The 20 year anniversary of this event is just a few days away. It was February of 1995 and I sent two crewmen to Piedmont, MO to paint a 240 ft. tower owned by the US Corps of Engineers. It was unseasonably warm. We all felt fortunate to have painting weather in what was normally a cold month and were looking forward to the good work and the money. I sent them out on a Sunday. I was busy rigging and climbing in Northern Arkansas. I checked in with them by phone Monday evening and all was in good order with the weather looking good for Tuesday. When I hit the ground Tuesday afternoon I got the call. The caller was the public information officer with the Corps. He was matter of fact and business like. When he spoke he sounded like he was talking about any construction process or legal matter. It was straightforward and simple. There had been a fall. The man had been pronounced dead. His name was Phillip. It was my obligation to contact OSHA, etc. After I heard the words dead everything else seemed like an echo. Dead. Dead. The word kept ringing. Not alive. Dead. The story goes on from here. There was a funeral. There was a lawsuit. There was the revelation that they knew the tower was defective. There was the evidence that this information had been kept from us. The lawyers for the widow found out and all hell broke loose. The US Government wrote a check. I think the lawyers that represented the wife and the ex-wife churned most of it, but in the end the kids got some small amount. That story is about money, lawyers, women getting paid…. The usual drill after an industrial accident. Mechanics. Cash. It is a story about money. It is not the story for this post. The story for this post comes some 15 years later, at my home, on a Saturday evening. That summer, after some 23 years of marriage, I found myself single. I owned a tower company, and had as my added task the completion of rearing two fine boys. We affectionately refer to these years as our “three guys and a dog” era, and the memories are fond for all of us on many levels. This particular Saturday evening the den was filled with a plethora of fine youngsters watching some ball game. Sprawled out all over the floor, I mentally did a quick inventor of the pantry, which would soon be empty, and assessed the bacon, eggs and pancake mix inventory for the coming morning,. I knew I’d wake up to bodies all over the house in various contortions of slumber, and I wanted to be sure I was ready. As I sat in my recliner I noticed a young man in the crowd that looked strangely familiar. I watched him closely, but was unable to make the connection between linear time and his image. Surely I knew him, but flummoxed I was at making all the synapses work in unison. Interestingly, I noticed that he was peering at me as well. We made eye contact, and as we did, I noticed that he was not looking at me, but rather, at the picture of Phillip that hung above my recliner. That is the same picture that is in this post. It was taken at the top of the tower about an hour before he left the planet. Nicely framed and displayed, along with the screwdriver he was carrying that day which is inscribed with his name. There was a long pause. We did a couple of blinks, and then he spoke. “Mr. Holsted, what are you doing with a picture of my dad on your wall?” I froze, not exactly sure how to respond. I took a look back at the picture, then looked at him. As I locked eyes with him, in a split second, I suddenly know who he was and he knew who I was. Just a young boy when his dad departed, he had few memories of Phillip. I, on the other hand, had many. As the others were watching the game he and I retired to the back porch, he with a bag of Fritos and I with a ½ pint of Remy Martin. It was a not a long night, but I put the Remy away and he killed that bag of chips and lots of Coke, and I told him the story.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 23:26:19 +0000
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