I am missing John and Ray these days.
I am missing them like the grandfathers I never knew, or like a crochety uncle I did know.
I am missing their visits to the newspaper office, with letters-to-the-editor in hand, or with musings on some local issue, or with questions about a meeting they missed or with a private opinion they wanted to share with the editor or with a suggestion for a reporter about a story they’d like to see.
I am missing their curiosity about the world, their conviction and their single-minded focus on our town.
I am speaking, of course, of Schnabel and Menaker, the sawmill owner and the newspaper publisher, the lions of the right and of the left who fought into old age against each other and for their respective visions for the Chilkat Valley. In intellect and tenacity, each was matched only by the other.
I remember what may have been their last public battle, a debate in the assembly chambers in the early 1990s about what the local government owed to the Porcupine Road, a tortured alternate route to Schnabel’s planned gold-mining camp tourist attraction.
The two squared off blow-for-blow, maneuvering and outflanking each other’s arguments. If memory serves – and it may not – Menaker hammered on the question of what the public stood to gain from investing in a decrepit, dead-end road. Schnabel countered that improvements would speed commercial and residential development, leading to increased property and sales tax income.
They were tired arguments about an old issue, but John and Ray’s points and phrasings were so incisive and their rebuttals so quick that their jousting electrified the room. The fight ended without a clear winner, as it stands today. What the borough should do with the Porcupine Road remains in dispute.
Schnabel and Menaker were paired opposites, stalwart battlers for causes living in an era of epic growth for business and government. You could have John without Ray only as much as you could have salt without pepper. No issue was settled until the town had heard from both of them.
Schnabel fought for development, industry, money, success and progress. Menaker fought for learning, nurturing, teaching, success and progress. They both wanted the same thing, but their definitions of it couldn’t differ more.
But their personal traits were remarkably similar. Both John and Ray were World War II Navy veterans who loathed war. Both donned old clothes, drove aging cars, and lived in funky houses. Both married single moms at a time when society viewed women in those circumstances as cast-offs. Both served in local government, rarely left town, and attracted armies of devotees.
Both were more analytical than emotional. John and Ray were not warm and fuzzy. They were builders of the town who had agendas and convictions and schedules to keep and things to do. They did not fritter away their days.
Ironically, after their respective spouses died, John and Ray spent their final days in rooms beside each other at Haines Assisted Living. Maybe their last battle was seeing who would live longer. John won that round, by a year or so.
John left a grandson a TV show legacy, property for a Boy Scout camp and a regional road-building company, as well as an example for longevity that included exercise, diet and vigorous activity.
Ray left the town a newspaper and a legacy of service as founding member and volunteer to organizations including our town’s public radio station, its environmental group, its preschool, its theater guild, its state fair and perhaps others.
John and Ray were our town’s political world at a time when the world and our town were smaller than they are today, though no less contentious and perhaps more so.
Whose vision for the Chilkat Valley will prevail, only the future can tell. A more vexing question may be, who do we have who can replace them?