Her Favorite White Devil

My friend Doris Hill passed away this week. Doris and I worked together at Kraft Food Ingredients where she was the Director of Human Resources. She was a good friend and a GIFTED LISTENER. Once after a particularly arduous business trip to Japan, I was in her office late one night complaining about the difficulty of doing business in Japan. I explained that the Japanese just don’t like us. Right off the plane from the US they give you a hard time. As you go through customs upon entry into Japan, there are 5 lanes for Japanese citizens and only one lane for everyone else. It so bad that they call us “Gaijin” which loosely translates into “White Devil”. Doris, an African American, chuckled and said: “Huh, that is the same thing we call you”.

Fast forward a few years when her mother passed away and I went to the viewing at her mothers church. Doris’s family members are pillars of the black community in Memphis and the church was packed with people from the community. Upon seeing me, Doris announces to the congregation with a smile in her voice:

Paul is here…My favorite white devil.

Even through the worst of times, Doris found ways to see the humor in life. Doris had struggles in her lifetime. Her husband was tragically murdered at an early age while they were on vacation in New Orleans. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Painfully, the trial of his murderer went on for years with the case being complicated by hurricane Katrina. Doris was a woman of powerful faith and that faith, enabled her to deal with all levels of challenges.

One of the most amazing accomplishments of Doris’s life was the creation of ESPN Academy of Memphis. The Education Scholarship Preparation Nurture academy gives needy children after school tutorial and support programs. She founded the academy in 2001 that has empowered children to achieve their maximum potential in school and in life. It is hard to think of something more beneficial than helping children meet their potential. Doris was a gift, and we can help keep her gift growing by contributing to her ESPN Academy.

DONATE TO THE ESPN ACADEMY

After Doris retired, we would get together for lunch every January. Health issues were always a challenge for her. She never complained. She never asked: why me? We always enjoyed a laugh together and unfailingly, she reminded me that I was:

HER FAVORITE WHITE DEVIL

Doris lives on in our memory and by the continuing impact her ESPN Academy has on the children of Memphis. We were all lucky to have her in our lives.

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Can I Throwaway My Cookbooks?

My sister Joan is a cookbook person. As kids growing up, I can remember her coming home from school and poring over a cookbook with a glass of milk. Today she spends her summers on her island in New York’s Thousand Islands. She still has lots of cookbooks, but like most of us, she gets most of her recipes online. That is why Joan is questioning of the need to keep her collection. My answer was: Of course you need to keep your cookbooks. I don’t think people will be throwing away their family bible simply because they go to the Internet to check out Facebook in the morning. Books, cookbooks in particularly, are part of Joan’s DNA. And, that is a good thing.

Joan and her husband Brian are wonderful hosts. They spend their summers on the St Lawrence River, right on New York border with Canada. Their little island has been in Brian’s family for generations and is a wonderful place to visit, but it isn’t exactly easy to get to. Joan and Brian have been going there for years, but it has only been since our daughter moved to Ottawa Canada two years ago, that we have made it there. The pace of life on the river is low key. One can sit on the veranda and stare across the river and see Canada while watching very large ocean going vessels pass. With all the noise in the media about the southern wall with Mexico, one has to wonder where the northern wall will go? LOL.

Joan, Brian, Susan and I were probably our original supper club. We all went to college together In Plattsburgh NY which was also close the Canadian border. Back in the 1970’s there certainly wasn’t any wall. You didn’t need a passport to get across the border. I don’t think we even had to show an ID. We would drive to Montreal for an evening. My buddy Ron Iles used to claim that the drunker you were, the easier it was to get across the border. His line was: “The Lord protects fools and drunks. That gives us double coverage.”

Back then we didn’t have much money for our supper club dinners. I can remember one late summer meal where I made Zucchini Parmesan with over-ripe squash from Joan and Brian’s garden. Iles, always a wizard with words, quickly began to shout praise for my Seeds Parmesan. Once you got past the larger seeds, the parmesan was pretty good and the price was right for hungry college students.

The menus for our dinners on Joan and Brian’s this week were a lot closer to Joan’s cookbook standards.

The Best Neighbor Ever

My friend Howard Johnson passed away this week. We have been neighbors for close to 30 years. When we first met, I knew I would like him when his wife Jan called him “HoJo”. Howard never took himself too seriously and he had a wonderful sense of humor.

What made him a great neighbor?:

He was always positive and had a smile on his face.
His grandkids worshipped him. My granddaughter Emma (5 years old) would run across the yard to say hello whenever she saw him.
He had tools that I didn’t have and made sure I borrowed them.
I have a power washer that he didn’t have. When Howard borrowed it, he would power-wash my driveway.
When I couldn’t get a small engine to start, he would calm me down with a story that was just long enough to cure a flooded carburetor.
My dogs loved him.
He would ask about my golf game and listen.
I could go on and on.

Howard and I hosted an annual neighborhood Oktoberfest. We were both veterans of the food industry. Howard worked for a sausage casing company. He would get his old customers to supply bratwursts. We would roll out our grills and have one street to bring side dishes and the other street to bring desserts. One year I had extra potatoes and made homemade French fries. The next year as we were setting up, Howard asked: No fries this year? Then followed up with: That’s all the neighborhood has talked about since last year. With a quick trip to the market that year, Howard’s fries were a hit, and have been a staple ever since.

Howard did volunteer work at the local hospital. For years he has been giving a morning blessing over the PA system. His goal was to deliver a spiritual blessing with a positive message. Howard’s boss at the hospital complained that his messages were too long. He worked hard on these messages and often struggled to keep them short. As a reader of this blog, Howard advised me to get your point and humor in up front, because you can’t rely on the attention span of your audience. Hence, the goal for all my blogs is to keep them short, to the point and try to include humor. As for Howard’s morning blessings, he has been fighting cancer for a while and the recordings of his messages are still being run. We have a friend who is a nurse at the hospital and she tells us that the staff still loves listening to Howard.

Howard was special to all his grandchildren. His one granddaughter made him promise years ago to live long enough to walk her down the aisle when she got married. He fought hard to live up to that promise. When that special day does occur, Howard will be there. His memory will live on with many of us. He was a great friend and the best neighbor ever.