Last week, The Era lost one of its family.
Joe Parker, graphic designer, wasn’t one of the more public faces of The Era. To all of us in the office, he was the grumpy uncle with a heart of gold.
He had a bit of a gruff voice and encouraged the belief that he was a curmudgeon — until you asked him about his rescue animals, or music trivia or history.
As I’d come to work each afternoon, Joe would be the first person I would see. His desk was right inside the door.
“Hello, Joe,” I’d say. Sometimes I would get a greeting, other times a growl. His job could be a frustrating one.
Joe drove to work each day from Kane, sometimes through feet of snow. Bradford residents would grumble as they stomped in, a few minutes late, kicking snow from their shoes. And Joe would already be at his computer, his coffee next to him and his picture of his beloved wife Cindy on his computer.
Joe had a key ring with what had to be 1,500 keys on it — OK, maybe not that many, but a lot. They would jingle as he rushed through the office, heading to the printer or to an advertising representative with a question. I asked him once about his myriad of keys.
In true Joe fashion, he didn’t answer so much as he told me a story.
“I have filing cabinets,” he said. He had run a newsstand in Maryland — “in a previous life,” he’d joke — and loved to read about history and non-fiction. He had all kinds of things in those cabinets, he said.
Now, thinking back, I realize he never really told me if the keys went to the filing cabinets or if the story was a non sequitur — with Joe’s sense of humor, it could have been either one.
In the newsroom, Joe’s desk wasn’t far from my office.
I remember dealing with a particularly difficult phone conversation one day for a story I was writing. I was talking to someone who had recently experienced a tragedy. When I hung up the phone, I sat at my desk for a moment with my head in my hands. Joe came over to talk to me.
“I overheard your half of the conversation,” he said. “I wanted to commend you for handling it the way you did. It’s a hard line to walk, being respectful while asking questions like that. You done good.”
Those words from someone like Joe helped me sleep at night.
Another time, a colleague brought her dog in to visit at the office. One person in the office wasn’t a fan; the dog didn’t like him, either.
“I couldn’t care less if people like dogs or not,” Joe said later that day. “But when a dog doesn’t like a person, I’m going to listen.”
Last week, Joe succumbed to cancer after a brief and terrible battle.
As I write this, his coffee cup still sits beside his keyboard. The picture of him and Cindy is still on the computer.
And the quiet … the terrible, tragic quiet of a life cut short by the devastation that is cancer is nearly a physical presence in the office.
Go with God, Joe. After all, the Good Lord might be the only one who could beat you at historical trivia.
(Schellhammer is the Era’s associate editor. She can be reached at marcie@bradfordera.com)
