Pauline and Bill Kombol, summer 1972, photo by Barry Kombol
Mom died 15 years ago today. A few days later, a good friend placed his hand on my shoulder and told me, “You just lost the best friend you’ll ever have.” Truer words have rarely been spoken.
We knew it was coming. She had COPD – Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Like many of her generation, Pauline smoked. For years, make that decades, she tried to quit, and for the most part did, limiting herself to just a few smokes a day. In fact, for the longest time, even I didn’t know she still smoked. She hid it that well.
In her last year, grandchildren from far away came to visit. Thanksgiving weekend 2010, Mom wished to take a ride around Enumclaw and point out her old family homes. And that of her grandfather, Joshua Morris, whom she never really knew, as he died before she was two years old. She packed her oxygen tank, and though experiencing discomfort, we completed the several-hour trip around town and out to Osceola. A few weeks later, she called me at work first thing in the morning. For thirty minutes, she shared her Christian faith journey and how proud she was to have passed it down to her children, in different iterations.
A week before Christmas, she fell. How many times have falls lead to death in older adults? First stop was Enumclaw Hospital, then a Federal Way rehab center, where we visited her on Christmas Day. She seemed to be getting better, but a setback landed her in Swedish Hospital. On New Year’s Day, many of the family visited. Mom convinced the doctors to pump her up on steroids, then put on makeup, so that when we visited, she was sparkling and appeared to be years younger. I was amazed by her remarkable recovery – right before my eyes. She was vibrant, almost perky. She held a great-grandchild in her arms, looking angelic. I imagined she’d somehow been cured. Foolish me, for I didn’t know of the doctor’s trick.
At Swedish Hospital, Pauline and her great-granddaughter, Nina Marie Clooke, age two months, January 1, 2011.
Pauline left Swedish for the Kline Galland nursing home near Seward Park. It’s a lovely place in a forested setting. And for the next three weeks, she slowly proceeded to die, under the gentle care of hospice personnel who calibrated the precise dose of morphine to keep her both conscious and free of pain. On the last few nights, we rotated sleeping beside her.
The fateful call came Monday afternoon, January 24, 2011. We were in Auburn at the Celebration of Life for Jill Alverson, Cal Bashaw’s daughter. Mom and Cal had joined their lives in partnership a decade earlier. Cal and his family became a part of our family. Were two daggers purposely thrown that day?
The following week was a whirlwind. We organized the funeral at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and coordinated with Enumclaw Funeral Home, just like we did for Dad, 32 years earlier. Father Bill Hausmann, one of Mom’s best friends and the priest who married Jennifer and me, came to perform the service. Mom wanted to be buried, so I chose a coffin, the simplest, bare pine box available, like those of earlier generations. Mom was never showy; she always practiced modesty but never pretension.
Our job was made easy as Mom had written down most of what she wanted after life. Father Hausmann graciously guided us through assembling the funeral service. Old family friends filled the pews. “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace” were sung. The 23rd Psalm was read, as were Corinthians 15:51-57 and Luke 12:48-49. Each of her four children delivered remembrances, as did two grandchildren. Following the Celebration of Life in the Parish Hall, the immediate family journeyed to the cemetery where Pauline was buried next to her husband, Jack. Flowers were tossed on her pinewood coffin. Her gravestone read, ‘Morte in Vitam,’ Latin for ‘death into life.’
Pauline (Morris) Kombol’s funeral program.
Thirty-two years earlier, Dad’s end came fast, dying a little over three weeks after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. One night before he died, he called me to his bedside and set forth a task: “I want you to take care of your mother.” Both daughters lived far away, while Barry and Cathy had three toddlers and a fourth on the way next year.
That was the easiest job I ever had. There was one simple way to take care of Mom – I let her take care of me. I was single, unattached, and living in their Lake Sawyer summer cabin, a mere 10 miles away. I came frequently for dinner. She hemmed my pants and sewed buttons on my shirts. And always sent me home with food: casseroles, lentil soup, scones, and blackberry pie.
We became pals, going to concerts and plays. With Danica, we drove to Pasadena and attended the 1981 Rose Bowl. I encouraged her to purchase a condo in downtown Seattle and joined as a 20% partner. We jointly managed Dad’s affairs, sharing the bookwork and undertaking investments. Each summer, she joined me at her lake house until I moved out after purchasing a Maple Valley condo. Even then, we accomplished a remodel that doubled the size of her lake home while maintaining its chalet character and style.
Together, we undertook projects. We sorted through piles of family photos, identifying faces whose names I wrote on the back. She guided me through family genealogies, from which I published several Morris and Kombol family histories. Those endeavors inspired me and led to a second-act writing hobby. Mom remained an essential part of my life until the end.
Knowing she was gone, I conjured ways to keep her alive. During the first nine months of my life, in utero, I shared everything with her. After leaving the womb, a baby carries maternal cells for decades, possibly for life. It’s called maternal micro-chimerism. There was my hook, my hold – deep down in the cavity of my soul, a few of Mom’s cells may still reside in me. On a molecular level, she was still with me. Just as during her life, I was still part of her, as mothers continue to carry cells of their infants for years, even decades after birth. Maybe I was grasping at straws, a drowning man trying to save a sense of self by clutching the DNA of flimsy reeds. But it worked.
Memory is a curious sort of history. The past in your head becomes the present. You step through its walls to the days and months of yesteryear – the way it used to be. We conjure snippets of recall from faraway events, hoping to make them real again. And then we’ll see each other and speak as we did before. There’s an element of magic at work. Like the alchemists, trying to change one element into another, we hope against hope that our leaden memories might somehow be turned to gold.
Some questions remain long after their owners have died, lingering like ghosts searching for answers never found in life. On this side of heaven, all we possess is the present. But the present endlessly dissolves into the past. There I am, a little boy of three or four. One of my earliest memories, in Elk Coal, with Barry. We’ve planned a performance to show off our skills to an audience of one – Mom.
On the edge of the yard where the tall trees grow, there’s a vine maple tree with a branch growing horizontally from the ground. Barry, two and one-half years older than me, flips upside down, hanging by his knees, grinning broadly. I jump and grab the branch and hang by my arms. Mom claps wildly, as if it’s the most incredible show she’s ever seen. Barry continues to hang. I drop from the branch and run into her outstretched arms as she squeezes me tightly. I’d never felt so proud.
That’s what Gary Habenicht meant when he advised, I just lost the best friend I’ve ever had.
Grandma Pauline with 13 of her 14 grandchildren on the occasion of her 80th birthday celebration in Arizona, March 31, 2007.
After receiving several of my CD compilations, a fraternity brother, Brad Caldart, suggested creating one with my top ten songs. I took his challenge to heart and began compiling lists of possible entries. That was well over a year ago. I’ve promised several times to quit producing CD collections, only to do so again and again.
So, I beg forgetfulness and share my latest anthology. To no surprise, it’s more than ten songs. The profundity of the occasion demanded no less than XIII. And like the Super Bowl, I chose Roman numerals to convey their renown. I searched for songs that say something, and to no surprise, many have appeared on previous compilations. There are several new ones. As is my custom, what the songs mean to me, and why they matter, is explained below. They carry one common theme – nostalgia.
I. Big River (1995) – This song first came to my attention in October 2021. On an early Saturday morning, I prepared to watch the Tottenham soccer match played at Newcastle. The home team celebrated their new Saudi owners by playing over the stadium loudspeakers Jimmy Nail’s wistful remembrance about growing up in Newcastle. It’s focused on the collapse of the Newcastle shipbuilding industry on the River Tyne where his father worked. The Neptune shipyard was the last to go, Jimmy heard on the radio, and then they played the latest No. 1.
It took several listenings, before I heard the line, “that was when coal was king,” the name of my newspaper column since 2007. Sting grew up nearby and expressed similar sentiments in his 2013 album, The Last Ship, which spawned a 2014 musical of the same name with Sting in the starring role. Through blind luck, we caught his performance in L.A., a month before Covid shut down the nation.
II. Tambourine Man (1965)– I listened to this song continuously during college. Why – the poetic lyrics, the storytelling parable, and conclusive end, “let me forget about today until tomorrow.” This song appeared on my first cassette compilation, The Best of December 6, 1978.
III. Superman’s Ghost (1987)– Growing up, I was a huge fan of Superman, the comic books, the TV show, and all things to do with superpowers. After school, found me planted at home or with a friend in front of a TV watching Adventures of. Though George Reeves’ death by suicide came in 1959, my innocent ears didn’t hear about it until several years later – in the school yard when this silly joke was offered, “Do you know why George Reeves shot himself? – He thought he was Superman.” Don McLean captures more than just his death in his poignant song.
IV. Questions (1976) – I was so enraptured by Mannfred Mann and Chris Slade’s lyrics that my sister, Danica inscribed them for me in calligraphy on old-fashioned parchment paper. I’ve kept it in my Webster’s Third International Dictionary under the letter Q. Another song from the collection of Dec. 6, 1978.
V. The Last Campaign Trilogy (1974) – Several years back, upon asking Siri to play John Stewart songs, this tune from his live double-album Phoenix Concertscame on. From its opening lyrics (“It was more than Indiana, more than South Dakota, more than California, More than Oregon”), I immediately understood the reference to Bobby Kennedy’ ill-fated run for president. Stewart traveled with the campaign playing songs before Kennedy took the stage.
A political junkie in the 9th grade, I followed each primary and was fascinated by the three-way races in both parties: D’s – McCarthy, Humphrey, Kennedy; R’s – Rockefeller, Reagan, Nixon. Stewart’s allegorical song is about much more. Our family was in Vienna that fateful morning, where the newspapers’ front pages showed a Hispanic waiter by his side, offering comfort to the fallen senator. In the hotel lobby, an old Austrian woman, her greying hair wrapped in a black scarf, hissed, “Johnson, Johnson!”
VI. A Winter’s Tale (1982) – This song was written for David Essex and spent ten weeks on the British charts peaking at No. 2. I discovered it on the Moody Blues’ 2003 album, Tim Rice, famous for Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita wrote the lyrics. Great lyricists invest heartfelt meaning into a mere 156 words.
VII. I Was Only Joking (1978) – Rod Stewart released this song as a double-A single. Its flip side, Hot Legs was played heavily the U.S. I spent most of the first six months of 1978 traveling in Europe, where this introspective side was regularly played. I fell in love with his autobiographical lyrics and confessional delivery.
VIII. ‘39 (1975) –Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen’s mammoth hit from A Night at the Opera, is a song that might just as well been included here. Brian May, the group’s lead guitarist, wrote ‘39. The song is about space travel and the dilation of time in Einstein’s theory of relativity. A century has passed when the explorers return, but they are but a year older. Their contemporaries are dead, and the space travelers encounter only their aging grandchildren. May achieved his doctorate in Astrophysics in 2007.
IX. The Way Life’s Meant To Be (1981) – Another time travel song, where ELO’s Jeff Lynne discovers a disappointing future world, filled with ivory towers and plastic flowers. It’s not the utopia he imagined, symbolized by a wish to be back in 1981. I had never heard this song until 35 years after its release, when Spencer used it as the fadeaway in a short film project at Chapman University.
X. Going All the Way –A Song in 6 Movements (2016) – This song appeared on Meat Loaf’s final album, Braver Than We Are. While Meat Loaf was the front-man, all his best songs were by Jim Steinman, who also wrote and produced No. 1 songs for Bonny Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Sun; Air Supply – Making Love Out of Nothing at All; Boyzone – No Matter What; and Barry Manilow- Read ‘Em and Weep. Steinman joined Andrew Lloyd Webber and wrote the lyrics for their 1996 musical, Whistle Down the Wind. Meat Loaf and Steinman died within months of each other during Covid.
XI. God Only Knows (1966) – Opens side 2 of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album. Paul McCartney summed it up best, when he described it as, “The greatest song ever written.”
XII. See Me Through (Part II) Just a Closer Walk (1991) – Van Morrison takes this 1941 gospel-jazz standard way back to Hyndford Street, where he grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Morrison reflects back on his childhood memories about 80 seconds in with a spoken-word poem that describes a Sunday afternoon in winter . . .
And the tuning in of stations in Europe on the wireless, Before, yes before this was the way it was, More silence, more breathing together, Not rushing, being, Before rock `n’ roll, before television, Previous, previous, previous.
XIII. All the Love I Have (2000) – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, The Beautiful Game(soccer) is centered on a Belfast Catholic team during the Troubles of 1969, the deadly conflict between Protestants and Catholics (watch the 2021 film “Belfast”). Ben Elton wrote the lyrics.
The star soccer player, John Kelly has joined the IRA, as his wife, Mary, pleads for him to reconsider leaving their marriage and abandoning his young son. It’s a stirring finale to this fine musical.
Note: The finale is actually two songs, All the Love I Have and Beautiful Game Finale, thus two video are shared below.
The Beautiful Game Finale:
XIII – December 2025 is also available on WJMK90 Spotify or as an Apple Playlist. Message Bill Kombol for a mailed CD version or a text of the Spotify or Apple playlists.
There’s a hole in my heart. Slowly, inexorably, depressingly, one by one, my literary heroes pass away. The latest, Tom Stoppard, generally regarded as the greatest living English playwright, died November 29, 2025, at age 88. And before him, Tom Wolfe (2018), Terry Teachout (2022), and Paul Johnson (2023).
Tom Stoppard had a way with words and cherished them. In his play The Real Thing, the playwright character utters this plea, “Words … They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more … I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.”
Those who value Stoppard’s words will be quoting him long after his death.
Stoppardian
A dramatist and Czech-born, Englishman, Tom Stoppard is far from a household name in America. He wrote intellectual plays of wit and humor, and farcical plays of intellectual intrigue. He didn’t write musicals or comedies, so many, probably most, have never seen his plays in theaters. Stoppard wrote plays, “because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.” Contradiction and conceptual enigmas were his stock in trade, though always delivered with dry comedic wit to drive the story. The adjective, Stoppardian, entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978.
I first encountered Tom Stoppard 50 years ago – with a pair of offerings at Seattle’s Second Stage. I was enrolled in The Living Theater, a class whose students were expected to attend at least seven live performances on campus or off. I invited my Mom to join me for a double-feature of two short Stoppard plays, After Magritte and The Real Inspector Hound. What we saw was both surreal and absurd, which led me to write a lengthy review trying to capture in detail the experience of the event. Stoppard believed that theater is an event, for which words and script are but a movable and changing part.
With each new Stoppard play I saw, The Real Thing, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Arcadia, Rock ‘n Roll, Leopoldstadt, or audio-plays I heard, Darkside, The Hard Problem, In the Native State, Albert’s Bridge, or Professional Foul, the greater my admiration grew. His most accessible work is no doubt Shakespeare in Love, the 1998 film whose script won Stoppard an Academy Award.
My collection of theater playbills from Tom Stoppard plays I’ve seen.
But for me, his 1993 stage play, Arcadiatakes the cake. I’ve seen it staged three times and listened to several audio versions. Set on an estate in rural Derbyshire, England, the play examines its owners, the Coverly family, in both 1809 and their present-day descendants. Arcadia is an exploration of determinism and chaos theory, love and literature, Lord Byron, lust, and the falsity of biography. As with all of Stoppard’s plays, it’s really about the characters who inhabit the stage, delivering lines that help the audience to first think, then understand, and later feel. It’s a multi-layered drama filled with romance, humor, tragedy, sorrow, science, rice puddings, and a tortoise. The L.A. Theatre Works audio staging of this nearly three-hour play will introduce you to entropy and mathematics, but in a way that is fun and cleverly explained.
One of Stoppard’s most intriguing and accessible pieces is Darkside, a radio play that conceptualizes one interpretation behind the meaning of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Stoppard received the band’s blessing to use their music at the soundtrack for his drama. Darkside was released in 2013 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a best-selling album that stayed on the Billboard 200 for almost 15 years. The story follows Emily McCoy, a philosophy student as she travels through a series of thought experiments vividly brought to life by the characters she encounters, and seeks to answer the question, “What is the good?”
I could share a dozen quotes to conclude this tribute, but have settled on just one, fittingly from his 1967 breakthrough hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. “Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.”
And my collection of Stoppard biographies and copies of scripts.
Afterword and Looking After
Theaters were really devastated by Covid-19, and as a result, fewer plays are staged, with musicals and crowd-pleasers the staple. Tom Stoppard’s works are still occasionally performed in England, but not often in the U.S. Jennifer and I were fortunate to have seen his last play, Leopoldstadt, the story behind his Jewish roots on Broadway in 2022. But locally, there hasn’t been a staging of any of his plays since 2014, that I’m aware of.
Yet there are ways to listen to his dramas, foremost among them, Tom Stoppard – A BBC Radio Collection featuring 14 plays. His 54-minute radio play, Darkside, is easily found on YouTube and elsewhere. L.A. Theatre Works has staged audio versions of three productions, including excellent adaptations of Arcadia,The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. They are available through Libby or your library. Only one of his plays has been filmed, a 1990 version of Rosencrantz, starring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss. Plus, there’s always the film, Shakespeare in Love, while not totally his own, it’s a satisfying representation of the Stoppard style.
Prized Possession
The autographed copy of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern at Dead” that I bought by pure chance.
Several years ago, we stopped at the Half Price Books in Tukwila and browsed. I found this used copy of Rosencrantz at an attractive price of $8.00, so bought it. For a couple of years, it collected dust on a nightstand filled with other volumes I haven’t yet read. It wasn’t until I packed it along on an extended trip and finally read it. Enthused, I began to read it again but was struck by the introductory page. Was that a real autograph, or just stamped artwork? Felt pen stain-marks bleeding through to the opposite side proved it was real.
Unwittingly, without trying, and by pure chance, I purchased an autographed copy the U.S. printing of the 1967 play that launched Stoppard’s career.
But of course, Tom Stoppard said it best as a line in this very play, “Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”
Growing up on the West Coast, the Pacific Ocean was our natural draw. During my early years, before memories even formed, our family made its annual summer trek to Grayland. We always stayed in the same 12-room motel, a long walk across sandy dunes and scattered beach grass to glimpse the ocean, which was still a couple of hundred yards further west. Early memories find me playing in the sand – enveloped by the ocean’s roar, razor clams, and cool breezes. We vacationed there every year, always with the Louie & Joanne Cerne family, until my mid-teens.
The Great Lakes didn’t even register. Sure, we learned about them in school, but if pressed to name all five, I’d struggle. My first encounter came in 1976, the summer of my 23rd year. I’d fallen from a tree late that June, crushing three vertebrae; then spent a week in a hospital bed, sleep-watching the bicentennial Fourth of July on television. Chris Coppin visited before flying back for his summer law program in London. Upon release, my doctor suggested I read James Mitchener’s epic novel, “Centennial.” At 909 pages, it lasted all summer.
My prognosis was uncertain. I could walk, with pain; and sit, with pain; and lie down, in pain. It would take time for the muscles to strengthen and my vertebrae to recover. I wore a back brace, best described as a corset tightened by strings, like Victorian-era ladies used to achieve thin waists. For the next month, I moved slowly and spent lots of time swimming. Water’s buoyancy and lessened gravitational pressure reduced the lower back pain. My planned summer of fun was decidedly unfunny.
I exchanged letters with Chris, informing him of our high school class’s five-year reunion slated for July 31. Rob McLean organized that impromptu affair at Lynne Puttman’s father’s ranch, where our best junior high parties were held. I was the only one to swim in the pool I’d enjoyed as a kid. By mid-August, I was going stir crazy.
Chris had Pan Am flying privileges, thanks to his father, George, a flight engineer. He took advantage of the airline’s non-stop service between London and Seattle, sometimes flying home on weekends. Chris arrived back in Washington, preparing to leave for his second year of law school at Notre Dame. Would I like to join him on the cross-country drive? I had nothing going on in my life except a bad back that hurt most of the time, so a buddy road trip was set in motion.
We left the morning of August 17th, heading east on I-90. Chris drove a light-blue 1968 Plymouth Fury, a four-door, on loan from his dad. The car’s engine ran hot, so we opened the windows and turned the heater to full blast to drain off excess heat. Driving mile after endless mile through sunny Montana made it uncomfortable, but we were young. No air conditioner either, so with windows open and Chris’ arm resting on the driver’s side door, he sported an impressive sunburn by day’s end.
Chris Coppin drives his 1968 Plymouth Fury along I-90, somewhere in Montana, on the first day of our road trip to Notre Dame.
We stopped at a cheap motel somewhere east of Billings. Our next day’s goal was Hermann, Missouri, where Chris’s girlfriend lived. Which meant we’d be driving past Mount Rushmore. Back on I-90, we approached Rapid City, and signs to Mount Rushmore began to appear. The colossal faces of four great American presidents, carved in granite, beckoned. The short ride wasn’t North by Northwest, but required a southerly detour, which cost us some miles and minutes. But how many times in our lives would we be that close? Only once . . . so far.
I asked Chris if we could visit. He said, “No.” I begged and pleaded, but he was in no mood for sightseeing. It was late morning, and we still had 900 miles in front of us. A compromise was finally struck. Chris drove to the park entrance and dropped me off in view of the monument It was an epic sight. I snapped a photo while Chris looped back around the lot, picking me up two minutes later. I jumped in the car, as Chris gleefully announced, “There, you’ve seen Mt. Rushmore.” We headed south toward Kansas City.
Kansas City, Here We Come!
The ’68 Plymouth came equipped with an AM radio. Stations faded in and out. After finding a good one, we rode it until it was too scratchy to enjoy. Our Missouri destination, where Cathy Rhoads lived, was still hours away. We passed through Kansas City late that night, listening to live broadcasts of the 1976 Republican National Convention. I had a personal interest.
Six months earlier, I was chosen as one of three Enumclaw delegates pledged to Gerald Ford. We represented him at the King County Convention held that May in the Seattle Center. But my hopes of attending the national convention in Kansas City were dashed when Ronald Reagan’s delegates dominated the district round, so our Ford delegation didn’t advance to state.
The contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan was so tight that multiple ballots were expected. It was the last political convention where the nominee wasn’t known until the votes were cast. Yet, through pure chance and circumstance, there I was, driving by the convention hall while listening to the live broadcast. We passed in the early hours of August 19, just after West Virginia’s delegation put Ford over the top.
Onward to Hermann we pressed through the night, arriving early the next morning. We spent a few days with his girlfriend’s family. Cathy’s father and brothers were auctioneers, so we joined them for one of their auctions. It was a peculiar affair, akin to a giant yard sale, with items like garden hoses and old lawnmowers sold in quick succession for a couple of dollars here and ten dollars there. I called it backyard entertainment.
At the Six Flags amusement park with Cathy’s family. From left to right: Bill Kombol, Chris Coppin, Cathy Rhoads, her youngest sister, Sharon, and Suzanne.
Hermann was a charming German town and still is. We enjoyed 35-cent burgers at a drug store counter, saw “Taxi Driver” in the movie house, toured the Stone Hill Winery, and visited Six Flags amusement park near St. Louis. Cathy was quite good at shuffleboard bowling, so we spent time at a local bar playing this game we’d never seen before. Here’s how I described Hermann in a postcard mailed home: “A nice small town, pop. 2,500. Middle America with a hillbilly accent.”
Land of the Fighting Irish
In half a day, we arrived in South Bend and settled into Chris’s digs. I hung out with his law school buddies for a bit, but didn’t fit in. They had ambitions, I didn’t, so did my own thing. I borrowed Chris’s car and drove 35 miles to Warren Dunes State Park on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan. I walked hundreds of yards through massive sand dunes to catch my first glimpse of a Great Lake. The waves were as big as the ocean, and the water stretched beyond the horizon. I spent most of the day sunbathing and body-surfing while marveling at the wonders of this inland sea.
I took Amtrak to Chicago, passing through Gary, Indiana, whose distressingly ugly steel works forever stained that tribute song from the “Music Man.” I caught a Cubs game, courtesy of two old guys in their 70s, who, seeing me approach, asked if I needed an extra ticket. In their box seats near third base, they told stories of Al Capone and grand adventures from their youth. I bought beers for all, poured fresh from bottles into cups – the Wrigley Field way. I toured the Art Institute, the Museum of Industry, and a half dozen other sites, and by luck caught an E.L.O. concert at the Amphitheater, and a few days later returned to Notre Dame.
That’s me in the pink shirt at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field with my benefactors, who gave me a ticket.
Back on campus, I spotted a poster that KISS was playing at Joyce Center. Since tickets were only $6.00, I asked Chris and his buddies if anyone wanted to join me. Their smirks and snickers informed me KISS wasn’t part of their law school pretensions. I went alone. KISS’s opening act was the yet unknown Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band. One month later, they released “Night Moves,” kick-starting their rise to stardom.
A Song is Heard
I can’t remember when I first heard “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” But it was during that trip. The single was released in August and cracked the charts over Labor Day. The song’s haunting intro and storytelling lyrics are sung by a seasoned voice who blends Chippewa legends and Great Lakes lore. Every line advances the narrative, and each of its 458 words stirs the soul. Gordon Lightfoot admitted the tune was based on “an old Irish folk song.” The night the great ship sank, Lightfoot was in the attic of his Toronto home, trying to work out that Celtic melody he’d first heard as a child.
Despite its six-minute length, Lightfoot’s song peaked at #2 on the U.S. charts, behind Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.” And hit #1 on Canadian charts, fittingly, one year after the November 10, 1975, disaster. Sadly, folk-rock ballads fade in time, while beat-based anthems dominate Classic Rock stations. The song came briefly to mind in May 2023, following Lightfoot’s death at age 84.
It’s wistful to be reminded that, save for Gordon’s song, the demise of the Edmund Fitzgerald might be largely forgotten, remembered only by “the wives and the sons and the daughters.” Nearing the 50th anniversary of the great ship’s sinking, I caught its bug while cruising the Great Lakes.
Tanya Turns 85
My mother-in-law turned 85 this past March. She was born in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, while her late husband, Gary Grant, was born 95 miles north in Chippewa Falls. Both families moved west to Washington when they were young. Tanya and her family briefly relocated to Minnesota, where she spent four years before returning to Tacoma for high school.
When asked what she wanted for her 85th birthday, Tanya hoped her four children and spouses would join her on a Great Lakes cruise. Only the two daughters and their husbands could, so a plan unfolded to board the Victory Cruise Lines for its 10-day sailing from Toronto to Milwaukee. With tickets in hand, my first goal was to memorize the five lakes’ names, instead of stumbling over which I’d forgotten. Midwestern schoolchildren are taught the acronym HOMES—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Check!
A frivolous moment for the Great Lake Cruisers on Victoria 1. Clockwise from lower left: Helen Feldmeier (Gary Grant’s cousin), Tanya Grant, Bill, Jennifer, Leah Grant, and Mike Royston – Group selfie by our irrepressible waiter, Aug. 21, 2025.
Jennifer and I also planned a trip to Minneapolis to visit our youngest, Henry. We scheduled that Midwest jaunt for the end of May, since our cruise wasn’t until mid-August. It was our first journey to Minnesota, a Great Lakes state to boot. There’s no handy abbreviation for the eight states bordering the Great Lakes—from east to west—New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Canada’s one province is easier—Ontario.
After a few days in Minneapolis, we drove two and a half hours northeast to Duluth, a port city on Lake Superior’s southwest shore. That day’s chilly weather chilled Henry and my hopes to swim in my second Great Lake. Plus, the discovery that the world’s largest freshwater body of water is damned cold on June 2nd. We settled instead for Gooseberry Falls and Betty’s World-Famous pies.
Henry, Jennifer, and Bill at Betty’s World Famous Pies in Two Harbors, Minnesota, June 2, 2025.
Just across the bridge from Duluth lies its twin harbor, Superior, Wisconsin. We crossed the border, and each checked another state off our lists. Our immediate goal was the Wisconsin Point Lighthouse, which guides ships into and out of the harbor. Jennifer was driving, and I navigated using Apple Maps. Heading south along East Second Street, the longest pier I’d ever seen came into view. The map identified it as Burlington Dock No. 1, and below, noted, “last port of call for the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Across Allouez Bay, on Wisconsin Point Road, I filmed a video of the nearly half-mile-long, 86-foot-tall ore dock. That’s where the Fitzgerald loaded 26,200 tons of taconite pellets on November 9, 1975.
Cruising Towards the Big Lake They Call Gitche Gumee
Ten weeks later, we stepped off a Toronto pier onto the Victory I cruise ship. It accommodates 190 passengers with a crew of 95. It was our first cruise. We sailed across Lake Ontario bound for Niagara Falls, after passing through the impressive Welland Canal, whose 27-mile connection to Lake Erie features eight locks, each climbing 40 feet for a total elevation gain of 320 feet. What amazed this history buff even more was discovering that the first set of 40 locks, each eight feet tall, was completed in 1829, five years after construction commenced. My ignorance of our own country’s history is immense.
Our cruise found us crossing Lake Erie to Cleveland, and then up the Detroit River, through Lake Saint Clair, along the St. Mary’s River to Huron. To reach Lake Superior, ships pass through the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, where Victory I berthed for the day’s activities. Nearby was the Valley Camp freighter, built in 1917 and converted into a maritime museum in 1968.
The Valley Camp is a generation older and half the cargo size of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yet our guided tour of this freighter provided a firsthand look at the operations of these hulking ships. The belly of this beast, where 16 million tons of cargo were transported a collective three million nautical miles over 49 years of sailing, is now a massive 20,000 square foot museum. The far end hosts the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Exhibit, where the remains of two lifeboats from the stricken vessel are housed. Very few artifacts were recovered after its tragic sinking. What we saw was chilling. One thick metal lifeboat was torn in half, like a piece of paper. The other, fully intact, was never launched, but freed from its cables when the ship sank rapidly.
In the cargo hold of the Valley Camp Edmund Fitzgerald exhibition. Only the front of this Fitzgerald lifeboat was found. The metal boat was ripped in half.
A 12-foot-long scale model illustrates the freighter’s extended length and narrow breadth, built to haul enormous loads of cargo while still fitting through the skinny locks. To get a grip on its size, the Fitz was 729 feet long—nearly 2.5 football fields—and only 75 feet wide, slightly broader than an average road right-of-way. Its nearly 10:1 length-to-width ratio, imagine an old-fashioned ruler, mimicked the Chippewa’s tribal canoes, which French fur trappers adopted to navigate the Great Lakes. Though it weighed 13,600 tons empty, the Fitz regularly carried 26,000 tons.
On that fateful run—the last of her season—the Fitz was carrying taconite pellets, marble-sized, hardened balls typically containing 35% iron combined with sedimentary rock. Six crew members, including the captain, were set to retire after delivering the cargo. In the photo below, I’m holding a jar of taconite as a freighter in the background prepares to enter the Soo Locks.
Holding a jar of taconite pellets as a Great Lakes freighter enters the Soo Locks in the background.
The Pride of the American Side
Launched in 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald truly was the pride of the American side. The Fitz was the biggest and best and most luxurious freighter on the Great Lakes. The ship attracted the top crews and sailors. Captain Ernest McSorley, a 44-year veteran, was widely regarded as the best skipper on the Great Lakes. The Fitzgerald regularly set records for the most tonnage hauled each year and round-trips completed. It was commissioned by Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, which also held interests in iron and mineral industries—among the first such investments by American life insurance companies.
The firm’s president and chairman of the board, Edmund Fitzgerald, came from a long line of Irish Great Lakes sailors and captains. Fitzgerald vetoed several Board attempts to name the ship after him, but it was done against his will at a meeting he couldn’t attend. Initially called Hull 301, the ship was built at the River Rouge shipyard, just outside Detroit. The shipbuilding company adopted a new process using welds rather than rivets to produce a more flexible boat. Every bridge, building, and boat is designed to bend, but how much bending is acceptable?
An artist’s rendering of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the pride of the American side.
15,000 spectators, more than the Tigers’ average fan base that season, attended the ship’s launch. Edmund’s son recalled, “The day the ship launched was probably the happiest day of my father’s life.” Chairman Edmund Fitzgerald retired two years later, a thoroughly contented man.
The Gales of November
Seventeen years later, Sunday, November 9, 1975, was just like any other. The weather in Superior was unseasonably warm as the Fitzgerald loaded taconite from Burlington Dock No. 1. Unbeknownst to the captain and crew, two storm systems were gathering. A low-pressure system from the Kansas plains moved northeasterly over Iowa towards Superior. At about the same time, an Alberta Clipper gathered steam and moved southeasterly, intensifying conditions.
Freshwater’s lower density causes Great Lakes waves to grow taller and form closer together during intense storms. A host of factors regularly conspire to create perilous conditions, but Great Lakes captains, crews, and freighters are familiar with wild winds and rough waters. Stoicism is the chief characteristic of Great Lakes sailors.
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank the next evening, Monday, November 10, around 7:15 p.m. Discovering what happened has produced scores of detailed reports filled with thousands of pages, yet no final answer has emerged. The probable causes have been vigorously debated, but none have proved conclusive, so the speculation continues. The most credible answers focus on the ship’s design, its hatches, rogue or record waves, navigational errors, Six Fathom Shoal, and fatigue. The simplest explanation that explains nothing but accounts for everything—the Fitzgerald arrived in the worst possible place at the worst possible time.
The Fitzgerald was universally thought to be the finest ship on the Great Lakes, and it had operated safely for 17 years in fair and foul weather. So why did it sink this time? The mystery lives on from the Chippewa on down.
The Legend Lives On
Newspapers write the first draft of history. Magazines add seasoning. Artists and poets create works that trigger emotions. The first news release, recounting basic facts of the Fitzgerald’s sinking, was wired to 6,500-member newspapers of the Associated Press. Two weeks later, Newsweek magazine ran a story on page 48 titled, “Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month.” That half-page article credits James Gaines with Jon Lowell in Detroit. From the beginning, the story Gaines wrote practically sings, “According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee ‘never gives up her dead.’” The article concludes on this somber note, “And in the stone Mariner’s Church in downtown Detroit, a minister offered prayers for the lost seamen and tolled the church bells twenty-nine times in grim tribute to the unslaked furies of Lake Superior.”
An artist illustrates the gale-torn waters of Superior that the Fitzgerald might have faced that fateful night.
Gordon Lightfoot first read the AP story and weeks later, Gaines’s piece in Newsweek. He was moved. But it struck him that 29 fallen sailors deserved more than 534 words in a magazine. With the AP, Newsweek, and other accounts laid out, Lightfoot began writing the lyrics that he teamed with the “old Irish dirge” he’d been humming. He completed the song but was deeply uncertain, particularly about his lyrics, given the subject’s sensitivity. He feared appearing corny, inaccurate, or profiting from tragedy. Still, Lightfoot couldn’t put the song out of his head, so he tinkered with it for months.
In the spring of 1976, Lightfoot gathered his regular band for a five-day session at a Toronto studio for the album that became “Summertime Dream.” Months earlier, they’d rehearsed ten songs, but not the sea shanty ballad, since Lightfoot hadn’t played it for them in its entirety. Towards the end of each session, he’d start strumming the new song, abruptly quit, then insisted, “It isn’t ready.” By 3 p.m. Thursday, they’d finished recording ten songs and had plenty of studio time remaining. Gordon again resisted, but the studio engineer told him that since he had already paid for the session, why not try that shipwreck song?
Lightfoot relented, and the lights turned low to set the mood. He turned to his guitarists and said, “Do your thing.” The drummer, who had never played a note on the mystery song, asked Gordon when he should come in. Lightfoot said, “I’ll give you a nod.” At precisely 94 seconds, Gordon gave the nod as he sang, “the wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound.” Just then, the drummer struck the tom drumbeat. It wasn’t just the band’s first take on this song – it was the first time they ever played it together.
There were several more tries that afternoon, but all agreed to come back the next day to do it for real. On Friday, they cut three or four more takes, trying to make it better. But when the various versions were played back, all agreed that the first one on Thursday was their best. It had a creative tension the others lacked. Gordon and the band were pleased with the result and felt they’d created something special. But no one in the room thought it would be a hit.
No Chorus, No Hook, No Bridge
At six minutes, the song was too long—there was no chorus, no hook, no bridge—it didn’t check any of the boxes for a hit. After the album’s release, Warner Bros. Records’ president, Mo Ostin, met with Lightfoot and told him the shipwreck song was getting some reaction on FM, and they planned to release it as a single. Neither Gordon nor the band believed what they were hearing.
Gordon Lightfoot was shocked upon hearing Warner Bros. Records thought his sea shanty ballad should be the album’s single.
His folk-rock ballad became a defining part of Lightfoot’s career. He later declared, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is my greatest achievement. It’s a song you can’t turn your back on.” Nor did he turn his back on those most affected by the tragedy. After playing the song at the Mariner’s Church in Detroit, the Reverend Richard Ingalls, the pastor who rang the bell 29 times, approached Lightfoot to thank him. But then pointed out that Mariner’s wasn’t a “musty old hall,” but a clean and bright church. Lightfoot agreed and changed the lyric for subsequent concerts to “rustic old hall.”
And when later investigators sent submarines to examine the ship’s hull 530 feet below Superior’s surface, they found that all the hatches were properly clamped. Gordon didn’t want any blame unfairly cast upon deckhands, whose job was to secure those hatches. So he changed the famous line delivered by Fitz’s cook, Bob Rafferty, to: “At seven p.m., it grew dark, it was then, he said, Fellas, it’s been good to see you.” After the ship went down, Raffery’s family received the postcard he wrote several days earlier, which read, “I may be home by November 8; however, nothing is ever sure.”
Lightfoot and his bassist, Rick Haynes, attended the 40th anniversary of the sinking in 2015 at Whitefish Point. When Gordon learned that Ruth Hudson, the mother of Bruce Hudson, a 22-year-old deckhand on the Fitz, was on her deathbed, he called Ruth on the phone, as the two had met numerous times at events to commemorate the lost sailors. A few hours later, Ruth Hudson passed away hours before the 40th anniversary of the ship’s sinking, joining her only son and child in heaven.
On the Good Cruise Ship, Victory I
The Victory Cruise Lines’ literature promised its passengers a visit to all five lakes. Anchored at Sault Ste. Marie for the night, we passed through the Soo Locks into Lake Superior early the next morning. The itinerary description sounded lovely: “Embark on a journey of tranquility amidst the vastness of Lake Superior. Let the gentle waves and endless horizon lull you into a state of peaceful contemplation, where the grandeur of North America’s largest lake inspires awe and introspection.”
As Victory I entered the MacArthur lock to ascend 21 feet from Huron to Superior, I went to the bow, curious if we’d reach Whitefish Bay and possibly sail the 17 miles to the wreck site. Alas, it was not to be. Maybe our ship was behind schedule, or perhaps the author of the cruise line’s itinerary was excessively florid. After traveling several hundred yards into Superior’s vastness, Victory I promptly came about and sailed back through the locks. Oh well, if you’ve seen one great lake, you’ve seen ‘em all.
Epilogue
A 1994 expedition named “Deep Quest” conducted seven dives over three days and obtained some of the best filmed footage of the sunken Edmund Fitzgerald, including a video where one of the 29 bodies could be seen wearing a life jacket. In response, “the wives and the sons and the daughters” rose in protest and petitioned the Ontario province to declare the area a legally consecrated gravesite, which cannot be visited without the approval of the Canadian government. Their hard work and heartfelt pleas came to fruition five years later in 1999. The captain and crew may safely rest in peace.
This remembrance ends with the final radio communication from the Edmund Fitzgerald, uttered by Captain McSorley during a conversation with its sister ship, the Arthur A. Anderson: “We are holding our own.”
By Gordon Lightfoot (original recorded lyrics, 1976)
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore, twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang
Could it be the north wind they’d been feeling?
The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
‘Twas the witch of November come stealing
The dawn came late, and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin’
When afternoon came, it was freezin’ rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya”
At seven p.m., a main hatchway caved in, he said
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put 15 more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
In a musty old hall in Detroit, they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed ‘til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early
Sources:
“The Gales of November – The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by John U. Bacon, 2025
“Edmund Fitzgerald – The Legendary Great Lakes Shipwreck” by Elle Andra-Warner, 2006
“The Song of Hiawatha” – An Epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1855
Anton Kombol, upper left , pouring a beer from a bottle with a group of Croatian friends.
Growing up in the extended Kombol clan meant at least four family gatherings each year – Easter, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, and Christmas Eve. Occasionally, there was a wedding, an anniversary, or a Sunday assemblage added to the mix. Grandma (Lulu) and Papa (Tony) had five children. For me, that meant four sets of aunts and uncles, a total of eleven grandchildren, seven of them cousins. Only Frank and Dana Zaputil were childless, but they always brought their good friend, Art, and the de facto twelfth grandchild, Pierre, a full-size French poodle, fully accepted into the family. Pierre was probably the favorite.
Tony & Lulu’s 50th Anniversary party, Aug. 2, 196. L-R: Nadine, Tony, Nola, Lulu, Dana, Jack, Bernell.
Like most family parties, talk often turned to events of the second generation’s youth. My parents, aunts, and uncles all grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in Kangley, Black Diamond, or Enumclaw. Anytime one of the Kombols told a story, there was sure to be a dispute about the facts or the event. There were often two or three different versions of what happened, to whom, and how. There was even uncertainty regarding the date of my father, Laverne Shercliffe Kombol’s birth in 1921. He was born at home in the small coal mining town of Hiawatha. Some said July 17, others July 18, while July 21 was offered as the birthdate, according to his grandmother, Jennie.
And as to when Jack contracted polio and missed several years of school, no one could agree. Though it was some time after Tony’s fateful day. As to that tragic event, no one remembered the month or year, but all agreed it happened in a Kangley mine. But which one?
Maybe this is why I started researching and writing history, especially about the coal industry. It’s no doubt helped having two grandfathers who were coal miners and two grandmothers who were school teachers.
Papa Kombol spoke in a thick Croatian accent. Back then, the term Yugoslavian was still in use, or Austrian, as Austria ruled both. His face and hands were speckled with purple freckles owing to a coal mining accident in the 1920s. He wore thick, I mean thick, glasses and typically read his Croatian periodicals, mailed from the old country, held close to his face. He had a hearty laugh, and when we were young, he always invited us to sit on his lap.
Anton Kombol was born January 6, 1885, in Fuzine, Croatia, to Anton Kombol (1849-1911) and Franciska Mihaljevic (1857-?). Croatia had been a part of the Austrian Empire since the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The first Kombols emigrated from France during the Napoleonic era, and successive generations of Kombol men married Croatian women. The local industries were woodworking and furniture-making, which attracted the original French immigrants. According to Leo Gregorich, Anton grew up in a place called Vrata, which means “gate” in Croatia. It’s within walking distance of Fuzine.
As Anton approached adulthood, woodworking was in his future, if the Austrian army didn’t call first. At age 17, Anton obtained an Austrian passport, issued on November 12, 1902. He made the 20-mile journey to Fiume, then part of Italy (now known as Rijeka, Croatia), and sailed December 8 on a ship bound for Southampton, England, by way of Le Havre, France. Anton arrived in New York on December 22, was processed through Ellis Island, then boarded a train on December 23, arriving in Roslyn, Washington, five days later. It was nine days before his 18th birthday.
Two older brothers, John (Ivan) and Matt Kombol, both living in Roslyn, welcomed him. Within days, he began work at the Northwestern Improvement Company’s coal mines that supplied fuel to power the locomotives of its corporate parent, Northern Pacific Railway. Anton soon changed his name to the Americanized moniker, Tony. For the next six years, Tony Kombol worked underground and saved his money. He later moved to Cle Elum.
L-R: Matt Kombol, John Kombol, Anton Kombol, early 1900s, Roslyn.
In May 4, 1908, Anton Kombol filed his Declaration of Intention to become an American citizen. He described himself as 5 feet, 6 inches, weighing 165 pounds, with brown hair, grey eyes, and a mustache. That September, a 23-year-old woman named Lulu Shircliffe accepted a teaching position in Ravensdale as her pay in Centralia “was not sufficient to our tastes.” She and a friend “landed in the hinterlands in Ravensdale, where the pay was tops, a coal mining town not far from Seattle.”
Sometime over the next two years, Tony Kombol moved to Ravensdale, whose mines were also operated by the Northwestern Improvement Co (NWI). Tony found room and board with William and Hanna Joseph, while Lulu lived at the home of Stephen and Lottie Weston, and their son, William. Stephen Weston was the hoisting engineer at the Ravensdale mine.
Tony Kombol, second from top with Croatian friends, likely near Ravensdale, circa early 1910s.
On November 11, 1911, Tony Kombol filed his Petition for Naturalization. Matt Starkovich, a fellow Croatian and Deputy Sheriff for King County, and Frank Ludwig, a Ravensdale liquor dealer signed as witnesses stating, Tony “is a person of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and is in every way qualified to be admitted as a citizen of the United States.” Tony declared his Oath of Allegiance on June 27, 1912, and received his Certificate of Naturalization on July 16, 1912. After ten years in the U.S., Tony became a citizen.
Lulu frequently returned to Chehalis to visit and stay with friends. It isn’t clear how or when they met, but at the time Ravensdale’s population was just over 700, so it would be natural for two eligible adults to know each other. In her job as a schoolteacher, Lulu was well-known and highly respected. And in a town with 230 coal miners, many of them single, she would have been one of the best catches around.
Lulu Shircliffe with her class of Ravensdale students, 1913. She would marry Tony Kombol the following year and retire from teaching . . . until circumstances dictated a return.
On June 18, 1914, John and Marguerite Carnero agreed to sell a 7,250 square foot lot to Tony Kombol for $160, due on or before December 31, 1914. Tony went to work building a house. Tony and Lulu were married in Seattle on August 4, 1914, and enjoyed a ten-day honeymoon before returning to their new Ravensdale home. As was the custom for young schoolteachers of the day, Lulu quit her job and went to work making their house a home.
Tony Kombol stands in front of the home he had built for his fiancée, Lulu Shircliffe, 1914.
On Tuesday, November 16, 1915, a blown fuse knocked out the hoisting machinery at Ravensdale No. 1. One hundred miners were sent home until the problem was fixed. Tony Kombol was one of them. Hours later, 31 men were killed by an explosion that destroyed the mine. It was the third-worst coal mining disaster in Washington state history. Many of the deceased miners were buried in the Ravensdale Cemetery, while others were sent back to the homes of their youth. The tragedy hit Ravensdale hard, and the townsfolk suffered. Merchants closed shops and miners left town seeking greener pastures. It isn’t clear what Tony and Lulu did with their home; they probably sold it cheaply. It survived and still stands at 27521 S.E. 271st Street in Ravensdale. The Kombols’ next two years would be hectic.
Shortly after the Nov. 16, 1915, explosion that claimed the lives of 31 coal miners and ended mining in Ravensdale for the next several years.
At the time of the tragedy, Lulu was three months pregnant with their first child. In late December 1915, Tony traveled to Ray, Arizona, with a fellow miner, Charley Canonica, where they found work in a copper mine. Several Ravensdale miners and their families followed. Lulu shipped their belongings a couple of months later. Bernell Kombol was born there on June 3, 1916.
After leaving Arizona, Tony found work in an Aberdeen, Washington, sawmill, while Lulu moved to Billings and joined her mother. That’s where their second child, Dana, was born. After rejoining the family in Montana, where he spent time working at the copper mine, Tony set off for Alaska, where business was booming. He was determined to make a small fortune or return. On his way north, Tony stopped off at Ravensdale to see William Reese, the Superintendent of the Northwestern Improvement Co.’s mines. A new mine, called Hiawatha, located halfway between Durham and Kangley, opened in 1917. Experienced coal miners were needed. Tony accepted the offer, and Lulu returned to Washington and found lodging in Durham, where their third child, Nola, was born.
Tony Kombol and his first son, Bernell, circa 1918.
As Tony labored building the new Hiawatha mine, NWI built cottages west of Kangley-Kanaskat Road to house their workforce. Some homes were transported by rail from Ravensdale, which hadn’t yet recovered from the disaster. Superintendent Reese was fond of the Kombol family and offered them one of the choicest homes, next door to him. Jack Kombol was born in that Hiawatha home, which still stands at 27723 Kanaskat-Kangley Road S.E.
The company needed that house back, so their fifth and final child, Nadine, was born in new quarters. Sometime later, William Reese made it possible for the Kombol family to return to the nicer home and secured a 100-year lease for them. They lived in that home until Tony died. Lulu remained several more years before moving in with Nola for her final season of life. There, she wrote a striking autobiography, a testament to her writing skills and a treasure for her family.
In the forests above Tony & Lulu’s longtime home on the Kanaskat-Kangley Road, their grandson, Bill Kombol, explores the artifacts and surface structures around the old Hiawatha mine, Nov. 28, 2023
NWI’s Hiawatha mine proved to be a colossal failure. The coal seam was subject to faulting, so production was frequently interrupted. Plus, higher wages being paid at the nearby Durham mine caused Hiawatha’s miners to hold out for wages of $15 – $20 per day, compared to the $8 daily rate paid at NWI’s mine in Roslyn. The Hiawatha mine temporarily shut down on November 1, 1920, then opened and closed on and off until its permanent closure in 1924.
For the measly amount of coal produced, Hiawatha had one of the worst records in the state, as measured by deaths per ton mined. Joseph Ripoli, an Italian, age 43, was instantly killed by a gas explosion on the evening of July 7, 1918. Ripoli left a widow and four children. Then on May 12, 1923, a Greek miner named John Panotos, age 42 and single, perished in the mine after a slab of coal fell from the chute, striking his head, and causing instant death.
While we don’t have Tony Kombol’s work records, he probably kept working through closures owing to his close relationship with Superintendent Reese. Even an inactive mine needs someone to run pumps to prevent flooding and start fans for ventilation. William R. Reese was appointed State Coal Mine Inspector in 1923 and left NWI. So did Tony Kombol.
In 1922, George Parkin and associates reopened the Kangley mine. A year earlier, they started mining in nearby Elk Coal. The new Kangley portal was on the Alta seam, but no shipments were made that first year. It isn’t known when Tony started work at the Parkin Kangley Coal Company. It was located less than a mile from his home. At the time, automobiles were a luxury, so most laborers lived within walking distance of work.
Life trundled along for the Kombols. Lulu stayed busy raising five children, all under the age of ten, while Tony labored underground. After more than a year of development work, the Parkin Kangley mine began shipping coal, just over 20,000 tons, in 1924. They employed 32 underground miners, while another four processed and sorted coal in the top works. The following year, production tripled to 64,000 tons, with 56 underground miners and twelve on the surface. The addition of so many new miners, many of whom spoke different languages, coupled with a push for higher yields, may have weakened safety protocols. We will never know.
The morning of Sunday, August 7, 1925, began like any other. Most mines operated seven days a week, so Sunday work wasn’t unexpected. It was a pleasant day with an expected high of 77°. Rain hadn’t fallen in over a month. I still haven’t found the accident report that documents exactly what happened and how. I did, however, by chance review an old envelope in Lulu’s collection of memorabilia, where I discovered the accident date, the coal company name, and the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) claim number 329482.
The Labor & Industries letter I discovered in an old envelope from Lulu’s collection of memorabilia.
But my attempts to find further evidence and information have thus far been stymied by arcane Department rules, communicated to me in a terse email dated June 20, 2024:
RE: Anton Kombol Records Request ID 154566
We have received your request for workers’ compensation claim records. However, Washington State law prohibits us from releasing confidential claim records to anyone who is without express written authorization from the injured worker or the employer of injury. At this time, the Department has to deny the request.
With Anton Kombol dead and the Parkin Kangley Coal Company closed over 98 years ago, I’m not exactly sure from whom I must seek written authorization. Right now, L & I have blocked me from seeing the file until I figure out an angle, or a kindly bureaucrat bends the rules. The search continues.
The only detailed description of the accident came during a September 2008 interview I conducted with Leo Gregorich, a close family friend and fellow Croatian. At the time, Leo was 96 years old, but sharp as a knife with a keen storytelling ability. My interview was fortuitous, as Leo Doran Gregorich Jr. died the following May.
Here’s how Leo described Tony’s Kombol debilitating accident:
“Tony told me about the accident. He was in the hospital for 30 days, but he was always confident that he would get his eyesight back. The accident happened when he was working in a coal mine. He was working in a ‘room’ of a ‘room and pillar’ mine. They were mining a ‘room’ in a pitched coal seam, in the crosscut. They were using dynamite. Tony has set some dynamite shots by lighting the fuses. The lit fuse burned at a set time per inch and would ignite a cap that caused the sticks of dynamite to explode.
When Tony set his shots, there were miners working in the next room, and they were shooting their dynamite shots at the same time. Tony set three shots to go off. He thought he heard his three shots go off and then returned to his working area (room) and was met by his last shot, which exploded near his face. Apparently, one of the three shots that he’d heard explode came from the miners in the next room.”
The explosion blinded Tony and permeated his face and hand with tiny specks of coal that in time became purple-colored blots. After several years, Dr. J. Thomas Dowling, an associate in the Virginia Mason Clinic, performed an operation that restored Tony’s eyesight so he could read and perform chores around the house. He was 40 years old. His second act lasted 41 years. As a side note, the clinic’s founder, James Tate Mason, was formerly Black Diamond’s company doctor. As King County Coroner, Mason also led the investigation into the 1915 Ravensdale explosion. Mason’s daughter was named Virginia, and that’s how the organization was named.
Ten months after the accident, Anton Kombol’s L & I claim was approved, and he was awarded a $40 monthly pension. The three older children, Bernell, Dana, and Nola, were each awarded $5 per month. Jack, at age 5, was given $7.50, and Nadine, age 3, received $12.50 per month, totaling $75 per month for the family of seven. The Kombols also received an immediate payment of $3,955 for Tony’s lost vision and partial hearing loss.
The Dept of Labor & Industries accident report and calculation of benefits under Claim No. 329482, for Anton Kombol, his wife, Lulu, and their five children, Bernell, Dana, Nola, Laverne (Jack), and Nadine.
The Kombol family’s troubles were not yet over. Two years after the accident, likely in 1927, when polio saw its worst outbreak since 1916, their second son, Jack, contracted the devastating disease. It landed him in bed for more than a year and kept him from attending school. At home, Tony cared for him, as Lulu taught during the school year.
Then, their second daughter, Nola, became a very nervous, tense, and active child. So much so that she developed fevers, which would last a week, and was bedridden. Lulu took her to a child specialist who advised, “Keep her away from other children as she wears herself out keeping up with them or excelling them.” A decision was made to send Nola to live with William Reese and his wife in the Mount Baker area of Seattle. Nola lived with the childless Reeses until about 1930, when Mr. Reese, still the State Coal Mine Inspector, died.
The first year after the accident, Lulu was hired as a teacher in Cumberland through the influence of a friend. It had been twelve years since teaching in Ravensdale. Lulu started teaching 3rd and 4th grade on September 3, 1926. She was paid $100 per month, or $1,200 for the school term. Lulu Kombol continued teaching full-time for another 40 years until 1965, the year she turned 80. She remained a substitute teacher several years thereafter.
In 1937, Mrs. Lulu Kombol was teaching grades 1 & 2 in Selleck.
Tony never again found gainful employment. He played an early version of a house husband, taking care of the animals and performing household chores. From my second to fifth birthdays, our family lived in Elk Coal, one-half mile from Grandma and Papa. Sometimes I’d be dropped off with Papa for babysitting. I remember following him during chores, napping in their bedroom, and Papa making me tomato soup for lunch.
Tony lived to the ripe old age of 82, spending the final weeks of his life with Jack and Pauline and their four children, to be closer to medical services in Enumclaw. Lulu survived him by ten years, passing away in January 1977, at age 91. They are buried together at the Enumclaw Cemetery near three of their children.
So, on this, the one hundredth anniversary of that fateful day, we salute brave Anton Kombol with a solemn adieu, farewell Papa, adieu.
Bill Kombol, June 14, 1975 at the start of the annual Cedar River Boat Race. The plastic wrapped around my torso helped keep water out of our boat.
The spring quarter of college, 1975, was upon me. I needed one more credit to graduate. A new life was opening after 17 years of schooling. I had no interest in grad school, getting a job, or even thinking about one. My ambition was to embrace a newfound freedom and focus on learning outside the classroom. My immediate goal was to live the good life. Let’s call it spring fever with one foot in and one foot out.
That spring brightened my life in several ways. Being discharged from the night shift, picking table job at the coal mine opened up 45 hours each week. I supercharged my liberation by only scheduling classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, eliminating two travel days between Enumclaw and Seattle. After being laid off, I applied for unemployment, but the $93 weekly checks wouldn’t start until school ended.
In addition to a new appreciation for live drama detailed in a previous essay, “My Living Theater,” I took up tennis for an easy credit (only three P.E. credits counted toward a degree, and two were in the bag). Two finance classes and one Home Ec rounded out my schedule.
My Spring Quarter, 1975 schedule.
I also aimed to improve my vocabulary by studying the dozens of handwritten pages gifted to me the prior summer by Uncle Evan Morris. With plenty of extra time plus proficiency on my Olympia portable typewriter, I typed nearly 2,000-word definitions, plus pithy aphorisms and quotations from the notebook Evan kept by his side at Washington State during the early years of World War II. Whenever he came across an unfamiliar word or catchy phrase, he wrote it down and later looked up and copied a short dictionary definition. I set forth to assimilate all of them.
I’d been interested in healthy eating, so took a class in nutrition. During my first years of college, with little awareness of the food sciences, I experimented with different diets. After convincing myself milk was the closest thing to a perfect food, over four days straight I drank nothing but, until a constipated intestinal system convinced me otherwise. Next, I dined only on eggs with similarly baleful consequences. For the most part, I ate well enough, but needed a better understanding of dietetics.
Collaterally, a class in the Home Economics department meant a preponderance of students would be girls. I hadn’t had a girlfriend during college. And with so much extra time, I wasn’t averse to finding one. I didn’t!
The two-credit Home Econ class was right up my alley. Judging by my notes, I spent an inordinate time focused on all aspects of food – digestion, carbs, fats, proteins, calories, vitamins, minerals, additives, and metabolism. I became fixated on food quality and ordered all manner of free pamphlets and information from the Department of Agriculture.
One assignment was to record everything we ate for two consecutive days. Looking back on my food intake for May 13 and 14, 1975, it’s surprisingly similar to my eating habits five decades later – a large breakfast of fruits and cereals, then a light or skipped lunch, concluding with a hearty assortment of meats and vegetables for dinner. And even back then, I always rewarded myself with dessert.
Cedar River Boat Racing
Outside the classroom, that spring steadily became dominated by boat racing on the Cedar River. My cousin Bob Morris, whom I’d worked with at the mine for the past nine months, needed a first mate and asked me to join him.
The narrow boats he and others raced looked like two-man canoes on steroids. I was planted upfront, wielding a double-bladed paddle and scouting downstream waters, while Bob faced backward and pulled oars from a sliding seat that fully engaged his arms and legs in propulsion.
Bill Kombol in front, with paddle, and Bob Morris in back, with oars, Cedar River Boat Race, June 14, 1975.
I chose the route and barked orders back to Bob, “Left – right – steady – pull hard.” Bob knew the river well and taught me the best lanes. He’d raced the two prior years and practically knew it by heart. His former partner, Jim Thompson joined a new boat with Jim Bain, so Bob asked me to sign on as a rookie. I had lots to learn.
The Cedar River Boat Race was the biggest event of the annual Maple Valley Days celebration. It’s always held on the second Saturday in June. This year it celebrates its 75th anniversary, marking a milestone that began with its 25th commemoration in 1975.
The festivities’ origins centered around a group of Maple Valley men who built flat-bottom boats and organized a race to determine which team could post the fastest time navigating the wild Cedar River from the Landsburg Bridge to Cedar Grove. The race was conducted using staggered starts, as many currents were only wide enough for one boat to pass at a time.
This photo is from a different stretch of river and appeared in the Voice of the Valley the following week. The caption was wrong – Bob and I finished second. Our boat was sponsored by TRM Wood Products, which is still located at Four Corners.
Spring flows present the perfect challenge. Successful racers need to avoid boulders, log jams, and cross-currents while choosing the fastest navigable waters. Getting caught in the wrong eddy or whirlpool might flip your boat sideways or even capsize it. Hidden snags beneath the water’s surface are an ever-present danger. Choosing the fastest rapid is tricky and fraught with error.
Two or three days each week, Bob and I practiced by running the river. Bob was still working day shift, so our trial runs were in the late afternoon. Bob kept his boat in the mine office basement at Palmer Coking Coal. During our spare time, we patched cracks and leaks with fiberglass and applied fresh varnish for a frictionless bottom.
The boat was transported atop a homemade pickup rack. Bob’s girlfriend, Rafaela Wright rode between us to the Landsburg Bridge. After setting sail, Rafaela drove to the Cedar Grove finish line to pick us up. After practice, we’d have dinner in their tiny travel trailer off Maxwell Road or at the Four Corner’s E-Z Eatin’ café. Rafaela was one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever known.
The E-Z Eatin’ Cafe at Four Corners, though at the time of this 1973 photo it was called Grace & Eddy’s.
The 11-mile route typically took 70 to 90 minutes to navigate. It all depended on how much water Seattle Public Utilities released from Chester Morse Lake to fill their Lake Young reservoir. As water flows changed, so did currents and channels. Every river day was different. Last week’s log jam might be this week’s causeway. If the river were three inches lower, a boulder we previously passed over smoothly might slow us down or hang us up.
Maple Valley’s newspaper, Voice of the Valley provided comprehensive coverage of the race and M.V. Days activities. This photo was taken during the 1976 race.
Race day coincided with Maple Valley’s festival, which included a parade, country fair, and community picnic. That year’s event was slated for June 14, the same day as U.W. commencement ceremonies. I skipped graduation. My diploma arrived in the mail four months later. By then, I was loafing in Lincoln City and wouldn’t see the signed parchment for another month. It didn’t really interest me – I’d left that world behind.
The race started at 2 p.m., two hours after the women contested a shortened course. Many families living along the Cedar River threw parties each year to coincide with Maple Valley Days. As we paddled downstream, cheers arose from the shore as intoxicated revelers raised beers and drinks in salute.
Crowds gathered beneath the old RR trestle across the Cedar River (near SR 169) to watch the boats race by. One boat is visible. – June 14, 1975.
The 1975 race featured 13 teams. Only nine of the 13 boats crossed the finish line. The previous year’s winners, Bill Niord and Bill Furlong, broke an oar and pulled out to protect their craft. The Last Chance, manned by Terry Morris and Ted Turpin, crashed into a rock and sank under the Maple Valley Bridge. As they made their way safely to shore, chunks of the boat and gear floated haphazardly downstream.
For the 14th time in the past 15 years, brothers Bob and Ben Soushek captured the title. Bob and I finished second with an elapsed time of 1 hour, 14 minutes, and 12 seconds, a full three minutes behind the perennial winners. The trophy presentation was at Royal Arch Park at 5 p.m.
Bob Morris, left, and Bill Kombol, right, accept their trophies after the 1976 race.
I raced the following year with Bob, and in 1976, we placed third with a time of 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 21 seconds. Two weeks later, I fell 25 feet from a Douglas fir tree in front of my parents’ Lake Sawyer cabin while trimming branches. I landed in Valley General Hospital for eight days with compressed vertebrae and a digestive tract that shut down.
I spent the Bicentennial Fourth of July watching televised coverage of the historic celebration from a hospital bed. I turned 23 the next day. My back would never be the same. I gave up Cedar River boat racing, but not my friendship with Bob.
Bob Morris
If I were to name the most important role models in my life, Bob Morris would undoubtedly be in the mix. Bob was four years and four days my senior. I looked up to him. We worked together for nearly a year at the mine. During slow nights when no coal was being pulled for me to process, I’d wander down to the hoist room when Bob was working the night shift. During dinner break, we often listened to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
On April 30, 1975, Saigon fell, and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end. After graduating from Tahoma in 1967, Bob worked for several months before enlisting in the Marines in January 1968. He deliberately chose the toughest corps because that’s the kind of guy Bob was and has always been. After his San Diego boot camp, Bob shipped out to Vietnam in April 1968.
He ended up about 30 miles south of Da Nang. During the first three months, he was a grunt, but soon rose to corporal and became the platoon radioman, always close to the unit’s lieutenant. He was later promoted to company radioman and assigned to the captain. Though generally out of harm’s way, a number of times Bob’s company found themselves under fire. One battle found them in extreme danger, probably the closest he came to death.
At the end of a 13-month tour of duty, Bob returned to the U.S. in June 1969, just as anti-Vietnam War demonstrations peaked. Anyone who lived through those days knows that returning servicemen were not treated with respect.
While working at the mine or later during our boat racing days, I frequently spoke with Bob about the war. When it came to an end, I asked him how he felt. To Bob, the fall of Saigon didn’t mean much. He’d served his country, done his job, and for him, “The war was in the rearview mirror.” To this day, Bob meets annually with his Marine brothers. There is much to admire about Bob Morris.
Bob Morris, left, and Bill Kombol right during their lunch break, January 1976. The photo was take in Enumclaw when the two were helping Palmer Coking Coal Co. move Stergion Cement’s storage bins to PCC’s mine yard in Black Diamond.
Three years later, in August 1978, I rejoined Palmer Coking Coal, once again. I was back at the picking table, the lowest job at the mine. I worked beside Bob, who taught me most of what I learned about operating equipment, running the mine yard, and getting jobs done.
I liked working under Bob. He was a good teacher and a practiced taskmaster who imposed a tough workload not only on others but on himself. Bob was no slouch and expected the same from those who worked with him. Yet, he usually found ways to make dull tasks competitively fun.
Though I was neither as strong as Bob nor as knowledgeable, I thrived under his exacting foremanship. He was one of the best teachers a future Manager of the company could have. Seven years later, Bob asked me to be the best man at his July 1985 wedding to Jill Kranz. For the past six years, I’d worked side-by-side with Jill as she was Palmer’s bookkeeper and all-around office gal.
Bob Morris, left, and Bill Kombol, right, at a retirement party for fellow coal miners, July 21, 1981.
In addition to boat racing, I began writing poetry. It provided a release from the blue-book blues of college midterms and finals. I also accepted an invitation from another older cousin, Dave Falk, for a 500-mile summer bicycle ride from Lincoln City north along the Oregon and Washington coasts to Canada. A few weeks after the boat race, I purchased a 10-speed Motobecane touring bike and began preparations on the backcountry roads between Enumclaw and Selleck for our big ride.
Epilogue
The day I heard news of Saigon’s impending fall, I wrote this poem. It was an early effort at verse and not particularly good. But somehow it seemed a fitting way to end this essay about spring fever, Cedar River boat racing, and how Bob Morris helped shape my life.
One Too Many Times – 4-29-1975
The last two young Americans have perished in the war
They’ve lost their lives for nothing, like fifty-six thousand before.
My heart goes out to all the dead and oh so many more.
But then, one too many times is not enough.
I hate to do it to you, but then how can we forget
You’ve almost got to brood and cry about these past events
I hate the war and every minute spent in useless argument
But, one too many times is not enough.
Sometimes I dream of the wonderful creations in this world
Of green plants flowing to the stars in some fantastic mural.
And standing in the middle, uncorrupted boys and girls
I hope, one too many times was quite enough. – WJK
The original poem in pencil from my notebook of poetry.
April 1975 – the final quarter of college and the end of 17 years of schooling. My afternoon job at Rogers No. 3 coal mine conveniently came to an end. Six months of 17-hour days driving from Enumclaw to Seattle, attending classes at U.W., studying, then on to Ravensdale for eight hours of grimy work, showering in the washhouse, with a half-hour drive back home, to bed by midnight, only to repeat the process six or seven hours later. It wore me down. I wanted to retire. Spring break was my last week, thankfully on the day shift.
That quarter provided a fresh beginning. Though only one college credit shy of graduating, I took a full schedule of 14 credits, including two finance classes to round out my Economics degree. Expanding my interests, I chose a two-credit Home Ec class in nutrition, one credit for tennis, plus a three-credit class called The Living Theater.
Growing up I had zero interest in theater and never even went to a school play during high school. I did attend one musical my senior year – the Who’s Tommy, presented at the Moore Theater, with a little-known, Bette Midler as the Acid Queen. In May of my freshman year, I saw a touring company’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Program cover from the Who’s Tommy presented at the Moore Theater, 1971.
My true interest in theater grew one Sunday afternoon during the summer of 1973 while reading Rex Reed’s movie reviews in the Seattle P-I. Reed highlighted a just-announced collection of filmed plays to be presented in movie theaters, on a limited basis, and only by subscription. The American Film Theatre, produced by Eli Landau filmed eight stagings of top theatrical works all featuring notable actors. Each film would be shown just four times, and exclusively at 500 select movie theaters across the nation.
I convinced Mom to subscribe and Dad joined, as well as Aunt Betty and Uncle Charlie Falk. The local showings were at the Crossroads Theater, east of Bellevue. I was a junior at the U.W. and each month drove my 1967 Renault across the I-90 floating bridge to meet the folks with an occasional dinner beforehand. In the “don’t trust anyone over 30” atmosphere of the early 1970s, a sentiment, I roundly rejected, it was a thrill to hang with my parents, aunt, and uncle, all comfortably in their late 40s and early 50s. I took pride in having launched this event to see the best of Broadway. The ushers even handed out real playbills!
Among the plays we saw: The Homecoming, A Delicate Balance, Butley, Rhinoceros, and Three Sisters. But, the greatest theatrical event in my estimation was The Iceman Cometh starring Lee Marvin as Hickey, a traveling salesman in an all-star cast of Robert Ryan, Frederick March, Bradford Dillman, and a young Jeff Bridges. The Iceman Cometh was four hours long, three acts, and two intermissions. It showcased Eugene O’Neill’s story of dead-enders with delusional pipe dreams who stayed drunk in Harry Hopes’ last chance saloon and boarding house to avoid facing the world.
That introduction to serious drama couldn’t have come at a better time. We subscribed for the second season that featured Galileo, In Celebration, and The Man in the Glass Booth. Unfortunately, the major Hollywood studios pressured local theaters to cancel American Film Theater screenings and the enterprise thereafter collapsed.
But I was now hooked on stage productions. The Living Theater class, in the engineering department of all places, was my new ticket to more serious drama. In addition to learning about the structure of plays and the various venues where they’re presented, students were required to attend seven live plays at the three theaters on campus, including the revered Showboat, a floating auditorium moored in Portage Bay. In addition, I saw three off-campus productions including Death of a Salesman at Tacoma’s U.P.S. and a pair of Tom Stoppard offerings at Seattle’s Second Stage.
Theater of the Absurd – Which performance?
The Living Theater class really sharpened my prose as we were required to write reviews of the required plays. One performance wasn’t on the syllabus but really piqued my imagination. It was a double-feature of two short plays by Tom Stoppard, After Magritte and The Real Inspector Hound at the Second Stage theatre. The Second Stage was affiliated with the Seattle Repertory Theatre and typically presented more experimental shows.
The Second Stage theatre program for Tom Stoppard’s, “After Magritte” and “The Real Inspector Hound” – April 28, 1975
Both Stoppard offerings were from a dramatic style called the Theatre of the Absurd – plays that reject traditional storytelling by focusing on what happens when narrative communication breaks down. In late April, I took Mom to see the double feature and wrote the following review, trying to capture the surreal and absurd nature of what we saw, both on stage and off.
“Reality”
We come on the sloop John B my dear mother and me.
We entered the Second Stage arena well before show time, found two second-row seats, and proceeded to experience the sights and sounds of the theater.
I pointed out all the Seattle luminaries listed as Second Stage supporters. Behind us, a woman in her middle fifties, whom we were going to encounter frequently as the night progressed, made the same observation. Our eavesdropping skills were in top form so my mother and I proceeded to monitor this woman’s conversations the rest of the night.
“Oh, look here, Christopher Bailey is on the list of supporters. I wonder what night he comes?”
Accompanied by two other women (from their conversations, I assumed the talkative one to be a grandmother with her daughter, and a friend), Mrs. Chatterbox, which my mother appropriately christened her, spoke, “There’s Lori.”
Lori was one of three girls of high school age who were ushers. Lori, it turned out, was also the garrulous grandmother’s granddaughter.
“Now why doesn’t she seat those people over there, plenty of good seats right there. I was shopping today and . . . oh, look, who is that? Isn’t that Jean Enersen?”
The daughter replied, “Yes, that girl on Seattle Today. No, that isn’t Jean Enersen, it’s that Shirley, yes Shirley.”
“Isn’t that Jean Enersen, the blonde one on King Newservice,” the loquacious grandmother butted in.
“Now where is Lori going to seat her? Look, Lori is putting that Jean Enersen in those good seats. I wonder why SHE gets those seats. Just because she’s on TV.”
“That isn’t Jean Enersen. It’s that Shirley.”
“Well, whoever it is, there’s seats over there, Lori,” the grandmother commands as if she’s talking to her granddaughter who must be fifty feet away.
The play begins. After Magritte is a delightfully surrealistic, satirical takeoff on something resembling a mystery or Sherlock Holmes type of script.
At intermission, the fun continues. Lori, the usher comes over to visit with her mother and grandmother. Mrs. Chatterbox asks, “Wasn’t that Jean Enersen you seated, Lori? Why did she get such good seats?”
The mother responds, “That’s Shirley, the girl on Seattle Today, not Jean Enersen.”
Lori tells her tale of what the ‘snobby’ Jean Enersen or Shirley said. In a mock voice, she repeats, “We don’t want THESE seats, I would prefer being seated there.”
“Who does she think she is?” the grandmother retorts. Lori and her two usher friends giggle and tell of their other experiences as ushers.
Mrs. Chatterbox again, “Look now, that Jean Enersen is leaving, what, doesn’t she like the play? I can’t stand her anyway. Did you see her show yesterday when they had that psychologist who talked about symbols? I absolutely detest that show.”
“That’s not Jean Enersen. It’s that Shirley on Seattle Today.”
“Well whatever, look, she’s not coming back. After getting those good seats, she goes and leaves in the middle of the play. I can’t stand her show. That psychologist explained what it means if you like . . . uh, I mean, uh . . . relate to a circle, a square, a triangle, or a Z. I draw circles and that means . . .” as she proceeded to give a lengthy pop-Freudian interpretation to drawing circles.
The Real Inspector Hound was another trip into the fantasy world of the absurd. Eventually, the critics attending the supposed play were involved in the fun, murder, and intrigue as critics became players and the players became critics.
Leaving the theater at the end of the plays, I turned to my mother and asked, “Well, what did you think of those shows? Rather unreal, huh?”
She replied, “Which performance?”
By William Kombol
April 28, 1975
HSS 451, Jack Leahy, Assoc. Professor
Professor Leahy gave me an ‘A’ for the class, writing, “
Great! You ought to be a playwright. This is a funny paper. I don’t quite know why, but the Repertory seems to attract these kinds of audiences – try opening night at a regular Rep presentation – it’s downright awesome, but very much a part of theater. The Elizabethans were the same. And that’s what makes it fun. Very much enjoyed reading this paper.”
The first page of my review, titled “Reality” with the professor’s handwritten comments.
My interest in theater grew.
My interest in theater grew with each new play I saw. I kept programs and playbills from most performances and usually stapled the ticket stub to the cover. While writing this essay I made a quick count of the collection which totals over 300, though some were lost. In the early years, I primarily saw were dramas. Back then only the biggest musicals yielded touring companies. But any musical with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s name attached found me attending.
Through all of them, Tom Stoppard remained my favorite playwright. And with each new play of his I saw, so did my admiration. Stoppard’s plays are first produced in the United Kingdom, and only his most successful make it to the U.S. Still, I’ve been able to see most of his best including the breakout hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Leopoldstadt, his most recent. With the advent of audio plays, I’ve listened to the lion’s share of the rest, including the mesmerizing Darkside, inspired by Pink Floyd’s 1973 album. Stoppard is generally considered the greatest living English language playwright. His most popular film adaptation is Shakespeare in Love.
In addition to seeing live performances, these days I’m more often listening to the likes of L.A. Theater Works or other recordings found on Libby and Audible. It may not be for everyone, but when you’re hooked on live drama, an audio play will do quite nicely.
Below are some of my favorite audio plays:
Broadway Bound– In my estimation, Neil Simon’s concluding comedic drama of an autobiographical trilogy, may be one of the finest works of the 20th century. It mixes humor with pathos and when you’re not laughing you might just find yourself shedding a tear. The L.A. Theater Works audio production is superb.
Copenhagen– This weighty play explores the ethics and morality of developing the atomic bomb. Michael Frayn, one of England’s leading playwrights explores the real-life 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist, and Werner Heisenberg, Germany’s leading nuclear scientist. There are two audio versions – pick the one starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Heisenberg.
The Real Thingis generally considered Tom Stoppard’s best. Its focus is broken marriages, adultery, and the nature of love, more specifically the real thing, interspersed with two plays within the play we’re seeing.
Arcadia, another Stoppard favorite explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty, plus the nature of evidence and truth in history, mathematics, and physics. It’s a complex play that requires several listening’s to fully understand.
Darksideis probably Stoppard’s most approachable audio play, as it was written as such to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It’s 45 minutes long with philosophical dialogue interspersed with music from the album. It’s a play you can listen to time and time again and still hear something fresh.
Post script: Ian Hunter’s 1981 song, “Theater of the Absurd” doesn’t really rise to what playwrights of that style are trying to achieve. Still it’s an amusing song and Hunter, former lead singer in Mott the Hoople is one of my favorites, so here’s a video link with lyrics:
I was blessed with eight fine aunts and uncles. There were no divorces among them. Collectively the eight couples logged 430 years of marriage. I was particularly fond of uncles, as a boy often is. They bore names that belong to the Greatest Generation: Jack, Frank, Charlie, Bernell, Chester, Joe, George, and Evan. Each influenced my life for the better. My last surviving uncle, Joe Silvestri died at age 99 three months shy of his 100th birthday.
Like all of them, Joe had a firm handshake that greeted nephews upon arrival at any holiday event or family gathering. Each had a different banter but Joe’s was unique – inquiring but posed by a man with something to say. A diehard Roosevelt Democrat, Joe was usually the first to bring up politics, but just as quick to suggest a game of penny-ante poker. “Just a little fun,” he’d say. As the youngest nephew, what a thrill it was to play poker with older cousins and uncles on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve poker in the Silvestri basement. Clockwise from left: Barry Kombol, Bill Kombol, Gerry Beck, Lanny Silvestri, Uncle Joe, Dan Silvestri 1977.
In conversation, Uncle Joe often went one step beyond – usually to the supernatural, perhaps faith healing, copper bracelets, or fire walking. He marveled at their possibilities and curative powers but when pressed added a disclaimer that much is still unknown. He talked politics with a passion, but politely and with a willingness to listen to differing points of view. Joe was also that uncle with an 8-millimeter motion picture camera – complete with 500-watt lights blinding nephews and nieces who hurtled about the living room concealing our eyes from the glare.
In high school, Joe’s oldest son, Dan offered me a summer job selling popsicles from a 3-wheeled Cushman scooter. The business was operated from the basement of Uncle Joe and Aunt Nadine’s home on Kent’s East Hill. Each evening we counted our coins and bills. Joe often stood watch over the assemblage. Our tills were expected to match the confectionaries sold. Still, most drivers were short, through neglect or more often petty pilferage. Mine always balanced perfectly. For decades Joe bragged that ‘nephew-Bill’ as he called me, was their best Popsicle salesman and never short on his till. Uncle Joe was a mentor who made me feel proud.
L-R: Joe, Nadine, Cheryl, Dan, and Lanny at Cheryl’s wedding to Gerry Beck, Sept. 14, 1974.
Joe worked much of his life as a highway engineer for the Washington Dept. of Transportation. He began work on the I-90 project over Snoqualmie Pass in the 1950s. My Dad and his brothers-in-law needled him about the construction job that never ended. Uncle Joe graciously accepted their ribbing, offering a spirited defense with a knowing laugh.
One by one, my father and uncles passed away until only Joe remained. He alone was left to care for the three Kombol sisters, his wife, Nadine, plus sisters-in-law, Dana and Nola, becoming their chauffeur and escort at family functions, marriages, and funerals. When two more aunts passed on, only Joe and Nadine remained from that generation. They celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary on a delightful Sunday afternoon joined by family and friends.
Joe’s work ethic befit the greatest generation he exemplified. He served his family in life and death. When Aunt Dana Zaputil died in 2012, family members were invited to choose items of remembrance from her home. We strolled through her Fauntleroy home telling stories, recalling good times, and singling out keepsakes. It was a hot summer day with temperatures stretching into the 90s and most kept to the air-conditioned indoors.
Someone asked, “Where’s Uncle Joe?” Up on the rooftop, my 92-year-old uncle stood pressure-washing accumulated moss and debris to prepare his late sister-in-law’s home for sale. It took the urging of two nephews and a son to convince him to come down the ladder and off the roof. He did so only with a promise that one of us would finish the job.
Two years before his death, Joe, age 97, and Nadine showed up at Palmer Coking Coal to purchase a mixed load of sand and gravel. I walked out to say hello as the loader dumped sand and 7/8” washed gravel into the bed of his small Ford pickup. After the usual greetings and small talk, I inquired what he was doing with the mix, because it’s a specialty product. Well, Joe explained, he planned to pour a slab that afternoon so would be hand shoveling the sand, gravel, and powdered cement into his concrete mixer back home. I about fell over.
After knowing Joe for all of my sixty-plus years, he still managed to surprise me. At their 75th wedding anniversary, Joe pulled out a harmonica and played a suite of songs to the large gathering of admiring relatives and well-wishers. I had no idea he even played harmonica!
And just a week before his 99th birthday, Joe drove to my office with a worn suitcase of old photos and keepsake belonging to his stepdad. Since I write a history column for the local newspaper, Joe gave me the opportunity to scan the contents in the event there was a story to tell. Indeed there was and I wrote it.
Joe & Nadine at their 75th wedding anniversary, Aug. 2018.
The Silvestri family’s proud Italian heritage.
Knowing the end was approaching, Joe hand-wrote his family’s history in a spiral-bound notebook. His father, Carlo Silvestri grew up in the Emilia-Romagna province of Italy just 12 miles across the Secchia River from the home of his future bride, Clotilde Cavecchi. They didn’t know each other. Carlo found work in France eventually joining that country’s attempt to build the Panama Canal. After the French effort failed, Carlo ventured to Washington where he became acquainted with Annibale Cavecchi whose sister, Clotilde worked as a housemaid in Marseille.
Carlo joined Annibale who was laboring on a farm in the Wabash-Krain area of Enumclaw. But he exchanged letters and photos with his sister, Clotilde, in the days before online dating sites. An arrangement was settled by which Clotilde moved to America and married the farmhand her brother had recommended. Three decades later, Clotilde acquired that 40-acre farm where her brother and late husband had first found employment. Some of the land is still owned by Silvestri family members.
After the early years, Carlo and Clotilde moved to Black Diamond where Carlo worked as a self-employed lumberman hand splitting 2” x 8” wooden planks called lagging that were used in the coal mines. He also raised cows, both dairy and beef, selling his meat in the Italian areas of Renton. Clotilde bore a succession of children, Nello, Ricco, Philomena, Fredericco, and Tomosco whose American names became Nick, Rick, Pink, Fred, and Tom. They named their sixth child Giuseppe, Italian for Joseph. Following baptism and confirmation, Uncle Joe added Anthony as his middle name.
During Prohibition Carlo joined a bootlegging ring, attending their still located east of Ravensdale. Clotilde’s first cousin, Tullio Cavecchi, and partner Sisto Luccolini sold the Italian brandy called grappa in Seattle. But Carlo alone was nabbed in a raid and sentenced to a six-month term on a work farm. Joe’s folks always referred to that farm as the ‘stockade.’ Still, Carlo earned enough money to buy a cow that he named Stocada, an Italian play on words. Joe milked that cow for years. Sadly, his father, Carlo died a few years later when Joe was only nine.
In time his widowed wife, Clotilde moved with her remaining children to Kangley where she married Frank Valerio, himself a widower. Joe was equally proud of his stepfather whose dusty suitcase came into Joe’s possession upon his death. He spoke proudly of Valerio’s life as an Italian immigrant to Ravensdale, then Kangley where he worked as a coal miner. Kangley is where Joe first met the children of Tony and Lulu Kombol, whose youngest daughter, Nadine he would one day marry.
Joe and Nadine in Kangley, 1942. Behind them is the Kangley Tavern, later operated for decades by Truman Nelson.
Joe delighted in his Italian heritage visiting the old country several times. For decades he was a fixture in the Black Diamond chapter of the Sons of Italy. Late in life, Joe paid tribute to the Italian dairy farmers who were active in the Enumclaw area and highlighted their work ethic. Those family names were Ballestrasse, Capponi, Condotta, Fantello, Giglioni, Malatesta, Marietta, Primton, and Rocca.
A few years back wanting to learn more about his ancestry, Joe took one of the popular DNA tests. It turns out my proud Italian Uncle Joe was actually 50% French. Though he groused about the results, Joe chuckled ironically at his genetic heritage.
Joseph Antony Silvestri was born March 4, 1920, in Black Diamond. Like many of his generation, he joined the Army during World War II. While Joe was stationed in South Carolina,his fiancé Nadine Kombol drove with her mother, Lulu across the country, where Joe and Nadine were joined in marriage on August 21, 1943.
L-R: Lanny, Joe, Dan, Nadine, and Cheryl Silvestri, 1953.
Together they raised three children: Danny, Lanny, and Cheryl. His oldest son, Dan preceded his parents in death on the last day of June 2018. Nadine passed away peacefully at their family home on Sept. 25, 2019. Joe joined her just over two months later on Dec. 12th. They are buried together in the Enumclaw cemetery right next to my parents, Jack and Pauline Kombol.
All my aunts and uncles are gone and so is most of the generation who guided me growing up. Joe and Nadine were my last. I miss them each dearly . . . especially Uncle Joe.
Nadine (Kombol) and Joe Silvestri in Wilmington, South Carolina on their wedding day, Aug. 21, 1943.
Adapted from a 1929 first edition of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms."
It was a dark and stormy night. Coastal rains pounded the Oregon Coast. STOP!
Mike Wickre would have ridiculed this opening, but Mike Wickre is gone, so I’ll write it my way, mindful of his dismissive wisecracks from beyond.
With little notice, an old friend passes away. A Facebook message warned of Mike’s imminent demise. Days later, a concluding text informed his life was over. Then silence. Whoosh! Gone!! Only his Facebook page remains – that’s death in the digital world.
Word leaked out, there would be no service. Mike didn’t want one. No gathering of friends to bid adieu to an old pal. No farewells, no sharing of memories, none of those anecdotes and stories that lessen our collective loss. A fading remembrance swallowed by emptiness. As Jeff Lynne poignantly asked in the best ELO song that nobody’s heard, “Is this the way life’s meant to be?”
I regret there being no funeral or Celebration of Life. Rituals are important for saying goodbye. The world is a poorer place, if as it seems they’re going out of fashion. The deceased’s wishes are usually respected, though with Wickre, I’m tempted to disregard his desire – to poke back, as he so often poked others.
Most would agree – Mike was a difficult individual. Kristofferson described him best – a walking contradiction, partly truth, and partly fiction. Need I add: eccentric, bombastic, irreverent, nutty, sarcastic, and cynical, with an over-arching egotistical approach to life.
But he had a charm and charisma that’s hard to ignore. At the end of the day, he made me a better person. But half the time aggravated the hell out of me.
Mike Wickre’s 1973 Enumclaw High School graduation photo.
The obituary nobody else wrote, so I did
Michael Irwin Wickre was born to Marilyn (Smith) and Raymond Wickre in Bremerton, Washington on Oct. 3, 1955. His grandmother was a Lakota Sioux. Mike took pride in his Native American heritage. He said she was “white as china,” and died without a clue. Fittingly the family moved to Lakota Beach in Federal Way where Mike attended Lakota Middle School. There he became close friends with Brad Broberg, who remained one for the rest of his life.
The Wickres moved to Enumclaw in 1969 when Mike was in 8th grade. They lived on S.E. 408th Street in the foothills east of Veazie Valley. Mike’s younger brother, Alan described their small farm as “the last house before the hill. We had cows, horses, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and geese. From the creek, there was a pipe to our man-made pond. It was a great place to be a kid.”
One of Mike’s first Enumclaw friends was Joe Cerne who remembered his dry-witted humor and quick tongue. “Mike was the funniest guy around,” Joe recalled, “I never laughed louder than being with him.” Kevin Rustvold remembered how he loved playing pinball and foosball, but remained a serious germ-a-phobe all of his life. Mike’s class became the first 9th graders to attend high school since the new building opened in 1962.
Mike graduated in 1973 and found work at Weyerhaeuser, saving money to attend a four-year college. He was proud of his time in the woods and shared plenty of stories about planting trees and setting chokers. He also worked at Hygrade’s meat packing plant on the Tacoma tide flats and chronicled the time he shoveled pig guts into the grinder. He remembered the plant as “a five-story pile of filth on a site so toxic it is still uninhabitable for rats,” then added, “It got worse.”
Mike Wickre’s description of his injury while working for Weyerhaeuser: “Got caught in the bite . . . the haul-back was side-washed and stretched out of plumb . . . it snapped and the mainline caught me just below my man stuff. It sent me downhill riding the butt rigging . . . felt like getting my leg caught in a car door. Saved enough money to go back to school. Pretty fun memories and good friends . . . most loggers are very nice men underneath their Copenhagen stains. Loggers chew because it’s too danger to smoke cigs or weed while setting chokers. Plus you need a little ‘something’ out there.”
Mike labored at gritty jobs and took classes at Green River Community College. He hung out with Enumclaw classmates, Tony Pedrini, Kevin Rustvold, John Kochevar, Mike Shook, and Steve Dunning. Most were involved with the Enumclaw Soccer Club and played for the G.R.C.C. Gators. (Mike and Steve are seen photobombing the team in a nearby picture.) Mike had an entrepreneurial spirit. He started a company called Acme Hornet Hunters, whose business was to remove wasp and hornet nests while selling bees to high school biology classes. It wasn’t a stinging success.
Enumclaw Soccer Club 1972-73. 1st Row, L-R: Tony Pedrini, Ted Klahn, Ricky Thompson, unknown. 2nd Row, L-R: Pete Bowman, Kenny Cowells, John Kochevar, Paul Raine, Mike ?, Bobby Remein. 3rd Row, L-R: Kevin Rustvold, Theron ?, Mike Shook, Coach Alf Meubauer, Frank Nichols. Photobombing from behind the fence: Steve Dunning and Mike Wickre.
After earning enough money and Green River credits, Mike enrolled at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He majored in journalism and wrote for the Western Front student newspaper. Mike was always attracted to the bizarre and enjoyed his first big journalistic success with a Feb. 10, 1978 article about human cloning. It was picked up by wire services. He graduated from Western in December 1979 and moved home, throwing himself into the Enumclaw scene.
Mike joined Greg Lovell and Tony Pedrini in renting a house on Griffin Street across from where the new Four Seasons restaurant was being built. They called their bachelor pad the No-Tell Motel. He sang backup in Kevin Rustvold’s band named Sphincter.
The band Sphincter, circa 1977. 1st frame, clockwise: Les Walthers on keyboards, Mike Wickre clapping, Mike Hanson on bass, Kevin Rustvold on guitar, and Mike Shook kneeling with microphone. 2nd frame, L-R: Dave Reynolds, Kevin Rustvold, Mike Hanson, Mike Shook.
With Pedrini and Rustvold, he coached Jack’s Scrappers, an Enumclaw girls’ softball team. After-game parties at the No-Tell Motel featured Rainer beer. They collected the empty bottles until a pickup load generated enough funds to purchase a refrigerated keg tap. Celebrations typically started Thursday night after softball and often extended till Friday. The No-Tell bachelor party ended two years after it began.
Jack’s Scrappers, the women’s softball team that Tony, Kevin, and Mike coached went undefeated that season. From the July 21, 1977 Enumclaw Courier-Herald.L-R: Greg Lovell in blue shirt and white tie, and Mike Wickre pointing to the pickup load of Rainier beer bottles while carrying a BB gun.
In September 1980, he joined the Enumclaw Courier-Herald and worked under its legendary editor, Robert “Bud” Olson. Mike was the paper’s only reporter. Small-town newspapers don’t pay much, so he quit the Courier-Herald in April 1981 and joined a marketing guru who showed him the ropes for selling advertising. The job fit his journalistic background and business initiative. That training propelled Mike to a very successful career selling newspaper, TV, and radio ads.
On Sept. 18, 1982, Mike married Nancy Ann Johnson, a Dakota Indian. She was the adopted daughter of an English author, Emilie Johnson who wrote “My China Odyssey.” Mike and Nancy bought a home in Northshore between Tacoma and Federal Way. With what he learned about selling ads, Mike opened his own marketing firm, AdStrategies, LLC, which he later operated out of a condo just above the Tacoma Dome. He earned bucket loads of money as a one-man advertising agency for auto dealers, car shows, and RV sales firms like Baydo’s.
Mike and Nancy’s marriage fell apart in the 2010s when Mike moved full-time into his Tacoma condo. Nancy died in October 2015. Three years later, Mike met Jacinta Mwihaki Njeri online, a nurse who goes by the name Dee. She was attracted to his humor and found him to be a very funny guy, as almost everyone did.
The couple married on Sept. 19, 2020. Dee told me that Mike liked to cook and was a good one. He also enjoyed watching sports on TV, especially baseball, and also World War II histories. A few months before he died, Mike wrote, “In case I croak, I am on record. Greg Wasell and Steve Bunker were the funniest guys I ever met. Greg was always thinking ahead for a prank. Bunker made planting 800 trees a day fun.”
In early December 2023, Mike fell, hitting his head which caused bleeding in the brain. He lapsed into a coma and died at Tacoma General Hospital on Dec. 29, 2023, at age 68. Michael Irwin Wickre is survived by his wife, Jacinta (known as Dee), his mother, Marilyn, a sister, Marla Wickrefujimoto, and two brothers, Alan Wickre and Ryan Wickre.
Mike’s ashes are buried at the family’s Tokeland cabin with a lilac tree planted above. Really, Mike? Planted beneath a lilac tree? After the last shovel full of dirt was stomped on his remains, Wickre’s ghost whispered a snarky retort, then spit a wad of chew on the grave.
The Wickre I Knew
I first met Mike Wickre in the spring of 1975, the last quarter of my senior year of college. I was living at home and worked afternoons at a coal mining job in Ravensdale. When the job ended I found myself with lots of extra time.
It was good to be back in The Claw. I was taking a tennis class so walked the block to my elementary school, J.J. Smith, to hit balls against a cinder block wall. One day Mike stopped by and struck up a conversation. He remembered me from school. Two of his friends, Scott Veenhuizen and Jeff Wasell shared a small rental a couple blocks away. Mike invited me over to hang out and play Foosball. The evening gatherings typically consisted of beer, pot, Foos, and banter.
We became friends … sort of. With Mike, you never really knew where you stood, except you were standing beside a guy with an engaging smile and captivating personality.
In the mid-1970s, a commune-influenced, all-you-need-is-Love, whole-grain aura still burned astrologically bright within the faux hippy crowd around Enumclaw. But Mike’s bruising personality tolerated no such sentimentality. He was a tough-minded logger who worked in the woods and shoveled pig guts at a packing house. Yet behind his barking bravado lived a literary wannabe. And even deeper lurked a misfit hiding his awkwardness. Mike once confessed, “Yes I know I am socially retarded. Let me know if you can work with me – your friend, Mike.”
A college classmate, Bruce Hyland reflected on the dichotomy, “An interesting thing about Mike … he seemed to have one foot in the hard-scrabble, Enumclaw working man’s life and the other in the civilized world of writer/soccer player/college life. And he didn’t quite fit in either. He always straddled between the workingman and the effete world of journalism.”
I never grew close to Mike because, at some primal level, I feared his explosive outbursts. Still, I liked being around him. Mike was that kind of guy – a cunning sense of humor delivered with a biting tongue. Mike’s favorite quote, one by Winston Churchill captured his antagonistic personality, “He has all the virtues I dislike, and none of the vices I admire.” Wickre loved Monty Python’s skit, “The Argument Clinic.”
Like many great friendships, ours blossomed on the sporting field. Mike invited me to join the Dolezal Chiropractic slow-pitch softball team that Ken Prince captained. By the spring of 1977, I was working as a management trainee at a bank and living in Seattle. I drove an hour to Enumclaw for late afternoon games. We kicked off the season on April 23, playing a double-header on Saturday, one morning game and one in the afternoon.
The Dolezal soft-ball team, circa 1977. Mike is barely visible in the back row with a hat and shaded face. Other are Ken Prince, Tony Pedrini, Bruce Radford, Alan Wicker, Chris Coppin, and Bill Kombol, front row, second from right.
After the second game, we celebrated our loss at the Logger’s Inn in Buckley. It was Wayne Podolak’s 24th birthday which entitled him to a free 72-ounce birthday mug. We all got slowly plowed. Mike, Greg & Jeff Wasell, and I ended up at Lioce’s in Auburn for more beer and pizza. We nearly ended the night in a bar fight. Mike was the kind of guy you wanted by your side in a bar fight. That’s how you built friendships in your twenties.
A few months later I recorded our team’s lineup in a June 13 diary entry:
Catcher –Mike Ackershot and me
Pitcher – Ken Prince
1B – Chris Coppin
2B – Dan Darby
3B – Donnie Robinson
SS – Wayne Podolak
LF – Mike Wickre
LC – Dave
RC – Jeff Wasell
RF – Greg Wasell
Les Hall also played but was absent. That day we lost to the Lee Restaurant roster headed by Keith Fugate, Kim Kuro, and Stan Fornalski.
At the plate, Mike belonged to the “go big or go home” school of thought. Every swing was for the fences. The guy could hit softballs a mile and often did. Win or lose, the real team bonding started afterward at one of many local drinking dives. That night we ended up at the Alcove Tavern. Enumclaw had five or six downtown saloons within a block’s walk, all of the same ilk – neon-lit, smoke-filled, fading posters, pull tabs, pickled eggs.
That summer we waterskied at Lake Sawyer where Mike was witness to a bee flying up my nose and stinging me. As Mom applied meat tenderizer to my nostril, Mike lost control laughing. He never let me forget it. That same afternoon Mike got sick after drinking too much beer and vomited on the deck. Afterward, he marveled at how nice my mother was, “She didn’t even yell at me. She was always smiling.”
A week or so later, I wrote in my diary, “Friendship is nothing more than shared experience.” Mike was a shared experience.
He began joining other events with our gang of friends. We played poker with a longstanding circle of my pals. Here’s how Mike described us:
“I played with you old bastards – Keith Hanson, Jim Clem, Pode, Lester, Wheels – smart guys, smart asses. I don’t know if I ever laughed so hard. I had just started a business, scared stiff, no income, playing poker. And for about three hours, an escape for me, it meant a lot. Old Rugged Cross, high-low split – best game ever. I sure would like a rematch with those guys.”
It was Mike who introduced us to Old Rugged Cross, a card game we still play to this day. In a February 2021 message, Mike continued with memories from high school:
“Nothing but respect for all of them. I had to hit Jim Ewalt in the balls in high school choir, but he respected my authority. In the bass section, those guys were big – Ewalt, good ol’ Bill Tuk, and Randy Verhoeve took turns punching me in the seeds during breathing exercises. And it always hurt. But within a week I had hit them all in their egg bags. I lived to talk about it. That’s why I respect those guys because they respected a coward like me.”
Wickre also joined our last two beer smorgasbords in 1978 and ‘79. What’s a beer smorgasbord? When a bunch of guys bring assigned half racks of beer to a party whose purpose is to blind taste test the most popular brands until everyone’s blind drunk. Mike was proud to be there and later bragged:
“It’s important to note my early successes amongst you old bastards. That night I was ‘Rookie of the Year’ and ‘MVP’ for identifying three of 15 beers. We ate saltines, and Podolak, Copperman, and you danced on the balcony in your underwear to celebrate Dale Troy going ‘In the Navy.’ It was also the night my incredibly rich, hot fiancé left me on the Veazie Flats, and that was that.”
Mike Wickre, left and Lester Hall opposite in yellow shirt at the 1979 Beer Smorgasbord at Lake Sawyer.
He added a concluding coda: “Les Hall drank a pitcher of beer through his jockstrap, which he proudly never washed – for several years judging by the stains.”
In February 1980, Mike called me from the Courier-Herald. The nation was in one of its periodic freak-out moments with 53 Americans held hostage in Iran and energy costs soaring. I worked for Palmer Coking Coal Company in Black Diamond. We were experiencing a surge in demand selling coal for home heating. Wickre came to our sales yard and interviewed my uncle Carl Falk and me. Mike was a sharp reporter who quickly grasped our market position and wrote a fitting article. He even doubled as the Courier-Herald’s photographer and took several photos he used in a story appearing on the front page of their Feb. 28, 1980 issue.
In time Mike joined our golf group, the Duffers’ Golf Association (DGA) winning the four-round summer tournament in 1988. The winner was awarded a passed-along Green Jacket that he kept in the trunk of his car that winter, where it was ruined by battery acid.
A mid-1980s DGA foursome. L-R: Tom Noltenmeyer, Jay Carbon, Tom Cerne, Mike Wickre.
Most of the golfers attended the Mariner home opener. Before carpooling to the Kingdome, we assembled at a convenient south-side tavern for pre-game warm-ups. Mike drove that night, joined by my cousin-in-law, Ron Thompson, and me. Mike proudly wore a new Mariner hat. From the backseat, Ron snatched the cap from his head. Mike sternly asked for its prompt return as a drunken Ron Thompson mocked him. Mistake!
Tensions flared. Ron raced from the car with Mike in fast pursuit. He chased him with a ferocity that scared the living daylights out of me. Wickre’s primal anger gave me the chills. I interceded with a patient pleading and Ron was spared a thrashing. You could give Mike the business, but crossed a line at your own risk. I never came close to crossing it.
Mike’s sporting life
Mike often reminisced about his high school years. In order to tell a coherent story, I’ve parsed through his blather and bluster in various Facebook missives and private messages. Let’s call it Wickre lore.
The school yearbook lists his 9th-grade activities as choir and French club, but he also joined the baseball squad under Coach Ron Miller. Mike told the story of having to give his up uniform mid-season to Mark Vannatter, a classmate and son of school administrator Don Vannatter. Wickre growled, “I like baseball. I just don’t like baseball coaches.”
As a sophomore in 1970, Mike turned out for both basketball and baseball, and continued with choir. On the baseball diamond, he bristled under head coach Frank Osborne’s dictatorial style, but was mesmerized by his instruction. Like most players, Mike called him by his initials, “My mentor, F.O. taught me life lessons, and how to hit. He turned me into a varsity pitcher. But he didn’t understand that I won’t back down. You could have made a movie of me and Frank.”
Mike called Osborne his Oedipal coach, a Freudian reference to jealous feelings a son has towards his father. As a sophomore, Mike was the team’s fourth pitcher which meant Fungo bats and shagging balls. He recalled Coach Osborne’s superstitious nature, “If you shagged infield balls and the team won . . . guess what? Wickre’s shagging balls for the rest of the season.”
One of Mike’s true joys was being around that year’s top pitcher and Hornet team leader, Jim Clem. Wickre called Clem “his all-time mentor.” Mike laid it out in a private message:
“I have a little manic attack going on. I have to tell someone this tale to stop laughing. I was a gangling sophomore. I played baseball in the 4th grade and said ‘No mas.’ So here I am, geekier than geek, and I sit down next to Jim Clem. Like sitting next to one of the Apostles. He talks to me. I think he was wearing an ascot. I am having a legend speak to me – my eyes wider than my ears. When I found out Clem was going to be my coach, I did three somersaults. Then he leans over and lets me in on a secret, ‘F.O. is the biggest prick you’ll ever meet.’”
“My two finest coaches were Doug Baldwin, wrestling at Lakota Jr. High, and Jim Clem, baseball at Enumclaw High. Both encouraged … not a negative word. Blessings to both for turning a boy into a man. I hope I can pass it along. And actually try to be like Clem who told me his simple mantra, ‘Wick, I get better and better every day.’”
His senior year Mike joined the baseball team but didn’t finish the season. Here’s how he described that truncated experience. “Irony is fun when you play along. F.O. kicked me off the Varsity Hornet baseball squad because I had long hair. Now, I have no hair. Karma’s . . . a bitch.”
Which Mike Wickre
Bruce Hyland, a friend from college made a number of acute observations about Mike.
“We met at Western in the journalism program. I had moved from upstate New York after the service and was going to school on the G.I. Bill. Most everybody else seemed young and soft … Wick, on the other hand, was clearly more worldly wise … audacious, witty, with no B.S. We clicked from Day One.”
Three decades and a whole lot of changes passed before Bruce reunited with his college friend.
“When I finally came out for a visit after some 30 years, Mike put me up at his place, gave me a car to use, fed me, and lost to me at Cribbage (just like in college). We went to a college newspaper gang reunion at a Tacoma night spot that some alums organized because I was visiting. We had a great time. Played a round of golf the following day. He was seeing (and I met) an assortment of sketchy women who knew that old saw about God giving men two heads, but only enough blood to run one at a time. A good friend in every way.”
By autumn 2016, some six years later, when he returned for a college newspaper gang reunion, Bruce encountered a changed Wickre:
“He’d been on meds for some kind of operation plus he was taking something to help him sleep. He’s virtually medicated all the time. And weed was legal so he was always tokin’ up. Lives a very isolated life … seems to be getting more irrational. He was wary and even paranoid … accusing me of screwing up his seriously screwed-up car. A very different personality.”
Two of Mike’s favorite Facebook profile pictures. Left – Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull, circa 1885. Right – Mike Ring-a-ling, March 2015.
Mike made me a better writer
I hadn’t seen Mike for over a decade. We last crossed paths around 2010 at Gold Mountain and made plans to connect on the golf course. Instead, we connected on Facebook. Mike discovered my interest in writing, which I practice on that illiterate social medium called Fakebook.
Now I could enjoy the fullness of Mike’s wickedness. As the Prince of putdowns berates me publicly for overusing personal pronouns – I, me, my. And says my sentences are too long. “Keep your sentences short, like Hemingway.” And my paragraphs needed to be shorter. “Let the words breathe,” Mike counseled.
This typical Wickre response came after reading one of my essays:
“As you know, I usually embarrass you worldwide. So this is just us boys. I consider you a great friend, and an easy target. Put Billsie on the tee, and I will give him a proper whack.
“I like tightened copy. Reporters in the type era were paid by the published inch. Copy editors were paid to cut words. See last sentence. So these idiots that worked for newspapers had to get to the point, tout suite (French for immediately).”
Then a few weeks later:
“Look at you improving your writing. Paragraphs are fun, every 30 words, just easier to read. I like when you reach out a bit more in your descriptive – you are on the right track – push the edges and you will get there. I want to see fire … rage … laughter, tears, and resolution … 1,000 words, no plagiarism or misspelled words. Lean into this manifesto … don’t let me down.”
And more encouragement:
“I like your tighter writing. You might enjoy the down-to-bones approach of Hunter Thompson and Mark Twain. Avoid Faulkner, who is verbose. Flowery puff is just not good. Capote wrote tight. Condense. Hemingway wrote some books I am told. Use short sentences with vigorous language. You have the skills but your writing is generally weak and in the passive voice. Your facts can’t be questioned. Use active verbs, and avoid the word ‘I’. You are smart enough to do better. I have hope.”
Plus advice on what to read and why:
“If you haven’t read it, try Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion” – about loggers. Best book I have read outside the Bible. Read both three times. Some of it stuck. You will get lost in it. It’s set in Oregon, but could have been Enumclaw. But, a crappy movie.”
You’re on my bucket list
For the last five years of his life, I tried to set up a dinner to reconnect. My efforts began in 2019 with offers to host a restaurant meal with two close friends, Jim Clem and Tom Cerne. Then came Covid, which tanked plans for nearly two years, much of it due to Mike’s germ-a-phobe consternation. He kept dodging my efforts with outrageous requests and changing demands. By the fall of 2024, we made progress toward our long-planned get-together which I thought was getting close. It didn’t happen – my sad regret.
One of Mike’s last messages to me: “You’re on my bucket list.” Now I’m left with the loneliest words in the English language, “If only.” Our dinner reunion will never be realized. If you have plans to meet an old friend someday, remember John Fogerty’s fateful song, “Someday Never Comes.”
A Farewell to Mike
It was a dark and stormy night. Coastal rains pounded the Oregon Coast. My wife and I made our way to Kyllo’s, a seafood grill in Lincoln City where the D River flows into the ocean. When guided to our table, we passed a nautical display featuring an Ernest Hemingway quote. I snapped this photo knowing Hemingway was Mike’s favorite writer.
The Ernest Hemingway display in Kyllo’s on the D River in Lincoln City.
Later that Saturday night I sent it to Mike via Facebook Messenger. He replied within a minute, “Listen to Ernest …” On Sunday afternoon, Dec. 10, 2023, Mike wrote his final Facebook post, “Thanks to Bill Kombol.” I didn’t see that post until after he died.
Mike Wickre’s last Facebook post, Dec. 10, 2023.
The title photo standing atop this essay came from “A Farewell to Arms.” At our Lincoln City home, we have accumulated a nice collection of decades-old books, among them a first-edition hardcover of Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 novel. Its binding is secured with black tape and the inside cover is stamped ‘Discard.’ The imprint of Enumclaw Public Library is scratched over by a black crayon.
I researched the quote from the restaurant display hoping it might be from “A Farewell to Arms.”
“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
Here’s an irony Mike would fully enjoy, it isn’t a Hemingway quote. It’s by William Saroyan, a novelist, playwright, and short story writer of the same era.
Sometimes a Great Notion
On numerous occasions, Mike urged me to read Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion.” I’ll be honest – he practically bludgeoned me. Mike read it three times. The best book he ever read besides the Bible.
Several years before he died, I bought the Audible version of Kesey’s second novel. Many critics consider it his greatest. Tom Wolfe, who later chronicled Kesey’s exploits with the Merry Prankster, took note of its brilliance. After seeing its 28-hour length, I promptly lost interest and the recording collected digital dust. When Mike died, I knew what must be done.
Sometimes a Great Notion, audiobook by Ken Kesey.
“Sometimes a Great Notion” tells the story of an Oregon family of gypo loggers. They are led by a hard-headed patriarch, Henry Stamper who has two sons, Hank the stubborn first-born, and Leland, the sensitive half-brother, from a second and much younger wife. Leland moves east with his mother, attends Yale, but returns to the family logging show to settle scores. Conflicts between father, brothers, workers, and log mills brew in the old-growth forests as union forces seek to stamp out the family’s independent ways.
Upon finishing the book, I began to see why this novel so appealed to Mike. Resistance to authority, the life of loggers, a college man’s struggle against convention, a consciousness-raising literary style – it’s all there.
I finally understood why he so wanted me to read it. I began to glimpse the specter of the boy he was. And perhaps the man he wanted to be. Reading “Sometimes a Great Notion” became my requiem for the repose of Mike’s memory.
Rest in Peace, Mike – under that lilac tree.
Mike and his family: “Sometimes I mind my own snarky business, a hate-filled wretched old P.O.S. Then sometimes the best time of your life sneaks in and makes it all worthwhile. Pictured L-R: Tarzan the chess wizard, my love Jacinta (Dee), my brother Alan, Edith Finley, my lovely mom (Marilyn), and Beth of the beach who is my new B.F.F. I ate four Dungeness crabs, just polished off the last two.” — Mike’s Facebook post Sept. 3, 2018.
"Radical Wolfe" a 2023 feature film that explore Tom Wolfe's life and work.
“Radical Wolfe” was the last film I expected to watch on a transcontinental flight back east last year. Tom Wolfe died nearly six years ago, and airline movie selections rarely feature thoughtful documentaries about revolutionary literary figures. Passengers want comfort-food entertainment to better digest crummy airline food. Movie thrillers, rom-coms, and music videos offer what both parties seek – for airlines: quiet and pacified sardines; and for 300 passengers crammed in a tube: stimulating entertainment.
Six miles high on our flight to New York City, with earplugs in and eyes glued to the screen, I muscled through the staccato nature of wifi interruptus, a common airplane movie ailment of frozen screens and mid-scene glitches. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed “Radical Wolfe,” a documentary that grew from Michael Lewis’ 2015 Vanity Fair article. Lewis is a writer whose flame was lit by Tom Wolfe’s torch.
Tom Wolfe was a quiet southern gentleman, who with a younger sister grew up in a home of educated parents. His father, Tom Sr. was editor of The Southern Planter, an influential agricultural magazine, and his mother, Helen was a landscaped designer. Tom turned down Princeton University to attend Washington & Lee, where he majored in English and became sports editor of the college newspaper. He played baseball advancing to a semi-professional team and earned a try-out with the New York Giants. He was cut after three days.
Wolfe abandoned sports and next enrolled in Yale’s American Studies doctoral program. After several years of research, Wolfe submitted his doctoral thesis exploring Communist influences on American writers during the 1930s, a subject he knowingly chose to provoke his mentors. The thesis was savagely rejected, but after rewrites and toning down his florid style, it was accepted and a freshly-minted Dr. Tom entered the real world.
A series of lowly jobs in newspapers over five years eventually landed Wolfe a job at the Herald Tribune, a perennial second-place, we-try-harder competitor to the New York Times. Wolfe developed a special affection for his adopted Big Apple calling it, “pandemonium with a big grin on it.” There he joined Clay Felker and a team of fresh writers like Jimmy Breslin who embarked on a common quest to make journalism livelier. In their Sunday supplement, New York, the team produced the “hottest Sunday read in town.” In America’s biggest metropolis, Wolfe discovered that cities are complex entities and far more than what any one person experiences. Yet, there’s no way to fully grasp individuals without first understanding how people create their lives and construct their fabrications. .
It was also in New York during the mid-1960s when Wolfe adopted the clothing style that set him apart from Wall Street bankers to Greenwich Village hippies. He began wearing white suits that were traditionally worn only during the sultry days of summer. But Tom Wolfe wore his custom-made, cream-colored suits year-round becoming the snowy-dressed dandy of the Big Apple. White suits provided the protective armor that Wolfe hid behind when researching his stories.
Tom Wolfe, on the back cover of “From Bauhaus to Our House.”
New Journalism
Wolfe’s New Journalism was a set of writing techniques to lift nonfiction storytelling to an entertaining experience. He was the maestro among fellow journalistic practitioners like Hunter Thompson, Gay Talese, George Plimpton, Joan Didion, and Rex Reed. Wolfe explained the story-telling process of New Journalism during a 1987 Rolling Stone interview with Brant Mewborn. “The first is scene-by-scene construction. In other words, telling the entire story through a sequence of scenes rather than the simple historical narration. Second is the use of real dialogue—the more the merrier. The third, which is the least understood of the techniques, is the use of status details. That is, noting articles of clothing, manners, the way people treat children, the way they treat servants, etc. The fourth is the using point of view, which is depicting scenes through a particular pair of eyes.”
I can’t recall when Tom Wolfe first came into my life. Like many in the late sixties, I heard the phrase “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” bandied about but knew nothing of Ken Kesey’s antics or his psychedelically-inspired Merry Pranksters. Nor was I aware of Wolfe’s send-up of the cocktail party where wealthy socialites joined a get-together with Black Panthers. I came upon Wolfe while leafing through the pages of Rolling Stone where he wrote the first chapters about how test pilots became astronauts. The magazine’s publisher, Jann Wenner urged him to start the story, that six years later became “The Right Stuff.”
One of Wolfe’s most controversial works, “Radical Chic” was written in 1970 after he attended a party Leonard Bernstein hosted to introduce New York society to the Black Panthers. Wolfe’s entree to the party came when he noticed an invitation on David Halberstam’s desk. He promptly called the RSVP number and announced, “This is Tom Wolfe, and I accept.” He arrived at the Bernstein’s posh Park Avenue apartment and immediately sought out the party’s hosts, Leonard and Felicia Bernstein, to present himself.
He made no secret of the fact he was collecting notes for a story. He carried a green steno spiral notebook upon which in bold block letters he’d written, Panther Night at Leonard Bernstein’s. It was only after he told readers of New York Magazine what he had seen and heard that critics attacked its accuracy. When one of the guests claimed he recorded the affair on a hidden tape recorder, Wolfe was overjoyed. He hadn’t recorded the event but knew his note-taking must have been precise and accurate if fellow guests falsely believed he did. The story raised his profile. But I didn’t read it till a dozen years later.
Tom Wolfe seated in his Manhattan apartment.
The Purple Decades
I didn’t fully fall in love with Wolfe and his kaleidoscopic writing style until release of “The Purple Decades,” his greatest hits collection of early works in the Sixties right up until the time of its 1982 release. That sampling inspired me to read more Tom Wolfe, so I paced through his earlier books.
Two years later Rolling Stone began publishing chapters for his first novel, “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Wolfe had frequently bemoaned the decline of American fiction so decided to show the literary world how to capture the vibrancy of New York, the world’s most dynamic city. In a letter to Wenner, Wolfe proposed submitting serial installments much like how Charles Dickens published many of his novels – in popular magazines. It would be modeled on William Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” From July 1984 to August 1985, each biweekly issue of Rolling Stone arrived in my mailbox with a new chapter that I immediately inhaled. Wolfe found the pressure of deadlines provided the motivation he hoped for. He was right, and this reader was hooked.
Back in the Sixties, Wolfe began noticing subcultures of ordinary people who were rarely mentioned in mainstream culture. His role as a white-suited sociologist allowed Wolfe to blend into these tight social groups, like the custom car crowd from which he produced “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” or the San Diego surfers from which he wrote “The Pump House Gang.” “What struck me,” he noted, “was how so many people have found such novel ways of extending their ego way out on the best terms available, namely their own.” Each subculture devised its own hierarchical status structure. For custom car owners it might be the most inventive creation, or for surfers who best epitomized beach culture.
When asked why he wrote, Tom Wolfe usually answered he enjoyed exploring how people sought status in their lives. “I think every living moment of a human being’s life, unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death, is controlled by a concern for status.” He developed this theory after studying Max Weber, a German sociologist who wrote the essay, “Class, Status, and Party.” Wolfe refined Weber’s insights into what he termed the ‘Statusphere.’ He explained people were not competing for prestige with all of society. Instead, they pursued rank and status within a narrow sphere of their own making, typically friends, co-workers, fellow hobbyists, or other social frameworks where close companionship is found. Most people regard their personal Statusphere as better than all others.
The Human Comedy has never been richer.
The collective insights from status-seeking surveillance fueled his first novel, “The Bonfire of Vanities,” a blast of oxygenated air that captured the social milieu of Manhattan in the 1980s. Wolfe’s characters were composites discovered during years of careful observation and months of research into their lusts and livelihoods. The novel was phenomenally successful generating $15 million in gross sales, the equivalent of $40 million today. And what a book it was, Wolfe chuckled, “to produce a movie so bad that it lost nearly $100 million dollars.” As Tom Wolfe wryly observed about his own bestseller, “The human comedy has never been richer.”
After “Bonfire of the Vanities” elevated Tom Wolfe to the top of the country’s authors, his 1998 follow-up novel, “A Man in Full” landed him on the cover of Time Magazine. He was now the most famous writer in America. His publisher was so confident of the book’s sales that more than a million copies were printed before anyone had read a single word. The story was set in Georgia with a cast of characters, both black and white from all castes of Atlanta’s social and economic classes. It was a huge success but drew critical reviews from staid authors pushed aside by Wolfe’s popularity.
Particularly aggrieved were John Updike, John Irving, and Norman Mailer who entered the fracas attacking the novel as “entertainment, not literature.” Still, Wolfe had the last laugh, amusingly skewering his assailants in a spirited and mocking counter-punch titled, “My Three Stooges.” The novelist John Gregory Dunne summed up the kerfuffle best, “Wolfe had the capacity to drive otherwise sane and sensible people clear around the bend.”
Wolfe was regularly accused of everything from ignorance to arrogance. One critic termed Wolfe “the most dangerous writer in America and the one person you don’t invite to your party.” When asked why some critics despised him, Wolfe responded that he simply pulled away the status-seeking veil for all to see. He continued, “Intellectuals aren’t used to being written about. When they aren’t taken seriously and become part of the human comedy, they have a tendency to squeal like weenies over an open fire.” Gay Talese, a fellow New Journalism writer explained some of the contempt directed Wolfe’s way, “Here was a writer who stuck his neck out, criticizing fiction writers and their work. Then he goes ahead and writes a best-selling novel. He knows he will get killed critically because everyone in the literary establishment will have it in for him.”
About politics, Wolfe said he belonged to the party of opposition and found enemies on both sides of the partisan divide. But Wolfe didn’t care and quipped, “You’re nobody till somebody hates you.” He shrugged off flak explaining, “It usually means that I’ve been unorthodox in some way. I haven’t gone along with the reigning intellectual line.” When accused of being cynical, racist, and elitist, Wolfe struck back. “That’s nonsense. I throw the challenge to them: if you think (my writing) is false, go out and do what I did. Get beyond the cocoon of your apartment and take a look.”
The author-admirer’s bookshelf of Tom Wolfe.
Wolfe has regularly been called America’s leading satirist but always rejected the title. He emphasized his point was not to satirize, but to detail how people think and act, as he discovered through detailed reporting. Others found his work transformative. Larry Dietz, a friend and editor observed, “What Tom did with words is what French Impressionists did with color.”
He also cared deeply about freedom of expression. Some voices in the documentary film suggest that Tom Wolfe might not be published today because he regularly pissed off too many people. Today’s culture is filled with armies of the righteous, anxious to be offended and wear their moral indignation like a Technicolor dream coat of wounded pride. But Marshall McLuhan, who Wolfe chronicled in a 1965 essay, issued the best rejoinder, “Moral indignation is the technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.”
In 1996, Tom Wolfe suffered a heart attack that required quintuple bypass surgery. He was humbled to discover that he too was made of clay. He survived the incident and wrote another five books and numerous magazine articles before dying in May 2018 from an infection. Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia.
He was Tom Wolfe!
Grandiose, courageous, skilled, and humorous, Wolfe was filled with vim, vigor, vinegar, and vitality. In death, his work may be neglected, but Wolfe is so good he will no doubt be rediscovered again and again by future generations. He inspired me to read critically and write lavishly. Though I haven’t one percent of Tom’s skills, like Wolfe, I arise each day thanking God for having been born in the greatest country and the greatest time in the history of the world.
After you finally realize the collective WE are fertile grounds in the Human Comedy, that he so meticulously detailed, take a moment to recite a prayerful thank you for Tom Wolfe and his 88 years of life. He was unique and unprecedented, a jewel and a gem, a writer like no other, who makes us laugh, and I miss him dearly. So this essay is my heartfelt “thank you” to a man who first entertained and eventually inspired me to go out into this great big kettle of comic stew and find interesting things to write about. For there’s no writer more interesting than Tom Wolfe.
Postscript: Two degrees of separation
A decade before his death, my glamorous sister Danica was invited to a tony dinner party at the home of Tom and Meredith Brokaw in their Upper East Side Manhattan apartment. She walked into a gathering of perhaps 15 guests and spotted Tom dressed in his signature white suit. “Oh my gosh,” she thought, “My brother should be here.” Danica knew of my love for Wolfe and could only hope she might speak with him. It got much better than that. As the guests were seated at three round dinner tables, she found herself between Tom Wolfe and Diane von Furstenberg, the Belgian fashion designer best known for developing the wrap dress. The evening proceeded with Danica’s attention raptly fixed on Tom’s every utterance.
At the party’s end, she rushed home and called me to deliver her star sighting and recite everything he’d said. I didn’t have the presence of mind to write it down and neither did she. During their conversation, she related my admiration for his work and bragged that I’d read every one of his books. She boldly asked if he would be so kind as to autograph a copy if it were mailed. He said of course, and Danica secured his address to execute the favor.
I was thrilled with the offer and began thinking about which book to send. While contemplating my good luck, I became acutely aware of what I was really doing. What would Tom Wolfe’s finely scripted autograph on the facing page of a book even mean? Would I casually, while entertaining friends pull it from the bookshelf, open the cover, and reap the astonished envy all present? And by doing so imbue myself with some superior status for possessing such an item? That I owned a book that upon my death might fetch an extra $10 from a collector, assuming my heirs even looked inside the cover? Wouldn’t I be reveling in the personal vanity that my literary hero had so expertly exposed in his essays and novels?
The decision came easily, I wouldn’t do it. Why? I was embarrassed to exhibit such a personal vanity by trading on the celebrity of an author who warned me against that very trait. Instead, I quietly sat down and read the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity . . . there is nothing new under the sun.”
