A Voice Calls from Africa

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in March 2006.

When Cathy Ayelevi Forson Sjogreen was growing up in Ghana, her parents couldn't afford to send her to high school, so she earned money for her education by selling produce in an open-air market from a tray atop her head.

“I love learning,” said Sjogreen, 40, who speaks ten languages and whose first memory of school is sitting under a tree with other students. “We were taught according to the old British system.”

Today, Sjogreen, who lives in Livermore with her Swedish mathematician husband and their two young sons, hopes to one day return to her country of birth.

“When my husband first got his job with Lawrence Livermore Lab,” Sjogreen said, “my boys and I stayed in Sweden so I could finish my degree at Stockholm University.”

But the boys missed their father so much that Sjogreen moved the family to Livermore six months later, arriving in 2004 with her degree unfinished.

The oldest of seven children, Sjogreen has a special talent for learning languages. While a young woman in Ghana, Sjogreen used her language skills to land a job. Then, over time, her aptitude—and the generosity of a supervisor who paid her air fare—opened the door for Sjogreen to move to France, where she initially lived with an uncle.

"I admire everything about France,” she said, “its language, history, literature, and culture.”

Sjogreen lived in several French cities and worked as an interpreter and bilingual secretary. She also volunteered as a translator in hospitals, airports, train stations, and churches.

Always eager to enhance her language proficiency, Sjogreen was taking an advanced course in French in the early 1990s when she met her future husband, Bjorn.

“He was working on his post doctorate project,” she said. “It took me almost a year to agree to move to Sweden, because I still had my job, my relatives, and my good friends in France.”

Love, of course, won out, and Sjogreen moved to Sweden in 1994.

Now, 12 years and two children later, she hopes to finish her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. In the meantime, she is attending Las Positas College.

“My intended major is French Literature,” she said, “but I’m curious about languages and wish to do more research in the field.”

While Sjogreen’s near-term goal is to complete her formal education, her eyes soften when she talks about Ghana and the 120 children her parents care for in the orphanage she helped them start in 1992.

“Each child is clothed, nurtured, loved and educated in English and native languages,” she said. “The joy in their faces makes me feel so proud.”

Called Mother’s Voice, the orphanage grew out of the compassion Sjogreen’s mother has always felt for little children, even when Sjogreen was a girl.

"Some mornings we’d wake up and there would be a new face in our house,” she said.

Because Sjogreen’s father worked in nursing, he was able to arrange for free pediatric care, though sometimes the doctors assumed the youngsters were his children.

Sjogreen said over the years the family had to make some sacrifices for the orphans they took in, and, as a teenager, she questioned her mother about taking on the burden.

“My mother just has so much love in her heart,” Sjogreen said, “she had to reach out to these children.”

Since inception, Mother’s Voice has operated with no government support. Some of its revenue is generated by also serving as a day care center, but additional funds are needed to properly care for the orphans.

Sjogreen and her husband, along with her siblings, support the orphanage by wiring money—even small amounts—whenever they can.

One sister, Sarah, works at the orphanage, and even the Sjogreen boys, 10 and 8, express concern about the children. The boys got to see the orphanage 16 months ago when the family visited Ghana.

Though Sjogreen worries about funding, her greater concern is for the future of Mother’s Voice. Her father is 73 and her mother is developing glaucoma, so Sjogreen has plans, as the oldest child, to one day take the knowledge she’ll gain from her college degree and move back to Africa to run the orphanage.

“My desire to save the orphans of Ghana is like an earthquake,” said Sjogreen, her eyes pooling with compassion. “It’s as if I hear my mother’s voice inside me.”

. . .


. . .


. . .
Cathy Sjogreen holds a photo of orphans at Mother’s Voice, an orphanage she helped her parents start in Ghana in 1992.

A river of tears and blessings

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald five days after Thanksgiving, 2006.

Last week on Thanksgiving, I shared with my parents and in-laws a story my 11-year-old daughter recently wrote about a rafting trip we took along the Stanislaus River this past summer. For Kelsey, it’s a tale she needed to write about to get beyond the experience. For me, it’s a narrative brimming with thankfulness.

Kelsey enjoys writing, and has knack for suspense: “Walking over the bridge to go river rafting for my second year, my heart pounded. I could hear Mother Nature’s birds chirping, but what I couldn’t know was that after this journey, I would never dare to even think about rafting.”

She then describes getting instructions from the 20-year-old “radical instructor” who calls everyone dude. She notes the difficulty of climbing into the raft because “I am twice as small as I should be.”

Kelsey is small for her age, having battled several medical challenges and a leaky heart when she was very young. She had open-heart surgery when she was three, and underwent scoliosis surgery after our summer vacation.

Once in the raft, but before launching, she writes how she “bounced around on the sponginess” and sung repeatedly, “I love river rafting!”

Kelsey conjures brief sketches of the family members on the trip. She writes about her stepmother, Pam, saying, “She is always happy. I have never once seen her mad.”

She describes her 14-year-old sister, Melissa, as having blonde hair and blue eyes, and looking just like her mom.

I appear in the story wearing a hat with my fishing license clipped to it, important details later in the tale.

Having set up the scene and characters, Kelsey now builds to the critical moment: “After we got in the river and under a bridge, it happened. We came to it. There was the rapid.”

Below an illustration of a huge blue wave going over the raft, in which a tiny Kelsey with a red life vest is seated on the bottom, she portrays the chaos that follows our plunge “right down the middle” of the rapid.

It’s worth noting that this section of the Stanislaus River, which starts at Knights Ferry, is about as gentle as any river can be. Last year we rafted the same stretch and glided easily through every rapid. This past summer, though, rains caused the river to swell.

“Kelsey, hold on to the boat!” Pam shouts, and a moment later when Kelsey realizes I’ve fallen off the back of the raft, she screams “Dad!!!”

Picture me being pitched into a rushing river. In an instant, I was downriver from the raft, abducted by brute force from my wife and daughters, my head dunking under from time to time, my hat still atop my head, my mind panicked and flooded with thoughts of drowning or breaking a leg or arm.

During all this, 14-year-old Melissa remained calm, certainly frightened, but able to focus on working with her step mom to paddle with strength to catch up to me, to then help pull me from the fast-flowing water. Kelsey’s succinct “after four tries, we got him” understates their heroic success in rescuing me.

The last page of Kelsey’s story describes her tears, how in the aftermath of my rescue she “cried and cried,” how the rest of the trip “was torture.” She also notes that I’d lost my hat in the ordeal, and that my fishing license had been swept away.

Indeed, as we continued down river, Kelsey was almost inconsolable in spite of our efforts to calm her fears. As we coasted smoothly along several long stretches, as Kelsey snuggled next to me, my own silent terror began to give way to a profound joy and thankfulness for life.

Then something magical happened, a sign that all would be well. Kelsey writes how we came upon my hat, just beginning to sink as Melissa snatched it from the river. Then, a moment later, there was my fishing license, floating along in its plastic case, waiting for us to rescue it.

Soon, Kelsey felt better. She even sat near the front of the raft and trailed her hands through the water. When we stopped for a picnic along the shore, she tried her hand at casting and fishing.

And while at the end of the trip we were thankful to be finished and safe, Kelsey says it best as she ends her tale with the perspective of fifth-grader who has gained wisdom: “The only good thing was it makes a good story, and next year we’ll be doing pottery.”













Feeling better after the trip...

Life in France under Nazi rule

This story appeared in a somewhat shorter version and as two columns in the Tri-Valley Herald, published in late October and early November 2006.

On June 14, 1940, 11-year-old Leon Vermont stood on the Boulevard Diderot and watched as German troops marched into Paris. Like most little boys at the time, Vermont was impressed by the good-looking soldiers, their apparent invincibility, even the height of the Nazis, each of whom looked at least six feet tall. Marching to the precise rhythm of a military band, the soldiers were, in Vermont’s young eyes, “a magnificent vision of a powerful and victorious army.”

Vermont, who today lives in Livermore and whose French accent graces his words, sat in a downtown restaurant with his son, Phillip, and recounted his years as a Jewish boy in occupied France.

Vermont’s story is a tale of loss, kindness, sadness, and luck.

“I don’t recall anything tragic happening in the early days of the occupation,” he said. “On the contrary, I recall people saying the Germans were not as bad as we had been led to believe.”

Vermont remembers attending a concert by a German band a few days after the occupation: “The musicians gave the children chocolate.”

As much of France fell under the spell of propaganda, even prompting some citizens to look favorably on the Nazis, the German high command was making plans for its “Final Solution,” the extermination of all Jews.

Today we know that over six million people—two-thirds of European Jews—were killed in the Holocaust, but the world was different then, Vermont said. No one could imagine calculated mass murder.

The first Jews were arrested in May 1941, almost a year after the occupation. The Nazi strategy was to move gradually, first to round up immigrant Jews whom many French natives were persuaded to think of as a nuisance. “Men like my dad, a cabinet maker, and a Polish Jew,” Vermont said.

In fact, Vermont’s father was among the first to be deported to Auschwitz, the death camp from which he would never return.

Careful not to upset the French and their sense of human rights, the Germans waited yet another year before arresting—with the willing assistance of the French police—20,000 Jewish men, women, and children on July 16, 1942.

Though doors were kicked in all over Paris that day, the officer who called at the apartment where Vermont’s family lived must have been “a real human being,” Vermont said. As the children hid under beds, another policeman approached to break down the door, but was stopped by the first policeman. “They walked to another door to arrest another family who opened their door.”

Vermont’s 44-year-old mother, who spoke Yiddish and little French, soon arranged for an escape. She would take her two older daughters and Vermont with her, leaving behind for the time being her two youngest children in the loving care of the apartment concierge.

During the dangerous train trip, the four family members passed themselves off as native Parisians. Babette, the oldest daughter, did most of the talking since she spoke perfect French.

Arriving at the border between occupied France and the southern portion of the country known as the “Zone libre,” they spent a frightening night walking through a forest to cross the border into relative safety, though this didn’t mean they were completely free. “We were immediately arrested and sent to a detention camp,” Vermont said.

After three weeks, Vermont joined a home, or “chateau,” in Chabannes with 60 children. He was allowed to stay in touch with his mother and sisters by mail.

Vermont explained that because the French government had proven itself to be pro-German, a number of homes supporting Jewish children were initially tolerated in the Zone libre.

Soon a letter arrived from his mother, written by one of his sisters, asking if the 13-year-old Vermont would gain permission from the director of the home to be away for a few days.

The director was Mr. Chevrier, a French catholic who years after the war was awarded the Medal of Righteous Gentile, an honor from the State of Israel. This award was granted for his dedication to saving Jewish children under his protection under difficult conditions.

Vermont was being asked by his mother to retrace the treacherous train journey back into occupied France, through heavily-guarded checkpoints, and into Nazi-controlled Paris to retrieve 5-year-old Felix and 10-year-old Regine.

Mr. Chevrier agreed, and so did Vermont. “No doubt, no analysis, no hesitation,” he said. “It was not until years later I realized the enormity of what I had done.”

With Felix and Regine reunited with their mother, Vermont settled into life in Chabannes. Unaware of the fate of his father or the death of so many Jews, Vermont found a way to laugh with his new friends, to play, to enjoy and study classical music performed on a piano and violin, and to read many books. The counselors at the home were professors, musicians, and engineers who fled Germany when Hitler came to power. “I recall many lively discussions on literature, philosophy, theater, art, and social studies,” he said.

Soon Vermont learned of plans to send as many Jewish children as possible to the United States. Because he was not born in France and younger than 15, he was among the first children selected. With his mother’s permission, he was assigned a date to sail from Marseilles for New York on November 7, 1942.

But after a tearful goodbye the day before his departure, the children woke to shouting. The German army had just invaded the south of France. “My life changed instantly,” Vermont said.

Soon the French national police—the Gendarmes—began making visits, and one day three gendarmes arrived to arrest the home’s head counselor, Ernst Jablonski. “He was a brilliant scholar with a Ph.D. in philosophy,” said Vermont, “a warm human being, funny and very kind.”

As Jablonski was escorted to the gate, 25 teenaged boys walked alongside him. “We gradually formed a chain around the three gendarmes,” Vermont said. Then, on a wordless cue, the boys grabbed the three policemen as Jablonski sprinted 50 yards to the forest and disappeared.

As the boys released their grip, the police slapped and screamed at two of the oldest boys. “Had they been German soldiers, they might have shot us on the spot,” Vermont said. “But they were Frenchmen, and weren’t conditioned like the Germans to shoot defenseless women and children.”

It was only a matter of time before everyone would be rounded up. “And we knew we had to do something,” Vermont said. “What to do was the question.”

To avoid arrest, the counselors and older children established a 24-hour watch. The chateau was in the country, so anyone approaching could be immediately spotted from the roof.

“And that’s exactly what happened,” said Vermont. “The gendarmes came back in the middle of the night.” Hearing the signal, the children dropped from the second story window and ran into the forest. “The same operation took place two or three times until the gendarmes threatened to close the chateau and arrest the director.”

In light of increasing pressure, the children—with the help of the French Underground—were given instructions to escape to other locations. Vermont was to go to Grenoble in the Italian-occupied section of France, and was given a false identity and a story that he was going to visit his grandparents.

The trip by train took three days, and he encountered both German soldiers and French police. “I had the easiest time with the Germans,” said Vermont, explaining that they couldn’t tell he was from Paris, and therefore out of place. “To this day I firmly believe that the French cops who interrogated me immediately knew my story was phony.”

Like most teenage boys, Vermont was constantly hungry, and to avoid starving he had to steal food from stores where fruits and vegetables were displayed out front. With the few francs he was given for the trip, he would occasionally purchase half a baguette without the mandatory rationing coupons. “I would wait for the bakery to be empty, then with my most convincing voice and sweetest smile—or saddest eyes—I’d ask the baker to sell me a piece of bread.”

Arriving in Grenoble on a rainy April day in 1943, Vermont was exhausted and hungry as he made his way to a convent. During his two-week stay, no one tried to convert him to Catholicism, yet he enjoyed attending services and reading books about religious and spiritual ideas.

From Grenoble, Vermont traveled by bus to a remote mountain village called La Compote where he lived for five months with a married couple who were peasant farmers. He rose at five every morning to feed farm animals, haul manure, chop wood, and do other chores. Like most teens, he resented the work, and was scolded when he neglected his duties.

On Sundays, Vermont took a sponge bath to clean off the week’s accumulated dirt. Then he accompanied the couple to church, where he enjoyed the music and met other children.

In fact, one Sunday after church Vermont noticed two girls walking along a street. As the adults talked, he ran over to meet the girls, and could tell, after a few words, they were from Paris.

“On the spot I did what I was strictly not supposed to do,” he said. “I told them I was from Paris, I was Jewish, and hiding in this village.” The girls confessed they were also Jewish and hiding with their parents. The three teens immediately became friends.

“I soon found out I was attracted to the younger girl,” said Vermont, adding that like him, she was 14. “But I didn’t know what to do.”

Eventually resolving to put his arm around her, Vermont couldn’t find the courage. But one day the sister brought a camera and said, “Let me take a picture of you two birds.” Vermont was in heaven. Then she added, “Leon, put your arm around her.”

To this day, Vermont has the picture.

A few weeks later he was relocated by the underground and never got to say goodbye. “I only hope with all my heart they survived the war.”

Happy to leave the difficult life at La Compote, Vermont found himself reunited with his mother, his oldest sister (Babette), and his two youngest siblings in a detention camp in Italian-occupied France, in a town called Annecy. (His other sister, Agnes, was being hidden in a convent.) The five family members shared a single room, and the children attended school. Life felt somewhat normal.

Still, Vermont said, “All we wanted was an end to the war and a return to Paris to be reunited with our father.”

They didn’t know, of course, that Jews were being exterminated and that their father, who was among the first to be arrested in Paris and deported to Auschwitz, was likely already dead.

Then, on a sunny fall day in November 1943, a truck full of Germans with machine guns arrived. “My sister Babette had been authorized to go into town, and I was outside in the backyard,” Vermont said. “The Germans surrounded the building, but not before I jumped over the fence and ran a hundred yards.”

Vermont hid among bushes and watched helplessly. Then it happened. His mother and his 6-year old brother Felix and 11-year-old sister Regine were forced with the other women and children into a second truck.

He would never see them again.

“For me, this is the most striking memory of the war, and a nightmarish symbol of man’s worst inhumanity to man,” he said.

Now alone, Vermont set off for the address he was taught should this happen. He walked for two days to Chambery, 40 miles away. He was given a Christian identity and attended a Catholic school for six months in Pont de Beauvoisin.

Then in April 1944, an underground worker came to the school. Vermont was excited to learn he would be crossing the border into Switzerland. What the worker didn’t say was that many people had been shot trying to cross the same border.

In spite of the risk, an underground guide, around midnight, quietly led Vermont and nine other children into Alps. After two hours, the man gave directions to the older boys, and turned back. “On we went and not a single word was spoken,” said Vermont, “until we reached a river.”

As they entered the freezing water, some fell in, including Vermont. “We started laughing as if this was the funniest thing that ever happened to us.”

Shivering, the children pressed on until a searchlight and a German “halt” stopped them. Three Germans in their distinctive helmets approached. “I thought this was it, “ said Vermont.

But the soldiers turned out to be Swiss from the German-speaking part of Switzerland. “At six in the morning our adventure was over, “ Vermont said. “A new life was about to begin for us.”

Vermont kept this story private for more than five decades until ten years ago when his sons began asking many questions about his younger years. As he sat in the downtown restaurant, he shared pictures, his own writings about the events, and copies of historical documents. He also drew maps to describe the distances he traveled and the location of various French cities.

Vermont said he respects the German people, and appreciates their great contributions to music, philosophy, and literature.

But about the Nazis and those who supported their evil campaign, he has a different feeling. He was happy, of course, to learn after the war that his sisters Babette and Agnes had survived. But with the loss of so many innocent lives, including the deaths of his mother, father, and his little brother and sister, Vermont experiences to this day an intensity of emotion and anger that makes him want to scream.

Upon turning 50

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald two days after my 50th birthday on October 3, 2006.

Today I’m thinking and wondering about Stephen Gibbs.

I’m thinking about him because a few days ago I turned 50, and turning 50 makes a person think about things. And I’m wondering about him because he’s my best friend and it’s been five years since Steve and I spoke with one another.

While I’ve certainly been busy these past few years, I suspect that’s not my excuse for not staying in touch. How hard is it to jot a note to his Oregon address, or reach over and pick up the phone? And why hasn’t he called me?

I met Steve at a seminar in 1977, when I was 20. We’re about the same age, and the moment he said a few words I knew I liked this guy. Picture blond hair, clear blue eyes, a square jaw. His mother was British, and his father was an American soldier in World War II.

Steve and I appeared to have little in common when we met. While I typed up essays for English classes, Steve worked odd construction jobs and lived in Santa Cruz in a weathered shed surrounded by geese on the wooded property of a friend. He often wore second-hand clothes, and made life choices I never would have made.

But we shared a connection, a similar view of the world, and his remarkable wit captivated me and everyone he met. I remember us musing one day about women, and I asked, “What’s your ideal girl, Steve?” Without missing a beat he said: “A semi-organic wood nymph into granola and trucks.” His timing with humor was excellent.

But his timing with women was tenuous.

Typical of this was his experience at a garden center where he worked after graduating high school when one morning a young woman saw his blond hair and broad shoulders and asked, almost breathlessly, if he was a surfer.

An honest fellow, Steve said no, he wasn't.

“Instantly her eyes faded,” Steve told me. “Without a word she turned and walked away.”

Steve had several girlfriends over the years, and I met all of them, just as he got to know the girls I dated. One girl I didn’t meet, though, was his high school sweetheart, Mary. In a picture Steve showed me, Mary wore glasses and her long black hair was parted down the middle. He also showed me a shard of clay from pottery she made for him in art class.

The day he told me about Mary, Steve said he sometimes thought about going back to find her. Maybe because in your twenties everything seems possible, I said I’d help him find her if he wanted. I liked her for loving him, and I pictured the two of them putting together the pieces of the broken ceramic bowl.

After living in Santa Cruz and then Los Gatos, Steve moved to Humboldt County and lived in a tent on a rambling, rustic lot where he helped his brother build a house.

When I went to visit that first fall, I felt the chill of the changing season. We walked the property, watched the afternoon arc of a hawk’s silhouette, and then, as we stepped into his tent, I saw a primeval verdant mildew in the shockingly familiar goldenrod rug that for years lay beneath the coffee table in my parents’ home. Steve must have salvaged the rug from my parents, and there it was: my past; his present.

For years after his move to Humboldt, I visited Steve each October. He eventually found an apartment, and we spent lazy days talking over bagels, playing backgammon, and going on long runs. We enjoyed running, having come of age when Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in 1972, and when a college track star named Steve Prefontaine became a legend even before his tragic death in a car accident in 1975.

So why, then, haven’t we spoken these past few years? Do friends just sometimes drift apart? When Steve last visited, we enjoyed our time together. We said our goodbyes in no different way than usual. And yet something between us must have changed.

Today what has changed is that I’m thinking about Steve. I'm wondering about him as I settle into the skin of a 50-year-old man who 30 years ago met a fellow with blue eyes who made me laugh and became my best friend. And today I’m even wondering if I ought to go back and try to find him.

. . .

Dialing for Steve...

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald on October 17, 2006.

In my last column, I wrote about how turning 50 prompted me to wonder about my best friend, Stephen Gibbs. Steve lives in Portland, and I mused about why, after 30 years of friendship, we hadn’t spoken in five years.

The column elicited many responses from readers who’d also lost touch with friends, and while most encouraged me to call Steve, I hesitated, uncertain about our friendship.

Then Denise Rousset wrote in an email, “Go find your friend because our lives are peppered with the friendships we've made, but the ones we remember are like sinew and bone. . . . It will give you peace to tell this person how much his friendship has meant to you, and I'm sure it will mean a lot to him as well. Maybe even timely for him. Maybe even vital at this moment.”

That did it for me. I took a deep breath, picked up the receiver, and dialed.

As the phone at the other end began to ring, I wondered if Steve even lived at the number anymore. When I last saw him, he was renting a room in a basement from friends. But maybe that arrangement had ended.

I also harbored a deeper worry about Steve because twenty years ago his father, who was manic-depressive, committed suicide by swimming out to sea. Though Steve had never exhibited the slightest sign of depression, his silence scared me.

On the other hand, perhaps he’d gotten married and simply moved on with his life. I just didn’t know.

After a couple of rings, the phone picked up. It was a recording of a woman’s voice. She listed the people who lived in the household. Sure enough, Steve was one.

I stumbled through my greeting and left my number. Then I waited.

After three long days, while listening to my messages, I heard a voice I’d know anywhere. He sounded good.

But hidden in the background of his call was the unanswered question: Why had we lost touch?

When we spoke the next evening, I learned the answer. But before I share it, here’s what’s new with Steve.

“I’m passionate about pulling barbed-wire,” he said. “I’m a volunteer.”

Steve said he works with people committed to restoring wilderness to 175,000 acres in the Oregon desert by removing miles of fencing from federal lands no longer used for ranching. Removing the fences allows antelope and other wildlife to roam freely.

Because the area is wilderness and machinery is prohibited, volunteers trek in by horse and manually coil and remove the wire. It’s a difficult and dangerous job, and Steve loves it.

Since volunteering pay no bills, Steve works odd jobs to earn a meager living. Each year he helps organize a rummage sale that raises money for Portland’s Catlin Gabel School. He works part-time for the school, but receives no benefits.

“In other words, I’m looking for an heiress with a health plan,” Steve said, laughing, though I could tell he was serious. “In the world of money and power, I’m on Baltic and Mediterranean.”

I also learned that Steve’s mother, who as a little girl in England had a Nazi bomb plummet onto her porch, is alive and well at age 87. “I wouldn’t be here today if that bomb had exploded,” Steve said.

Along with his relentless wit, Steve continues to make life choices that intrigue me. He still lives in a basement, though he managed to take an expenses-paid trip to India a few years ago. He doesn’t have email or even own a computer, but he’s saving for one. If asked for a business card, he uses obsolete cards from a company he worked for years ago. He turns the card over, applies a label with his name and address that he gets free from his insurance agent, and jots down his phone number.

In other words, Steve hasn’t changed a bit.

But why, then, did we drift apart?

I asked him this toward the end of our two-hour call, and I pictured his blue eyes when he said simply that over the years he has often lost track of friends, that staying in touch with people in different places in life seems to take too much effort.

As he has done throughout our 30 years of friendship, Steve was able to articulate what I couldn’t. His words, of course, described my own reason for not trying to reach him.

As we made plans for a visit, I felt as if we’d cleared a path in our friendship, as if we’d pulled away the barbed wire of a needless fence.

. . .

Former gang member now helps save lives

A slightly different version of this column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in September 2006. In light of his gang-related past, the young man I interviewed requested that I not use his name or the names of other people in his life. In the original column, I used no names. In the version below, I use fictional names for ease of reading.

Ten years ago when Roberto and his best friend Anthony were 13, they stood together wanting to join a street gang. But to join, they had to fight four young members of the gang.

“We had to endure a two-minute fight without giving up,” Roberto said, asking that his real name remain anonymous. “In my eyes it was worth it. We finally belonged.”

But growing up in Santa Ana, Roberto—now 23—is certain that today he would either be in jail or dead from gang violence.

That is, if not for someone who saved his life.

“For as long as I can remember, I’d always been in some kind of trouble,” he said, his kind brown eyes reflecting nothing of the life he once led.

Roberto listed a few of his offenses: getting expelled from school for smoking marijuana, being involved in shootings, disappointing his parents, dropping out of high school, selling hard drugs.

“We wore baggy pants with baggy shirts and shaved our heads every other day to keep them smooth and shiny,” he said. “People looked at us with a sense of fear.”

At 14, both boys earned enough respect from their gang leaders to get a tattoo with the name of their neighborhood gang. At least fifty separate gangs exist in Santa Ana, he explained, and leaving one’s immediate neighborhood means risking a fight or getting shot.

In fact, Roberto himself was hit with a 22-caliber bullet just below his waist, yet even then, he said, he “never thought about leaving the hood.”

Involved in many shootings, at 17 he saw a man deliver 16 gunshots into two men through the open window of a car. He didn’t know the shooter or see his face, and tried to save one of the victims who was still alive after the shooter fled. The tourniquet improvised from his own shirt couldn’t save the man who died even before the ambulance arrived.

When Roberto turned 18, his friends threw him a birthday party at his parent’s home. Around 11 p.m., after the party was in full swing, shots rang out in the backyard.

“A minute passed before I realized two people were dead,” he said.

One he didn’t recognize, the other was his cousin. “I lifted his limp body, and all I could think was whoever did this was going to pay.”

Roberto later learned that the other dead man was his cousin’s killer. “My friends shot him in defense.”

He explained that gang members are sometimes given an opportunity--called a ticket--to leave a gang to protect their lives. After the death of his cousin, Roberto was given a ticket because the rival gang knew where he and his family lived. Anthony, who lived next door, was also allowed to leave the gang.

“My friend took advantage and moved to Phoenix,” he said, adding that Anthony enrolled in diesel mechanic school because he loved cars and wanted a better life.

“He asked me to visit for a weekend,” Roberto said. “For those two days I had peace of mind and didn’t worry about who I was going to run into. That convinced me to move to Phoenix.”

Roberto moved into the apartment complex where his friend lived, and decided to enroll in a surgical tech school.

He also met a girl. “My life was changing,” he said.

In September 2001, the two friends took off for a weekend and drove to Santa Ana to visit their parents. Because Anthony had accrued some vacation, he decided to stay for a week to visit family. Roberto returned to Phoenix.

“When I got home, I’d missed 30 calls from my mom,” he said. Thinking his mother was just worried about him, he called back and his sister answered. “She was crying and told me my friend had been shot,” he said. “Then she told me he was dead.”

Anthony had been murdered by a rival gang member who recognized him at fast-food restaurant.

“I had nothing to look forward to anymore,” Roberto said. “I dropped out of school and decided to go back to Santa Ana to die, just like all my friends.”

Then something miraculous happened.

“The week I was going to leave, my girlfriend came to my apartment,” he said. “I could see in her eyes she had something to tell me.”

She was pregnant, and at first he didn’t know whether to be happy or upset. “I was confused, but I always told myself I would never be a dead-beat dad.”

Roberto re-enrolled in school and moved in with his girlfriend. He eventually graduated and now works in the East Bay as a surgical technician. In fact, assisting surgeons in saving lives has inspired him to continue his education to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist.

While Roberto and his girlfriend are no longer together, he is just a short drive from the four-year-old fellow he credits with rescuing him from a life of violence and jail and quite possibly death: “I owe my life to my hero,” he said, “to my son.”

Leaving for Las Vegas

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in February 2006.

“It’s okay to tell my name in your column,” she told me. “My life has been full of hardship, and though I may fall down, I know what makes us weak makes us stronger."

And so begins the tale of a 26-year-old resident of San Joaquin County whose name is best kept silent, and whose broken heart led her last week to leave a job she loves and move to Las Vegas to live with a half-sister she barely knows.

Before we learn of her heartbreak, let’s meet her: “When I was 3, I cracked my head open on a carnival ride called the Tilt-a-Whirl,” said this young woman, whose smile and easy laugh reveal nothing of the challenges she’s faced in life.

Because her father and mother were traveling carnival workers, she didn’t get the stitches removed until after they’d grown into her head. Then they had to be removed surgically. “I have a scar that looks like a railroad track,” she said, her fingers trailing through her hair.

She and her family, which included an older half-brother and half-sister—all three children from different fathers—traveled up and down the state working carnivals.

Though she considers herself lucky to grow up with “a constant playground in my backyard,” life on the road could be dangerous, with gangs sometimes interfering with the carnival. She remembers watching her father get stabbed. “Fortunately, it wasn’t too serious,” she said. She also recalls when the girlfriend of a booth worker was killed while under a ride that was started up.

The family first worked for Foley & Burke, a carnival company that was bought out by Butler Amusements, owned by Butch Butler. “Uncle Butch was always dear to the kids who were living with the carnival,” she said. “The Butler staff treated everyone as family, and made sure at night the kids were in bed or with an adult.”

Her family settled in Tracy when she got old enough to go school. Her father continued to work for the carnival, coming home every few days. Her mom became a waitress.

Even then, on weekends, if the carnival was within driving distance, the family would meet up with their father to work.

She was 8 when she got her first job cleaning up after games at the booths. “At that age I learned the benefit of working hard for what you want in return.”

What she wanted was to please others, a trait she has to this day. “I never bought candy or toys for myself,” she said. “Instead I bought gifts to make my family happy.”

Then, life took a turn shortly after her parents divorced: At 11, she moved to Idaho with her father and his new wife. At 13, she went to live in foster care in Tennessee. At 17, she moved to Florida for 6 months with her mother’s boyfriend, while her mother drove trucks around the country to make ends meet. Later that same year she moved back to San Joaquin County with her mom.

For a time, life settled down, but in the past few years she’s faced more than her share of hardships: In 2002 she lost her cocker spaniel of 13 years to cancer. A month later her father was killed in a motorcycle accident. She lost a grandfather and both grandmothers.

In 2004 she was diagnosed with Chrones disease, only to discover after months of treatment and losing patches of her hair that the diagnosis was incorrect. She was then diagnosed with endometriosis, which may preclude her from having children.

Fortunately, during these years she got a good job in the financial services industry, and she made many close friends.

And before her father passed away, she learned she had another half-sister. "She’s my dad’s daughter,” she explained, “but even my dad didn’t know about her until my grandma’s funeral a few years ago.”

Through it all, through the many homes and broken families, through the deaths and sickness, this young woman refuses to feel sorry for herself.

“Being bitter would only make me weak,” she said. “I know there are kids who’ve had it worse, with no one to love them. I made a promise when I was little to always be grateful for what I have and to spend my life giving others the love I know they desire.”

But with love can come heartbreak.

A little over a year ago, she met a young man and fell deeply in love. Though she and her boyfriend moved in together and spoke often of marriage, he began an internet correspondence with a younger woman from Russia.

Still, she still loved him and stayed with him, and at one point he agreed to break off the internet relationship. “He called the girl in front of me,” she said, “and told her we were engaged and getting married.”

But the online relationship continued and a month ago she finally had enough. “I spoke a truth he didn’t want to hear,” she said. “He spit in my face and threw me out of the house.”

She was devastated. And yes, heartbroken.

Then, amazingly, a week later, he came to where she worked and proposed marriage. “I loved him with all my heart,” she said, “but I told him no. I told him if we were to get married, it had to be for real love.”

When she learned a few weeks later that the Russian woman was coming to America to marry the young man, her broken heart told her it was time to move.

And so last week she did.

Today in a new home with her half-sister, she keeps the promise she made when she was a little girl. She refuses to be bitter. She continues to love even those who’ve hurt her and to embrace her sorrow as a stepping stone to strength.

It’s what a life of hardship has taught her, and perhaps what she has to teach us.

"If only everyone knew it’s not the end of the world when you hit rock bottom,” she wrote in an email from Las Vegas. “It’s only a new beginning.”

The necktie debate

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in August 2006.

I was looking through a box of old photos the other day and came across a 1962 snapshot of me when I was 7 wearing a white shirt and dark narrow tie. I remarked to my wife that my attire hasn’t changed much over the years, through my ties are a bit wider.

This got me thinking—like my recent column on beards—about the status of neckties in the East Bay’s business world. While publications such as the Wall Street Journal have trumpeted the return of suits and ties to the office, I decided to do some local research on the topic.

“More and more I’m seeing business people in a sport coat and open collared shirt. That seems to be the dress code,” said Livermore CPA Weldon Moreland, who typically wears a tie to the office.

“As a CPA, I’m expected to be conservative,” he said, “so I typically dress in a white shirt, a tie, and dark suit.”

Over in Pleasanton, CPA Jim Pease, who rarely wears a tie, has a somewhat different view: “The East Bay’s proximity to Silicon Valley has had an impact on the status of wearing ties to work.”

Pease suggests that business icons such as Steve Jobs—with their more casual style of dress—have had a lasting impact on how business people dress today. “Unless required by employers,” said Pease, “ties now seem to be worn only on special occasions.”

Steve Sherman, an attorney and shareholder with Hoge, Fenton, Jones & Appel, only wears a tie if he has a court appearance or is meeting with a new client.

“Unlike the firms I’ve observed in the Tri Valley,” Sherman said, “the attorneys who work at law firms in San Francisco or Oakland almost always wear ties. I think those firms are more traditional and the dress code reflects that philosophy.”

Of course, neckties have been encircling men’s necks for centuries, and were made popular by the French monarch Louis XIV in the late 1600s. The fashion trend found its way to England, and in 1880, members of the rowing club at Exeter College invented the first school tie when they detached the long bands from their boater hats and tied them around their necks.

Over in America in the 1920s, a tailor named Jesse Langsdorf realized that cutting a tie from material at 45 degrees allowed the tie to fall straight from the knot, rather than off-center as was common with ties of the time. This cutting technique, which is today the standard in manufacturing, also made possible the appearance of the diagonal stripes still produced by many necktie companies.

With the counterculture movements of the sixties and early seventies, open collars became acceptable and found their way into the workplace. CPA Moreland, a longtime Livermore resident, remembers seeing a downtown men’s store go out of business in the early 1970s shortly after Lawrence Livermore National Lab started allowing its scientists and technicians to dress more casually.

Nonetheless, the necktie’s popularity roared back with the 1975 publication of John Malloy’s best selling “Dress for Success,” which established rules that still influence our perspectives, including the view that men who wear neckties appear more trustworthy and financially secure than those who shun the tie.

Attorney Sherman agrees: “Wearing a tie conveys a message that the person is more formal or serious. When I wear a suit and tie to court, for example, I'm all business. It's game on.”

Sherman also advises younger professionals to wear ties to business meetings as a form of respect. “While the younger professional may lack experience,” he said, “it can help convey that they are knowledgeable and well-prepared.”

Tom Mantor, President of Bank of Walnut Creek, agrees that wearing a tie signals respect for your client. Though most of his business customers do not wear ties, his bank requires the more formal attire, including on Fridays.

“We may be somewhat old-fashioned in that we require ties at all times,” Mantor said, “but we feel it’s important to look professional when we meet with our clients and when presenting ourselves to the business community.”

Still, many firms in the East Bay have adopted business casual dress codes, and some companies allow jeans to be worn to work on Fridays.

And so the fashion debate continues.

While leaving the tie at home has become more acceptable in today’s East Bay business world, Mantor poses a question that makes a good point about the necktie’s importance and power in the business world: “If you went to a job interview, would you wear a tie? I think so.”

And while Sherman believes that neckties will remain a fashion accessory for future generations, he asks a small favor of family and friends: “Please, no more Father's Day ties, tie clips, tie chains, or any other tie accessories.”

Learning to read all over again

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in August 2006.

After completing two years of community college in the summer of 1992, Marc Hannah looked forward to attending the University of California, Berkeley. Hannah was an excellent athlete, had been the student body president at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, and was even the homecoming king.

But one day on his way to visit friends, rounding a corner on a hill as he rode the 1969 Honda motorcycle he had rebuilt, Hannah slammed into a car as it pulled out of a driveway.

“The driver probably thought he had killed me,” said Hannah, now 34 and a resident of Dublin. “Actually, he had only changed me.”

Hannah said he was wearing a helmet when the collision threw him 40 feet to where he landed on his head. “I stood up, walked aimlessly for a moment, then collapsed.”

The world Hannah woke up to after the accident was indeed changed. While he had no broken bones or significant physical injuries, Hannah’s brain had undergone severe trauma. The former straight-A student with a gregarious nature now had difficulty speaking. But worse, he discovered he couldn’t read or write, and therapists could do little except encourage Hannah to heal his brain by using it.

“A portion of my brain had to rebuild its connections,” he said. “I had to basically relearn everything.”

As Hannah tackled the daunting challenge that summer of learning to read as an adult, some words on the page did seem familiar. Yet when it came to writing, he discovered he had to learn how to spell all over again.

Hannah said that even after he could recognize individual words, he couldn’t read a whole sentence without forgetting what he had just read. When he was finally able to comprehend a full sentence, he had to work up to remembering the meaning of a given paragraph, then eventually a page, a chapter, and so on.

Similarly, speaking proved to be a challenge. “Deep down in my brain I knew the next word I was trying to say,” said Hannah, whose green eyes deepened as he recounted the experience. “But the word just wouldn't come to my lips. I’d go blank and get frustrated.”

As the fall semester approached, Hannah made progress in his rehabilitation, but was far from recovered. Yet he was determined not to let his accident detour his plans for college, so he went ahead and enrolled at U.C. Berkeley.

Attending a first rate university at that stage in his recovery, Hannah said, was like having “one lobe tied behind my back.” He told only a few fellow students about the accident and none of his professors, who assumed he was a little slow: “I didn't really interact with my professors that much. I was very self-conscious and didn't want to make any excuses, or have anyone feel sorry for me.”

Enrolling in two classes in his first semester, Hannah received a C and a D—the first D he remembers ever getting in school. He was put on academic probation, but nonetheless took a full load the next semester.

Hannah said his social skills around campus weren't good and he often kept to himself in the classroom. Yet he did make a few friends—including girlfriends— during his college experience.
Hannah’s commitment to his studies paid off, and two and a half years after enrolling he beat the odds—as well as the academic timeline of some of his classmates—and graduated with a degree in English.

“So now, 14 years later,” Hannah said, “I don’t have any comprehension problems. My brain has healed and my emotional demeanor has grown. Having gone through such a difficult time, I can relate to others and their sufferings.”

Today Hannah donates time to community causes, including as a member of the Rotary Club of Pleasanton North. He makes a living working with Livermore Valley Insurance Services to provide group benefits, insurance and financial products to businesses and individuals in the Tri-Valley.

“Accidents happen and people need help,” Hannah said. “With proper planning, love and support, we can overcome any obstacle. I’m testament to that.”

To beard or not to beard

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in July 2006.

I recently grew a beard for two weeks while I was away from the office. It came in with more gray than I’d expected, but it looked pretty good, if I say so myself.

A few people around town saw the beard, and I even brought the beard with me to work one day for show and tell before I shaved it off.

The experience got me thinking about beards and their status in the workplace, especially in office environments. Though beards have become more acceptable in the business world (think Steve Wozniak and Larry Ellison), we’re not all dot.com whiz kids.

So, is it okay for a typical executive or CEO in the East Bay to have a beard?

“I started with a full beard around 1981,” said Neal Snedecor, who works for the City of Livermore and meets regularly with business owners in his economic development role. “My friends convinced me to drop the full beard and go with a goatee in the early ‘90s as a trendy thing.”

Snedecor said his facial hair has never been an issue at work.

Another beard-toting executive is Ken Mercer, former mayor of Pleasanton and now a Vice President with ValleyCare Health System.

“I've had my beard for about 30 years,” said Mercer, “and no one at work has ever said a word about it.” Mercer said he initially grew the beard because he wanted to try it, and then liked it.

“I shaved it off once and grew it back the next day,” he said. “I trim it every day as I don't want it to get shaggy.”

While Mercer had his beard during his 16 years on the city council, including 11 years as mayor, most men in politics play it safe and shave. This is especially true of modern United States presidents who, with the advent of television, have been clean-shaven.

After all, some people associate beards with counterculture, seeing facial hair as sending an anti-establishment message. Where would beatniks and hippies have been without their goatees and flowing beards?

Desmond Morris, the British zoologist who studies human behavior and is best known for his book “The Naked Ape," believes that men began the practice of shaving because it made them look younger, friendlier and cleaner.

On the other hand, beards in western civilization are also associated with wisdom. The ancient Greeks, most depictions of Jesus, leaders like Lincoln and scores of university professors have helped promote the notion that beards signal knowledge and stature.

But then again there’s the beard as tough guy, the unfettered Clint Eastwood-type who drifts around saving innocent villages from outlaws, but seems a bit of an outlaw himself.

And what about the beard as director, actor and writer? Picture Steven Spielberg, Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway.

And does the actor-on-vacation stubble count as a beard? If Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck walking unshaven through airports can draw paparazzi and adoring fans, shouldn’t this fashion trend translate even a little into the corporate world?

With so many beard messages, what’s an executive to do?

“A CEO is a public figure who must recognize a broader responsibility,” said Jim Halliday, former CEO of HumanWare who lives in Danville and currently sports a closely-cropped beard. “He or she must personify the image that presents that institution in its best light.”

Halliday said he opted to be clean-shaven when he was the company’s CEO, but is comfortable with a beard in his new role as president emeritus where he sits on a number of industry boards and tours the country speaking on Braille literacy and vision impairment.

“My beard reflects the earthier side of my personality,” he said, “the side that makes me feel comfortable on a stage or in a vineyard.”

So, to beard or not to beard?

Perhaps it comes down to personal preference after assessing the culture and expectations within your company.

“I enjoy the salt-and-pepper effect,” Snedecor said about his neatly trimmed goatee. “It’s kind of the Sean Connery look, so I’ll keep it for now to save time in the mornings, to avoid nicks and cuts, and maybe, just maybe, to add a sense of intrigue to my demeanor.”

A fragile braid of wildflowers

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in the summer of 2006.

Last week on vacation in the Sierra Nevada, I taught my 10-year-old daughter how to fly-fish. She’s that wonderful age when every cast is hopeful, when everything about life is possible.

After casting into an alpine lake one morning, I told my daughter I learned about fly-fishing just after I graduated from high school.

“I learned up here in the Sierra,” I told her. “The man who taught me was a doctor, a family friend.”

The man was Robert Moncrieff, now a retired pediatrician who lives in Monte Sereno. I'll never forget his patience and kindness.

Moncrieff’s son, Scott, also helped me learn to fly-fish when our two families hired guides and pack horses to take us into the high country of Yosemite for a week in the summer of 1975.

We enjoyed the trip so much that Scott and I backpacked by ourselves the following summer to the same wilderness canyon and set up camp near a stream called Return Creek. We spent a week fishing and relaxing, and forging a good friendship.

Then, in 1977, I joined Scott and his parents and sisters for yet another trip to Return Creek. This time his New England cousins, aunt, and uncle (who was a surgeon) came along with us into the wilderness.

Some 20 years later I wrote a poem based on our experiences in the high country, titled “Photographs.” My idea was to create photographs in words, like snapshots in a vacation scrapbook. In the final part of the poem, I capture moments from the 1977 trip.

Before I share the last stanza of the poem, I want to recount an experience that demonstrates both the value of writing about our lives and the power of newspapers.

At the time I wrote my poem in 1998, Scott was living in Maine. Though our parents stayed in touch, he and I hadn’t spoken for many years. I thought he’d appreciate seeing the poem, so I got his address from my mother and wrote to him, enclosing the poem and several others, as well as a few of my short stories.

He didn’t write back.

I wondered if the letter was lost, or if Scott didn’t feel as I did about our summers backpacking. Then I thought perhaps he’d intended to write, but just never got around to it.

Then, in April 2000, I got a letter.

“Why I have waited so long to thank you for your poems and short stories, I am not sure,” he wrote. “I am ordinarily a good correspondent, except that I could not explain all that I felt.”

Scott told me my poems had been sitting on the shelf in his living room since he received them, and that he read them often.

What finally prompted him to write is that while he was on a train to the west coast from Maine, a man in the seat ahead of him was reading the San Francisco Chronicle with the pages wide open. Printed in the newspaper was an interview with me and lines of verse Scott immediately recognized as my poem about Return Creek.

Scott wrote, “Of all the people who might read those lines, none would understand them in the special sense I would, since beneath the beautiful sketch is a time gone by.” He goes on, “I still cannot give words to all I feel, but certainly there is the inimitable joy that only the pine and granite, snow, water, and ‘bright azure silence’ of the Sierra can give; there are a thousand taut memories, a center from which I can never be moved, and a wistfulness that moves in and out of simple longing and sadness.”

Scott’s words captured exactly my feelings about our trips into the high country. The “center” he references is both the connection we had to the wilderness, and that magical time in youth when everything is possible, when in spite of our awareness of the fragility and dangers of life, we’re hopeful and content, knowing we have our whole lives ahead of us.

It’s the same center from which my daughter cast every line as we fished last week in the Sierra, the same snapshot in time I hoped to capture in the final lines of my poem:

Here I watched your cousin
weave a fragile braid of wildflowers.
Your uncle stitched
the bleeding brow of his wife.
We fished Return Creek
casting hopeful lines
clear and strong as sutures
pulling trout from
vigorous waters
flowing from Sierra snows
to distant rivers, unseen.

Garry Senna

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in August 2005.

One Saturday two years ago, Garry Senna was organizing tools in his garage when he glanced across the street and saw a man die.

“I looked over to the park just as a man on the tennis court clutched his chest and collapsed,” he said.

Senna ran to help, and then accompanied the ambulance to Valley Care Hospital to meet the man’s wife and comfort her as she realized her husband had passed away.

Seeing death up close is not unusual for Senna.

At age 21, he saw a man jump from a four-story office building in downtown Berkeley. The man died on impact right at Senna’s feet. “I kneeled down and held his head in my hand,” he said.
Senna said this suicide was particularly eerie because when his mother was 14 and living in New Jersey, the same thing happened to her. “A man jumped from a building and died at her feet,” he said.

Along with death, Senna witnesses accidents on a regular basis. “I don’t know what it is with me,” he said, shaking his head, “but it’s rare for two or three months to go by without seeing an accident or someone in distress.”

Jenny Doehle, a friend of the Senna family, said that when her son James was five, they attended a pool party with other families, and James ended up in the pool in the middle of a lot of splashing kids.

“Garry jumped in to rescue my son,” she said. Amazingly, the same thing happened when James was eight, and Garry was there again to pull James out of the pool. “I’ve seen this happen with a couple of other kids, too, and shudder to think what would have happened if Garry wasn’t so vigilant and focused on the kids’ safety,” she said.

As senior pastor of Pleasanton’s Harvest Valley Christian Church, Senna, 48, has lived in Pleasanton since 1987. He and his wife Jody have four children, including a girl adopted from Latvia. While Senna serves a congregation of some 300 members, he is also a 14-year volunteer chaplain with the Pleasanton police department.

Senna’s duties as chaplain require that he deliver death notifications and care for grieving families in the event of an unexpected death.

“When a person dies unattended and unexpectedly,” Senna said, “the police consider the surroundings a crime scene until the situation is resolved. Having a chaplain tend to the family helps the police focus on their investigation.”

Senna estimates he has been called over the years between 35 to 40 times, either to be present after a death or to comfort family members. About half of those calls require that he personally notify the family of the death, as he did in April when a 20-year-old Pleasanton man committed suicide in Colorado. Senna and a police officer drove to Ruby Hill and knocked on the door of the parent’s home.

“It was 3:15 in the morning,” Senna said, “and I knew when those people opened that door that what I had to say would change their lives forever.”

The experience of delivering such news is always difficult, and Senna admits he never knows what he is going to say. “I have to speak to people at their most vulnerable time in life,” he said, “and I just pray for grace to say the right words when tragedy occurs.”

One such incident occurred in February when Senna was dispatched to the Stearns residence where a 37-year-old father had committed suicide in the backyard. The man’s wife, Michelle, and their two young sons were not home at the time. The suicide was discovered by the boys’ grandfather, who had been watching the boys that day and was returning home with them.

Senna said that while 10-year-old Jason and 5-year-old Cody knew something had happened, he was the one that afternoon who explained what happened and who helped the boys take the first steps to making sense of it all.

“Garry is an amazing and wonderful man,” said Michelle Stearns, mother of the two boys. “I don’t have words to describe what he means to me and my family.”

Stearns said that Senna stayed with the family the whole night after the incident, and then dropped in regularly, helping out whenever and wherever he was needed.

“We met a friend that night and he has been a friend ever since,” Stearns said. “He has been there for us every step of the way, and has helped reassure me that what I’m feeling is normal, that I’m going in the right direction.”

Stearns said that because her boys would not go into the backyard even several weeks after the incident, Senna and police officer Michael Collins stopped by one day and casually coaxed the boys into showing them a bike course Jason had built in the yard.

“Garry and Mike got the boys so excited about showing off their riding skills,” Stearns said, “that the boys grabbed their bikes and helmets and rode into the backyard to do jumps. Although we recently moved to another home in Pleasanton, it was a very important and emotional moment for all of us when the boys saw that there was nothing scary in the yard.”

Incidents with children provide some of the toughest challenges, said Senna, recalling a time when he received a call that a 3-year-old boy had apparently just drowned in a swimming pool. Senna arrived to find the distraught mother a few feet from the pool. A friend had pulled the boy from the water and performed CPR, but his heart had stopped. While paramedics worked, Senna took the mother aside to calm her, and also called the boy’s father who was at work in San Jose.

As Senna spoke to the father, he chose his words carefully. “Over the phone it’s important to minimize the situation as much as you realistically can,” Senna explained, “because the person has to be calm enough to drive to the hospital or wherever they need to go.”

Senna said if he revealed the boy’s heart had stopped, “there was no way that father was going to be able to drive himself forty miles to get home.”

Fortunately, the paramedics revived the boy as Senna kept in touch with the father by cell phone until he reached the hospital.

“The accident turned out to be a blessing,” Senna said. “The boy had a rare heart condition and if he hadn’t fallen in the pool, it may not have been diagnosed until much later, perhaps too late. As it was, the doctors discovered his condition and were able to operate successfully.”

Senna values his association with the Pleasanton police, and credits the department with going beyond required duties to ensure that relatives are notified of death in a caring, personal manner.

Pleasanton Police Chief Tim Neal describes Senna as an unsung hero who volunteers regularly for civic programs and is one of the most giving people he knows. “For years, Garry has comforted Pleasanton's victims of violence, families who have lost a child or loved one, and police officers involved in shootings and heart wrenching incidents.”

Neal said he often asks Senna to accompany him when meeting with victims of tragedy. “He lends me as much support as he does them,” said Neal.

For Senna, who grew up in New Jersey and after college worked as a photojournalist in Virginia for three years before moving to California, providing emotional and spiritual support to others is a calling he finds both challenging and deeply rewarding.

“If I can give people even a little bit of comfort, and help them through these moments,” he said, “that makes it worthwhile to me.”

Portrait of a father's lessons

In honor of Father's Day, this is the column I wrote for the Tri-Valley Herald in June 2006.

In a favorite black-and-white photograph, my father stands behind me, giving me a haircut when I was six years old.

In the photo, I sit on the tray of my sister’s wooden highchair, looking into the lens.

As my dad cuts my hair, his left hand holds my head steady as his right hand guides electric clippers above my right ear.

My jeans are patched, hand-me-downs from my brother. They’re rolled up to fit, and my feet are bare.

A white towel is pulled around my neck, and this all happens in a plain kitchen in Hanford, California.

Snapping the picture is my mother, Janet. You can’t see her, but she is as pretty as my father is handsome.

Back then, my parents were in their twenties, and my dad, whose name is Bill, was a high school English teacher.

With Father’s Day just around the corner, I pulled out this photo and called my dad.

“I remember that picture,” he said. “Those were great days, and we all had our lives ahead of us.”

Born in 1930, my dad spent his early years in Buffalo, New York. His mother died when he was three, and his father worked in a steel mill.

As I grew up, I didn’t think much about my dad’s life. It wasn’t until I got into college that I came to appreciate his decision to serve in the Air Force and then become the first in our family’s history to go to college where he earned a master’s degree.

With that education he became a teacher and later a guidance counselor at a community college.

Similarly, I never thought much about the quiet advice he gave us kids.

Today, of course, I know that my dad’s choices taught me about life, and I find myself sharing his wisdom not only with my children, but with employees and my students.

Here in the midst of the graduation season, let me share one of my dad’s observations appropriate for graduating students: “You’re always being interviewed.”

To illuminate this phrase, I contacted Pat Mayfield, a national business consultant and author based in Pleasanton.

“This is true in both professional and personal situations,” Mayfield said. “The continuous life interview is a natural process. Not only are we always being interviewed, we’re also always interviewing.”

Mayfield noted that at any given time, we never know who might be looking for a new employee: “It’s not unusual for opportunities to appear because of a chance meeting or observation. A random meeting on an airplane or a casual encounter at a networking or social event may lead to life altering changes.”

The idea that you’re always being interviewed also suggests that employees shouldn’t wait to interview for the next position in their company. Whether we realize it or not, we’re already being interviewed by the way we perform our current assignment.

This advice has served me well throughout my career. Yet my dad’s advice is also a reminder to me to live each moment in a way that will make my children proud.

This is the interview that matters most to me, the one where I’m assessed each day on what I do with my time, whether I make a difference in people’s lives, whether I share my love and create happy memories.

Like that photograph of my dad cutting my hair, I want to leave a portrait for my daughters to look back on, a memory of me standing behind them, a reason for them to say about me what today I say about my own father, that he taught me lifelong lessons.

How my mother inspired me to be a writer

From the Tri-Valley Herald, my column in honor of Mother's Day, 2006:

Before this Mother’s Day fades from memory, I want to share how my mother inspired me to be a writer, and how she just might inspire you as well.

In the 1960s, my mom (whose name is Janet) occasionally wrote poetry. Unlike the ranting of Beat era poets at the time, her poems—written in perfect penmanship—were about summer days and holding hands with my dad and how he once brought her a single rose when they were dating.

My mom read me her poems, and as I learned to write, I tried to compose my own. Like her, I stayed away from politics, writing instead about my passions: pirate ships, buried treasure and the circus.

Along with poetry, I also wrote prose. The summer I was nine, I spent days with a typewriter pounding out a Lincoln biography I’d plagiarized from library books.

Of course, my mom read every word and praised my writing skills.

After those early years, my mother stopped writing poetry. She recently told me she was reluctant to write because she knew she could never write like William Wordsworth or Emily Dickinson, poets she had read in my dad’s old college books.

But then, in 1997, something happened.

She received a phone call from me. I was working on a poem about a story she’d told me years before. I called to check on a detail.

“The lines you read to me that day,” she said, “well, they were so simple and yet so powerful. It was as if a light bulb clicked on for me.”

After that phone call, my mom started writing again.

“Soon the poems were just coming and coming,” she said. “I wrote about simple things like my garden or grandchildren or the cat next door. I didn’t care if I sounded like Emily Dickinson.”

In 1999, my mom compiled her best 25 poems and had Kinko’s bind them into a modest booklet. She gave copies to her family and closest friends as a holiday gift.

Then in 2004, my mom surprised us with another book, titled “Grandma Remembers.” She’d written 38 very short stories, each one fitting on a single page. Sometimes humorous, always delightful, the stories were memories of when she was little.

By 2005, she’d written her third book, this one about high school memories.

“For so many years I thought I needed to be more educated or have a bigger vocabulary,” my mom said. “But by writing to my grandchildren, I was just myself and I stopped worrying about trying to impress anyone.”

As I share a few passages from one of her stories, keep in mind that my mom was just 12 when she met my father. He was 15. They married in 1951 on the night of her graduation from Venice High School in southern California. By then my dad was in the Air Force. Next month will mark their 55th wedding anniversary.

Titled “The Hudson,” this story recounts how my dad and his twin brother bought a 1937 Hudson Terraplane the year they turned 16. She writes: “Painting it by hand, using mitts dipped in tan paint, they were surprised to see it turn pink as it dried.”

A few sentences later: “When I was old enough to date, I stood by the kitchen window watching for the old pink Hudson to turn the corner and stop in front of my house.”

Then she writes how one evening she was so excited about going out with my dad that “after dinner I put things in the oven that should have gone into the refrigerator. Things that needed to be cold went into the cupboard.”

Now before I share the final sentence of her story, I hope my mother’s writing will inspire you to realize what a gift it would be to have your memories, your stories, written out without fear, written down with love, written simply in a voice simply yours.

And when you finish reading my mother’s words, turn to your computer or pick up a pen and please, for your loved ones—as my mother did for me—start writing.

“That school girl crush I had on your Grandad,” she writes, “turned into love, and I still get excited when I hear his car in the driveway.”

Quadriplegic embraces tragedy

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in January 2006.








Just after 2 o’clock in the morning on November 13, 1993, Pam Yeaw woke up screaming.

She didn’t know why she screamed, but she couldn’t get back to sleep.

Then, a few hours later, the phone rang.

Her 21-year-old son, Darren Quin, had been in an alcohol-related car accident near Pinecrest Lake in the Sierra Nevada.

He and two friends had been driving along an icy, two-lane road when the car spun out of control and flipped over.

“The accident happened about 2 in the morning—right when my mom screamed,” said Quin, who took a break from his job in Pleasanton to reflect on the accident that forever changed his life. “And it happened on her birthday.”

Just after impact, Quin said he became conscious long enough to realize that his friends had escaped from the car uninjured.

He was not so lucky.

“I was hanging upside down in the passenger seat and couldn’t move any of my extremities,” he said. “Then I lost consciousness.”

Waking up a few days later in a hospital, surrounded by friends and family, Quin learned he was paralyzed from the neck down.

“After realizing I couldn’t perform a task as simple as scratching my nose, I questioned why I had to wake up,” he said.

In spite of his intense initial fears, Quin became hopeful as he regained some use of his arms after months of rehabilitation.

What was most encouraging, though, was the positive time he was spending with his family.

“This was a complete turnaround from before the accident when I had almost daily confrontations with my parents,” he said.

Every time he showed any sign of wanting to give up, a family member would be there to support him. “More times than not that someone was my mother,” he said.

After months of therapy and learning to get around in his wheelchair, Quin began attending classes at Las Positas College. The Rotary Club of Pleasanton North raised funds to purchase a van fitted with equipment that enabled Quin to drive in spite of his paralyzed legs.

Then one evening a few years after the accident, Quin was browsing the Internet when he noticed a young woman had logged on to AOL Instant Messenger.

“I sent her a message,” Quin said, smiling. “Turns out that evening she had just been stood up for a date.”

Quin and Stefanie Dimotakis began dating. They fell in love, and in 1999 Quin moved to Davis to be with her as she finished her degree at U.C. Davis.

The couple eventually moved to Modesto and bought a home. As Quin took classes in graphic design at Modesto Junior College, Dimotakis earned her teaching credential at California State University, Stanislaus.

Today Dimotakis teaches kindergarten at Cunningham Elementary in Turlock, and Quin commutes to Pleasanton where he does graphic design for Allegra Print and Imaging.

Leaning forward in his wheelchair, his brown eyes shining, Quin conveys a certainty about his life that is unexpected in a C6-C7 quadriplegic who has been dealt a brutal hand in life.

This is because his story is about more than keeping your chin up or rediscovering family or finding love.

Quin’s story is about choosing to embrace life’s offerings.

“It’s not often that someone can look back on a disastrous situation and realize it was fortunate,” he said.

Quin explained that before the accident, along with the ongoing conflicts with his parents, he was having frequent run-ins with law enforcement, and his future looked bleak.

“The road I was headed down was in dire need of a detour,” he said. “In fact, that curvy, rural highway wound up being the deviation I so desperately needed.”