The Spin Cycle – A Blog by Messenger Editor Don Perryman

He was sitting in a wheelchair when we walked into the room, a burly man who looked younger than his years. His right hand had a slight tremble. An attendant had her back to us and must have sensed us standing there. She turned around and smiled.

“Are we interrupting you?”

“No,” she said.

I looked at the man and asked if he was Mr. …? He nodded yes.

The attendant said she would be back in a bit and left the room.

That left the three of us. Strangers. The man looked at us quizzically.

I explained that he, along with a number of other veterans at the Hanson center, had filled out cards with a Christmas wish on them. As he does every year, a friend had collected the cards and taken them out to the Elks Lodge where some of us chose a card.

I had to repeat myself. The man’s hearing wasn’t perfect. He got the gist of what I was saying the second time around.

I handed him an envelope with a Christmas card and his Christmas wish inside — a Walmart gift card. It wasn’t much. In fact none of the vets had asked for much. Some wanted socks, others sweat pants. Simple items.

The room was brightly lit. His name was printed on paper on the wall above his bed. A small TV extended on an arm from the wall. A newspaper lay on the bed. The second bed in the room was unoccupied. His roommate may have been in the meal room we had passed through having his lunch.

He looked at my 17-year-old daughter and said, “That’s a pretty girl you’ve got there.”

She smiled.

My friend had told me that the veteran we visited with would be happy to see us even though he didn’t know us. He was right. Some of the vets rarely have visitors, and when they do, they like to talk.

I asked our veteran when he had served. He was a tail gunner on a bomber in World War II.

We had gone in expecting to spend about 10 minutes with him, but he told us stories and we lost track of time.

He talked about working for Morrison-Knudsen on the huge St. Lawrence Seaway project after the war. He talked about being in Afghanistan and about a severely injured man there who he’d helped recover from his injuries.

He talked, and we listened.

He talked about his son who can fix anything. There was a lot of pride in the story. He talked about the veterans center and how there couldn’t be a finer place.

He said he likes to sit outside the center in the sun. He talks to visitors as they are leaving and tries to cheer them up if they need it.

And then it was time to go. I leaned over and placed my hand on his shoulder and thanked him for his service and wished him a merry Christmas. My daughter then stepped forward, and he began to raise his right hand to shake hands with her.

“No,” she said. “I want to give you a hug.”

She leaned down and hugged him. He hugged her back, a smile breaking out on his face.

We said our good-byes and left the room. As we walked out the door, I looked back and saw he was watching us leave, the envelope still unopened lying in his lap.

We walked down the glistening hallway, and I thought about the man and what he had seen and experienced. I thought about my daughter who will leave our home and head out into the world next year. I had taken her with me, because I wanted her to understand that these people who live in veterans centers matter. That they did things for all us. Important things. That they shouldn’t spend the remainder of their lives as forgotten people. That a few minutes of our lives can mean so much to them.

As we neared the entrance to the building, my daughter glanced over at me.

“That was good,” she said.

Yeah.

She got it.

Don Perryman is The Messenger’s managing editor.

We had a nice pot luck lunch at the paper Tuesday. The food was good. The occasion was not. We were saying goodbye to Lori Harrison who was spending her last day at The Messenger.

Lori has been here for 10 years. I have worked with her for the past eight. During that time I have found her to be highly intelligent, great at her craft, quick-witted and stubborn – at times. The stubborn part, I mean.

For example, Lori has occasionally tried to convince me that cheerleading is a sport. It’s not, but she is certain it is. (I can be stubborn too.)

But more than anything, Lori did her job and did it well. You’d be hard-pressed to find a reporter who is better at covering education and health-related issues.

Through her work, an untold number of families have received financial support from the community after she related the story of a family tragedy, or illness.

She has kept our readership informed about the many library programs available, medical advances, school testing, the swine flu and was in the trenches when the tornado rolled through and when the ice storm hit.

We will miss Lori and we will miss the far too few times her daughter, Emma, has dropped by to charm us out of our money at Girl Scout Cookies time.

We are lucky that in her new job as the Hopkins County Schools communication coordinator she will be our first call for most school-related stories.

Good luck, Lori. Stop by from time-to-time. I can always use a good cheerleading argument.

•••••

Senate President David Williams and former UK hoop player and current Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer stopped by the paper last week. They were on the campaign trail for the governor and lieutenant governor positions, respectively.

We ended the Q&A with the Spin Doctor asking Farmer why Pitino didn’t play him more when he was at UK. Farmer had a good laugh.

Back when Pitino coached the Cats, he took phone calls on a radio program following games. The Doc has been told that during almost every show, someone from Clay County, Farmer’s neck of the woods, would say something along the lines of “Great game coach. This team is starting to come together. Let me ask you a question. How come you don’t play Richie more?”

•••••

Everyone please send out best wishes to Madisonville City Councilmen Dallas Cunningham and Bill Smith who have been under the weather.

•••••

The Doc understands when Sarah Palin says she has a burning desire in her heart to run for president. But how does she explain that vast emptiness between her ears?

•••••

Every time The Doc sees a Cialis commercial it makes me want to run out and buy another bathtub for the front yard.

 

The Spin Doctor is sure a lot of local politicians would like to get their hands on the magic wand state Sen. Jerry Rhoads used in order to get College Drive on the state’s six-year road plan.

The project to widen the road leading to Madisonville Community College wasn’t on any priority lists and had no local support, but when the state budget was finalized during the 2008 legislative session — abracadabra —  Kentucky 3052 was on the plan.

Local officials recognized that 3052 was College Drive. However, being on the list is one thing, getting funded is another. They were surprised when it received initial funding earlier this year.

That it was listed as Kentucky 3052 is also interesting. Why not College Drive? The Doc was told that it was because that is the road’s state designation and it was, after all, on a state road plan. However, a little further up the list of road projects was the widening of North Main Street in Madisonville from Hospital Drive to the traffic light at McDonald’s. Why not U.S. 41?

A little history here. In 2006, Rhoad’s wife, Dr. Judy Rhoads, MCC’s president, presented the project to a gathering of influential folks at a Madisonville-Hopkins County Chamber of Commerce meeting to develop a prioritized listing of projects for local state legislators.

College Drive received no support at the meeting.

Further, when the Pennyrile Area Development District put together a prioritized road project list in 2007 for the 2008 legislative session, it did not receive priority status.

The PADD list was developed with input from county, city, the local Department of Transportation district office and PADD officials.

The senator apparently took exception with the way two stories the Messenger produced in July concerning the College Drive residents’ opposition to the project were presented.

In an op-ed piece in July, Rhoads wrote that we had provided some “inaccurate information.” That there “is no ‘plan’ to widen College Drive.”

That’s parsing words. While true in the strictest sense that there is no “plan” on paper, residents were told by local DOT officials that is what they are looking at doing.

The state road plan describes the project as constructing “a turn lane by providing a three-lane curve on Kentucky 3052.”

Unless the Doc is badly mistaken, a turn lane can’t be added without widening the road.

Rhoads went on to say that no funds for construction have been authorized, and he is right. However, why spend $250,000 for design and another $100,000 for rights-of-way for a project that may not reach construction phase?

The senator points to other projects that he has worked to get on the state plan, and he should be applauded for those efforts.

However, his assertion that the College Drive project does not take funds away from “important projects,” misses the mark. The judge-executive and the mayor cited several projects they and PADD deemed more important that aren’t on the plan. That College Drive is would indicate that money is being spent on a project that could be better spent elsewhere.

The Doc doesn’t know if the project is necessary or not. I don’t live there and don’t travel out there enough to make a personal judgment.

But the people who live there don’t want it. The mayor doesn’t want it. The judge-executive doesn’t want it.

That’s good enough for the Doc. It should have been good enough for Sen. Rhoads.