I and some people close to me had a rough week recently.
My week began with the April 28th memorial service for local contractor Jack Bercel.
As I said at the reception following the service, I always thought of Jack as a “straight shooter.” He was as honest as they come. In all of the 44 years I have been involved with this newspaper, I never heard even one complaint about any of the homes he built.
Then on Monday, I received word from the Arizona Newspaper Association that former executive director John Fearing had died. I was glad to have seen him when we took our cross country trip last summer. He was living in Covington, Ky., at that time.
He was the executive director when I was president of the association. We became good friends while traveling together.
Later that day at the Men’s Club dinner, we were told that Ralph Truax, a long-time member had died. He was one of the community’s few surviving veterans who fought in World War II. He was a day shy of his 93rd birthday.
On Friday, our general manager at The Times, Kip Kirkendoll, received a phone call from a former high school friend. She told Kip that another friend of theirs had died that morning. “The three of us did everything together,” Kip said.
On Saturday, Diane received word from California that her long-time friend Jeanne Quenga had suffered a stroke. She died two days later.
But the biggest shock of all was when my son, Brent, called me early on Sunday morning and told me that he had received a text message from his Aunt Linda that Uncle Steve had died the night before.
I couldn’t believe it. “Uncle Steve” was my younger brother, my only brother.
“What did you say? Steve died? That can’t be,” said Diane as she rolled over in bed and hugged me.
Who’s going to tell your mom?” she asked.
“I have to tell her. It’s only right.” I said.
Brent was still on the phone and said he could be to our condo in a half hour to drive me to my mom’s house.
“I’ll be ready,” I said.
We arrived shortly after 8 a.m. at my mom’s small, gray house in west-central Phoenix. It’s the same house in which my brother and I grew up.
“This is a surprise,” she said with a big grin. Then she saw I wasn’t smiling. Brent took her inside with his arm around her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think you had better sit down, mom,” I said.
“Steve passed away last night.”
She started crying profusely saying, “Why, why, why?” He was still young (66). I’m old (91). Why couldn’t it have been me, instead?”
I told her I didn’t want her talking that way.
Then she asked what happened and how Linda was doing.
Brent called Linda and said we would be over with mom.
We were greeted at the door by Linda’s cousin, Judy.
We all sat in the in the family room and listened to Linda’s review of the prior day’s events. She said that Steve had asked a friend to help him get rid of his old, unworkable spa and a new one was being delivered later that week. It turned out to be a bigger task than Steve had imagined.
The two of them worked over three hours with no shade on a day in which the temperature reached 100 degrees.
They finally got it out of the ground. Steve went inside and said to Linda, “I’m through for the day.”
Linda said he first said his back hurt from the work they did. Then he said his chest felt funny.
“I asked him if he felt he should go to the hospital and get checked.” He said, “No, it’s nothing like that. I think I just got overly dehydrated.”
He drank a bottle of bubbly water and took a shower.
Not feeling very hungry, he turned down dinner and sat down on the couch. A short time later, Linda asked him something, and he didn’t reply.
She turned around and saw his eyes were rolled back in his head. She called 9-1-1 and the woman told her to start CPR immediately. The paramedics arrived within minutes. They took over the chest compressions and did everything possible. They loaded him in the ambulance and took him to the hospital. But it was to no avail. We had to face the reality that Steve had died.
He lived an interesting life. He wasn’t much of a student in high school except in music. He played in the percussion section of both the band and orchestra. He auditioned for and made the Phoenix Symphony when he was a high school senior.
He and two students formed a band called Apple that played music of the late ‘60s at school dances.
When an amusement park opened in east Phoenix called Legend City, he auditioned and won the job as the drummer in the stage band that played each night in the saloon.
That band went on tour at the end of the season, and that meant he would be leaving home. He was 18. Our mom wasn’t very happy about it, but she knew he was committed to his music.
Steve and I shared a bedroom for all those years we lived at home. Steve used to give me grief because I would put an album on by Eric Burdon and the Animals each night when I got in bed. He hated them. What bugged him the most was I would fall asleep immediately and would be forced to listen to the remainder of the album. Last Christmas, guess what he gave me: two CDs of the Animals’ greatest hits.
The night he left home, he drove off in his new Ford Pinto, purchased with money he had made at Legend City over the summer.
That band eventually broke up and he joined two other bands. The second of those bands had a lead singer named Linda Herre. She eventually became Mrs. Steve Cruikshank and they were married for 34 years.
The band was good, signing contracts with three major hotel chains and touring the country.
They were close to appearances on the Merv Griffin Show and the Tonight Show, but never got on the air. In Las Vegas, they played in lots of lounges, but never were headliners.
Steve was a talented drummer and was even called the best young drummer he’d ever heard in America by Louis Bellson after losing to Steve in a classic drum battle at Disneyland on New Year’s Eve one year.
But life on the road eventually got old.
When he reached 30, he decided to hang up his drumsticks. He enrolled at UCLA and got his business degree. He went to work for the Bank of Glendale. He became an appraiser. He got a job offer from Wells Fargo as a commercial appraiser.
In recent years, whenever I would ask how work is going: he would say it was another day out of the movie “Ground Hog Day.”
