Frank Speaking

Last Sunday morning, I got an email from my mother asking me if she could come down from Rhode Island for the night on Friday because Steve Grunow died. Steve had been smacking away at cancer over the last year or so and, while he wasn’t looking so superb the last time I saw him, I figured he he’d be around for some more time than just September. The funeral, she said, was Friday September 11th.

It is sobering and sad when your parents’ friends who you really like die. Steve Grunow met my parents when they tried out for the Sound Beach Volunteer Fire Department rescue squad back in the mid-1970′s. The EMT training didn’t last, in fact I’m surprised they even started in the first place – in my view, it wasn’t in their DNA. But it paid dividends in the large pile of lifelong friends they made in Old Greenwich, two of which were Steve and Linda Grunow. Even when I was out of town, on the other side of the world on occasion, my mother seemed to always have a Steve Grunow story. And the stories were all the same; something happened, Steve was cranky over some project, madness ensued, then everyone was buddies. He seemed like an OK guy.

When I moved back to town now 9-10 years ago, the Grunow’s moved right back into my orbit, but not in that call-for-advice kind of way, but in that mental roster we all make when we try to figure out who is and is not in our corner. And sure enough, they were. When I had a question about house construction, I called up Steve as if it were nothing, and it didn’t feel the slightest bit strange to ask a favor from someone who had never needed a thing from me in his whole life. When I ran for State Senator, and later First Selectman, the Grunows were first up with generous donations and in saying nice things (all lies, I swear). When we joined Rocky Point, I didn’t need to be with my mother to sit with Steve, drink a couple of glasses of wine and get the sense, in the exact same context, why they became friends with my parents in the first place back in the day.

I figured Steve was probably a popular guy, he was easy in bearing, if somewhat of a gruff shell exterior type. The kind someone once called a burnt marshmellow – grusty and burnt on the outside, melty and sweet underneath. I didn’t go to the funeral because I figured that these are the kind of things that are reserved for those really important and close people and while I liked Steve a lot, I didn;t put myself in that category.

It seems, however, that I was probably the only dope who overthought that decision. Passing First Congregational today, in the wet, ugly rain, was a New York City style traffic jam, cars backed up from the Civic Center to Sound Beach, parked at the side of every side street, on Sound Beach, practically every safe streetside covered with a car. I hoped for a second that nobody in Old Greenwich was careless with matches this afternoon, because the entire fire department was in attendance, mourning bunting on the sides of their engines. For that matter, they were probably safe because all the same people were in the church.

You can’t but think that this was a seriously popular guy, and when my mother came back to my place afterward, she was smiling. I gave her a hug because I was really happy to see her, but I could only think what a good life he must have had that so many people wanted to be there with him one last time.