Akron.
It was probably three years later that I again heard from him.
He had left the newspaper business and was working for a shopping center outfit out of Columbus in the far western part of the state.
He was overseeing four centers there.... but was about to move back to the shopping outfit's main office as director of public relations. And he said if I wanted to try a different side of the ocean, and jump in with him, just holler.
By this time, he and Sue had three children.
And it wasn't too long after our visit with them, that the newspaper ink in my blood ran thin, and I decided to try something else.
I called Doral.
He offered me the four centers he had just left.
And once again, we were swimming in the same part of the ocean.
But, before my call, he had hired somebody to run those centers who decided she wanted to keep the job.
So I was sent there to learn the elementary bookkeeping and ins-and-outs of a shopping center secretary--one who bows to the tenants, schedules special events (as cheaply as possible) and generally tries to keep these store managers (many of whom shouldn't even be selling shoe laces) happy.
Tina was a great teacher.
I think Doral knew that...and only the best for his "buddy".
So, after a week or so of training, I went back to the capitol to join Doral who was trying to make an assistant's job for me.
Unfortunately it wasn't there, so he gave me four centers to oversee, but I was still expected to be the number two man when there was something to do at centers in other cities.
But he did hire a part-time lady as my assistant...a lady that was one I could have easily fallen in love with---if I didn't already have the love of my life in my home.
Doral took care of me on my move to the head office. For the first couple of months.... He still had not moved his family and mine were still in Akron, we lived in a motel paid for by the company.
After a 12-15 hour day, I'd go with him to the Athletic Club for a steam and relaxation, and then a midnight or 2 a.m. snack.
The company picked up the motel tab, but they did not get cheated.
Their pound of flesh was more like five each day.
Then, the house he owned in the Columbus suburb when he was working for the newspaper, became his again when the tenant's lease expired.
That ended our motel stay.
And I started looking for a room or something I could afford.
I was still making payments on my house in Akron (which was up for sale) but, the salary I was getting on the shopping center job, was not exactly getting me out of the quicksand.
Doral--and Sue solved that problem.
I moved into their den in their home and slept on an Army
cot.
We would get home, maybe at midnight, after starting sometimes at 8 a.m., and Sue would manually crush ice, put it into a couple glasses of bourbon and have it waiting for us.
I guess some neighbor got a bit curious about me.
Sue had the perfect squelch:
"Oh, that's my second husband when my first is busy."
About that crushed ice. For Christmas, I bought an electric ice crusher and presented it to Sue.
It seemed to make her day...she gave me a big hug and a kiss.
Of course the children are adults now, but I remember them as that. If, on a rare occasion, Doral and Sue took a night out, I was the baby-sitter. And that was no problem, since I had three of my own.
The shopping center job was great when I was on the road.
Steak and bourbon on the expense account, good motel rooms, the latest in rental cars...such as a trip to Pittsburgh to check out the prices on discount stores opening up near our shopping centers.
But when back home, it was back to hamburgers and Arby's.
To this day I can't go an Arby's...I ate too many of them...in shopping center lunches.
I was the bad guy if Doral wanted to blame somebody for a decision. Oh, don't get me wrong. Those decisions we talked over and those decisions were because he wanted to be a shoulder to cry on, especially when it involved personnel.
Take the case of a center secretary who was not really with the program. To start off with, she spent the center's money for an inflated snowman--a BIG inflated snowman...in a part of the country that gets very high winds.
And the snowman floated off into the wild, snowyonder.
And there had been other complains.
So I get a call a day or so before Christmas (I'm home) to fly up there and fire "that bitch."
One of the worst flights of my life.
On an airline that shall remain nameless (the heaters didn't work, nobody was allowed in the last four seats) and the ups-and-downs would have made a porpoise throw up.
I fired her.
She called Doral.
He soothed her, but said: "Tom's your boss. What he says goes? I can't overrule him."
We would go to a meeting of merchants out of town...either driving or flying.
Great food, great drinks Great motel rooms.
But come morning, I'd be up, moving around, ready to get out and ride the surf.
Doral would be dead to the world.
I learned on the first trip...find some coffee...then wake him.
Bring the coffee back...shake him, holler in his ear.
He's groggy for the first few minutes.
But, once up and awake, he's his old, exuberant, go-get-'em self.
We would go to the meetings, He'd exude that personality, that self-confidence that has really been his trademark...and lull those merchants into a sense of security and trust and love of their shopping center owner, that they seem to be ready to double their rent.
And he would pass out a box of the best cigars that money could buy.
The box usually came back less then half empty.
Guess who got those benefits...the two of us.
Hey, he could charm--he can charm the lobster out of his shell--a gift that I wish I could have had--either by osmosis or however.
The ladies could get a line from him, but, in all my years by his side, he was the perfect gentleman.
Somewhere along the line, I got a chance to repay Doral for that loan he gave me when we moved to the new job together. He needed some bucks to complete his purchase or a house in Hideway Hills, a very, very exclusive (little did they know what they were getting) in Hocking county.
My wife and and I had no qualms to putting up our car for the credit union loan.
He got the house...one that he was touting as a perfect house for my family.
We visited...and it was a great site...rustic...trees, a lake, quite..the perfect hideway.
One time, as he and I were returning from the store a few miles away, he discovered a tree chopped down along the right-of-way...he decided that would look great at his place, so we stopped...loaded that wood into his car...
And that takes me back to an 11 p.m. or midnight trip to his suburban home when he spotted some bricks that he thought would look good at his place.
We stopped, threw some of them into the trunk/
I think that, Hideway trustees, or whatever they're called that oversee the development (and remember, this was in a day when Afro-Americans and other minorities were not exactly welcome in some circles) were shocked to their depths by the form he and Sue filled out.
Where it asked for religion, they filled in Druid. What holiday do they observe? Oct. 31.
And when somebody asked about a visitor who would not have passed the KKK muster, Sue replied:
"Why, she's my half sister."
I really enjoyed my time with these two people and with their children...a time I would not trade for a deep-sea dive for a view of the Titanic...even when I babysat with those three while their folks took a rare night out when neither has other pressing business.
But, I came to realize that the No. 2 job at the shopping center would not materialize.
I was tired of dealing with people who might, just might, have made it as guppies sorters at Petsmart.
My house was not selling. I missed my family day-to-day, even though I was usually home on weekends.
So I told Doral I was going to look back at Akron and employment opportunities.
And, the true friend that he is, he understood.
And so did Sue.
She really had the biggest burden---putting up with me day-after-day. Almost like a brother who can't break away.
As my job feelers went out....
A nibble from Goodyear...
But a better one from an ad agency.
And that was the leading candidate.
We had actually settled on everything---except that old sticking point--$$$$$.
The headman at the agency called the Beacon publisher for a reference. The publisher asked me to go to lunch in the old Mayflower.
Bean soup and cornbread.
And that luncheon took me back to the Beacon.
An Aside: The agency job was taken by a friend from the capitol paper. He later came to work for the Beacon.
And two of my daughters have worked there...and one is still at the ad agency.
Doral rejoined the only capitol newspaper still publishing.
He's still doing his thing...
I think that keeps him going.
Doral has flirted with that "15 minutes of fame" everybody talks about. But the tides never seem to come all the way up on the beach.
He wrote a great play, at least I think so. There was talk of a production...even a movie. It was performed on a London, England, stage.
But I think it was ahead of its time. "Thi$ God Bu$ine$$" is a play about those who exploit religion for their own gain...not a popular subject at the time...like defaming Billy Graham and the Pope.
Of course, a few years later, we had such icons as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker who found themselves not exactly in the great hallelujah chorus.
So his play was more fact than fiction.
There are some people that you feel "down home" with. You don't really have to entertain or be entertained. Just being in their company, a cup of coffee, maybe small talk, or even quiet time, is enough.
That's Doral and Sue.
Their three children have gone on to jump into the ocean and make careers that I'm sure make their folks proud..I know it does their old "uncle."
When I retired, Doral immediately wanted to put me back to work.
I resisted.
I now see him and Sue every two years or so.
I wish it come be more. Just as I wish we had been together more years than we were.
But that's life...that's the currents of the ocean that draw folks together...and then go out again...
As you grow older, the regrets are many...
Doral, as of this writing, still enliven and enriches the lives of his readers with 4 columns a week about where to find the best foods and the best restaurants in the area, hell, in the state.
And Sue is still her lovely, gracious self...welcoming an old classmate and a dear friend with open arms.
But, damnit, I still wind up on the couch...their German Village condo is just too small for visitors!
(Footnote: Doral is still going strong in Columbus. He's into food and was the Grumpy Gourmet for the Columbus Dispatch and he has a couple of websites. Just Google Grump Gourmet and you'll find him, pushing 90 and still at it....)
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