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The Slice: Here’s to you, Mr. Gunning

I still remember how the handshake thing started.

He caught me off guard the first time we shook, a little more than 10 years ago. Man, what a grip.

I guess I wasn’t expecting it. He was lanky, not imposingly big. And, after all, he was an elderly man, for Pete’s sake.

Who would figure he was that strong?

So when he smiled and gave my right hand the vise treatment, it made an impression. So much so that I alluded to it in a column. I think I wrote something about being careful when you shake hands with retired farmers.

After that, he never failed to pour it on when we shook. Except, that is, for the last couple of times.

Mr. Gunning was the first person to befriend my parents when they moved here from New England in 2000, full of anxiety about the change. That’s how I got to know him.

He would not have minded if I had called him Bob. He might even have requested that. I can’t recall now. But it never occurred to me to do so.

That had nothing to do with being formal. It wasn’t even a matter of manners.

I suppose you would call it respect.

He was an unfailingly loyal and steadfast husband during the years when his late wife was enduring one profound health setback after another.

And he was an excellent friend to my parents and many others.

When my father was near the end of his life, my dad sometimes fell asleep in the middle of conversations. But Mr. Gunning would cheerfully sail on with what he was saying, erasing any thought of awkwardness.

He had some stories I asked him to tell over and over.

The long-ago winter when they got snowed in on the farm. The transition from horses to machinery. The fact that he, a kid from landlocked Eastern Washington, did not experience seasickness on his way to the South Pacific during World War II while others in his unit spent much of the voyage leaning over the rails.

When my mother called me at work Monday to tell me that Mr. Gunning had died, I sent my wife an e-mail.

She wrote back, “It was a pleasure knowing him from the first time we met. How many people can you say that about?”

The last time I shook Mr. Gunning’s hand, his grip was weak. But he haltingly spoke of his dire prospects with inspiring calm and piercing honesty.

His real strength, you see, was not in his arm.

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com.

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