And now a word about Harry

I stood in line at the funeral home waiting to speak to the family who had lost their loved one a few days earlier.
Harry was the janitor at the newspaper I ran. I think he worked there 15 years or so. Until his knees got too bad for him to make it to the second floor of the old house that serves as the newspaper office.
That’s not true. Harry actually climbed those stairs many years after his knees got too bad to be climbing. He came up with ingenious ways of moving things up and down the stairs, and it sometimes took him several breaks to make the trip.
I probably should have advised Harry to give it up sooner. He had retired from his full-time job and was just doing this on the side. But the truth was I liked having Harry around.
As manager of the office as well as the newspaper, I was responsible for a wide variety of tasks. I was most comfortable handling the ones that involved interviews, editing, layout and design. I was much less comfortable being the principal decision maker when things blew up (furnace), died (printers, computers, stamp machines) or when natural disasters struck (flood, blizzards and lightning).
My boss (and his boss) were always there to help me, most certainly. But they were rarely at ground zero. Harry was usually just a phone call away.
His area of expertise was the realm of fix-it. Not technological band-aids, but carpentry, fuses and the like.
I loved decorating the office for the holidays and we usually did it with gusto. Harry was the clean-up crew. We would come back from vacation and all the ornaments, garlands and lights would be neatly put away and life returned to normal.
Harry made shelves, he patched holes, he made sure we had plenty of toilet paper and towels. He usually showed up right before it was time to leave, so he could shoot the breeze a little while – usually with Cathy, Connie or me. He told jokes and stories. He made us laugh. He brought his grandkids with him sometimes. He always talked about his family.
Harry left the newspaper first. I’ve been gone just four years and, in one of those weird coincidences of small towns, I now work with Harry’s daughter – same company, different departments.
Harry was not the kind of guy that someone would write a story about. He would never expect that. Yet, his story is the kind that is told a thousand times every day by people who do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. People who keep doing the right thing over and over in a non-miraculous way. Reliable, honest, good people.
It’s because of people like Harry that our lives run smoothly and we never have to worry about whose going to take out the trash or set the mouse traps in the attic. He knew what to do and I didn’t have to worry about it after I asked Harry to take care of the problem or project.
I don’t know Harry’s whole story. Only the chapters that intersected with mine. Harry always asked about my parents. He told me about his children and grandchildren. We shared pieces of our lives and he was part of mine for many years.
I remember him once telling me not to be in a rush to get married. “A good man is hard to find,” he told me with a grin.
Not always.
It was not hard to find Harry. He was always there for us.
Just like the good man he was.