LETTERS FROM HOME: THE CARPENTER WHO STOPPED BY ON HIS WAY HOME

June 14, 2001

Dear Julie,

Word arrived this week from New Jersey of the death of Rick Callahan, 54, a thoughtful, well-read, emotionally wounded, soulful, divorced father of two, a man with many abilities who seemed to be searching for a point to focus on or an answer to an unknowable question.

He'd been to war and had been hurt deeply by the experience not something he told you, something you saw in him. He had lived a country club life and had been destitute, too. He was having a Technicolor life.

Rick's life path crossed ours for a few months in the late '90s and then disappeared over the horizon. We'd ask others who knew if they'd heard from him. Not lately, they'd say. Now we have.

Rick was a carpenter just getting by on odd jobs and bartered services. He built the fence on the north side of our yard. It's the kind of fence you buy in sections from a lumberyard, but Rick wasn't satisfied with just doing the job. He put in gate posts that soar high above the fence line, and into the tops of the posts carved with a chainsaw diagonal designs, like Zs standing atop each other. John, our neighbor in the construction business, was awed.

On the rest of the fence, he shored up the bottom to prevent Hank and Lucy from escaping and built windows for the master bedroom that suit our 85-year-old house artfully. He was a carpenter the way the Bible or the Bhagavad-Gita are books.

Because he knew DC loves old buildings, he gave us a tour of his church, Christ Episcopal Church. He loved something he found in that church more than the building.

Rick was trying to decide whether to go back to school for a degree in psychology. People thought he should do something with his fine mind. He was doing something, I told him, making fine things that shelter people.

When Rick finally decided to leave the Midwest to go live in New Jersey with his aging father, he and his daughter, Maeve, stayed with us a few days. Maeve was having a hard time being 14, and Rick, no matter how troubled he himself was, came to his daughter's rescue. He gave DC an antique cup and saucer, something old and useful, to say thanks for the time with Maeve.

One morning he awoke us at 4:30 to see some magic in the sky -- the Hale-Bopp comet. Even Maeve, who was not happy about much then, didn't complain.

I don't know what happened to Rick in Vietnam. More than 50,000 names line that heart-breaking black wall in Washington, D.C. Many more casualties are hidden between the lines.

Rick's sister-in-law, Pam, says he confronted many of his demons after moving to New Jersey. His carpentry business was doing well. Maeve came to live with him for a year and a half and they thrived in each other's presence. She just finished her first year of college and is doing well. His son, Owen, is a high-achieving college student, too.

Rick was working with veterans organizations and counseling drug addicts. Vietnam was the one koan he never solved, she said. "How could you?"

In March, Rick found out he had treatable brain cancer and a very aggressive lung cancer. He died at home near those he loved and who loved him back.

For music at his memorial service, Rick chose an old Episcopal hymn, "O Brother Man." It is based on a John Greenleaf Whittier poem about brotherly love.

He has asked those who attend to bring their favorite recipe and joke. These are to be compiled later and distributed to everyone who came. Rick is making one last useful thing.

I'm sending my recipe for Cajun potato salad, so simple you don't need measurements. Potatoes, mayonnaise, bacon bits and bacon grease, vinegar, chopped up green olives and lots of Louisiana hot sauce will do it. Stir it up. Smile.

I don't know any jokes. I do know a different koan:

"The great path has no gates,

Thousands of roads enter it.

When one passes through this gateless gate

He walks freely between heaven and earth."

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.