Long-time friends

LeRoy is gone and the memories come flooding back. Trying to capture them in words is like trying to catch a tidal wave in a teacup. Marooned on the Lake, Snowbound, the Night of the Toilet, the Yule Log, the homebuilt observatories, the unexpected visits from Alaska bearing enormous slabs of frozen halibut, the countless kindnesses dispensed to our family during 45 years of friendship. He had a way of gently overwhelming you. My memories of LeRoy are not stories with punch lines but snapshots of small moments that remain sharp and unfaded in the mind. LeRoy and my wife Stella met in 1963 when he was a junior high school vice principal and she was the school nurse. They teamed up to help troubled kids and liked each other's gentle approach. Then, one December evening, LeRoy and Mary Jo invited us to dinner. We arrived carrying a yule log that we had chosen because of both its girth and its weight. I staggered to their fireplace and toppled it in where it wedged tightly, leaving little room for kindling. What we didn't realize was that the log was heavy not because it was fine hardwood but because it was wet. It never did burn right, LeRoy said, but after weeks of trying he did get it to smolder. Years later, in showing me how a real man builds a fire, he created such an inferno in his fireplace that the glass screen imploded and terrified everyone in the house. The Owens had four kids; we had three. After a while we discovered we were, if not mirror images, close to it where life's values are concerned. Our families blurred together a bit. We set up guardianship papers to cover each others' children in case one set of parents died. We got to know each others' homes as well as we knew our own. We went camping together. Snowbound: The first night of the big snow of 1969 the Owens family was visiting us in our home on a hill west of Eugene. We found one excuse after another to delay their departure, finally pulling the living room curtains to keep them from seeing how deep the snow was getting. By the time they wised up they couldn't get their car out of the driveway. Two days later their car was barely visible. On the third day LeRoy, face set in determination, began shoveling 42 inches of snow; we grudgingly pitched in and they finally managed to flee. Marooned: When we were all tenting near Mount Hood and hiked off for a picnic LeRoy discovered a raft on the beach of an icy lake. Using a stout pole he propelled himself toward the far shore. We watched curiously as the raft slowed to a stop in the middle of the lake. No amount of shouting and waving on our part could persuade him to come join us. It turned out that as the raft's momentum carried him into deep water his pole had proved far too short to reach the bottom. He made it back to land only later when the wind gave him a push. One more. The Toilet: One of our little angels had flushed a plastic bubble-mix bottle down the toilet. That night, while sitting on floor in the Owens' living room with LeRoy, two other guys, our wives and copious wine, I heard a number of ingenious methods proposed for retrieving the bottle. About 10 o'clock LeRoy decided we needed to move the discussion across town into our small downstairs bathroom and put the theories to the test. A hundred flushes later, about 1 a.m., we gave up, and the next day a plumber took less than a minute to extract the bottle. LeRoy thought we needed a wood shed so he showed up at the house and built us one. A ping-pong table might be fun in our basement, he thought, so he built us one of those too. When my sister moved to Eugene after her divorce and LeRoy learned that her young son was furious over having to leave his dad, LeRoy bought him a punching bag. (I just learned this from my sister a few days ago.) And I can only wonder how many other such stories there must be in Eugene, Samoa, Alaska, Ashland and other places where LeRoy's wise words and kind touch have buoyed spirits. As proud members of LeRoy and Mary Jo's extended family, we cling to dozens of these treasured personal vignettes of that wonderful guy we were privileged to call friend. He will live in our hearts always. Dave and Stella Emery

Contributed on March 2, 2009 | View Entry