In Memoriam

They say deaths occur in threes. Today, my thoughts and prayers are with the families of three people who have touched my life.

Tammy Faye Messner

As a child, my brother and I appeared on “The Jim & Tammy Show,” a children’s program that Jim & Tammy Bakker did on a local TV station, the predecessor to CBN. I must have been around 10. My brother and I won an Etch-A-Sketch, an extremely popular toy at the time. Through all the ups and downs of the Bakker ministry, I never forgot that trip to the Portsmouth TV studio or how much fun we had that day. It is certainly one of my favorite childhood memories.

Joshua Paige

I was quite floored to see this obituary in today’s paper. Obviously, I missed the earlier, shorter one.

Joshua (no relation, by the way) has been in poor health for quite some time. Nevertheless, every time I talked to him – and the last time was a couple of weeks ago – he said he felt good. The last time I visited him, he was doing some renovations on his house, putting in new kitchen counters and other things. I actually repaired his internet connection while I was there. One wouldn’t expect that a man his age was into technology but he was using Vonage for his telephone service.

I didn’t really get to know Joshua well until a couple of years ago, when I ran for office. I had known of him, particularly his civic activism over the years. He was formerly the president of the Inner-City Federation of Civic Leagues, a group made up of the black civic leagues in the city. Later, he became the first black chairman of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The selection of him as chairman was a contentious one, and resulted in one member – who cast the deciding vote – not being reappointed the next time.

Joshua became a mentor of mine, much as he has been to others involved in civic activities in the Norfolk area. Even after he became ill, his opinion on the matters of the day was often sought. He weighed in on the vice mayor controversy earlier this year.

Norfolk certainly has lost a valuable voice. And I will miss him.

Mark “Frenchy” Ouellette

In 1986, after passing the CPA exam, I hung out my shingle. I didn’t have any clients. In exchange for some accounting services, I was allowed to use a little office in a building which housed an upholstery supply store. One of their customers was Ouellette Upholstery, which was operated by Frenchy and his wife. They became clients of mine – their client number tells me that they were the 28th new client I added that calendar year. More importantly, though, Frenchy and Nancy became friends of mine, more like family than clients.

Over the last twenty one years, I’ve watched their kids grow up, gone to their weddings and seen them become parents themselves. Through it all, Frenchy was always the gregarious, bubbly one. Never without a smile.

When I got the call about a month ago that he was seriously ill, I knew I had to go to see him. I’m not really good with visiting folks when they get towards the end. So I took off on a Friday morning four weeks ago to just hang out with him for a bit. Although in obvious pain, Frenchy looked good and cracked some of his trademark jokes. He was optimistic about a new treatment that he was going to see a doctor about, showing me the internet research he had gotten on it. And he complained about how he wasn’t going to be able to see the specialist until July 10, some 2+ weeks hence.

The specialist gave him three months. In reality, he was gone in 10 days.

Words are never adequate when trying to explain a tremendous loss – and the loss of Frenchy – so young, so soon – is one of those.