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11/26/16

AN EXAMINED LIFE OF A RARE MEEK MAN

Part one of four   

By Robert R. Schwarz

And He [ Jesus ] has  said to me, " My grace
is sufficient for you, for power is perfected
 in weakness. " ….For when  I am  weak,
 then  I am strong.  ( The Apostle Paul, 2
                        Corinthians 12: 9,10 )

    The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted
    with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he
   may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and
   as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being
   fooled about himself. He has accepted God's
   estimate of his own life. He knows he is as
   weak and helpless as God declared him to be,
   but paradoxically, he knows at the same time
   that he is in the sight of God of more importance
   than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything.
   That is his motto. ( A.W. Tozer , 1897-1963 ,
                           American Christian pastor, author, magazine editor,
                           and spiritual mentor. ) 

Meekness is an attribute of human nature and behavior.
It has been defined several ways: righteous, humble, 
teachable, patient under suffering , and willing to follow
 gospel teachings….Meekness means restraining one's
own power, so as to allow room for others. (Wikipedia,
                        the online encyclopedia  )

           
A few  introductory words… Dear Reader, with these few  thousand words  I present to you Bruce Kuss , a kind of man many of  us  have met and instinctively trusted.  Yet, for some reason, we also instinctively avoid friendship with people like Bruce and away from ever asking  why., strangely , forever avoid asking  why.
***
I am a journalist and former  facilitator of interpersonal  communication   workshops , two influences which spurred me to know why I was one of those who perceived Bruce as someone I could trust  yet  never tolerate as a friend.   As you wade into this report, you might find it depressing.  That likely will change if you not presume that Mr. Kuss is a foolish wimp.
God's grace I thank for enabling me over several months  to research and write this report.  Also helpful was the patience of my wife , Mary Alice, who often suffered my 20-minute delays coming to the dinner table after I had shouted from my office  "be right there ! "

  
I
Fishing at age 7 on Big Spider Lake  where he
"never did catch anything "
    In the rehab center's  dinning room, sadness and joy fluctuated  across  the aged face of my friend Bruce  as he told me about  a cherished memory…
          He was 12 years  old   and sitting  with his parents and  a few  guests around a evening  birch log fire  at the Cedar Lodge resort on Big Spider Lake , 20 miles  from Hayward in northern Wisconsin.  Everyone was talking up  their  fishing  day: "that exact location of a  lily pad"  where aggressive strikes of large-mouth bass occurred ; or  the drama of how " that Musky   followed   my Johnson spoon  almost to the boat , then dove down…That's August   fishing for you… water too warm . "  A few wives empathized with the wife of the   lodge owner, Frank Letourneau  ( he was of Chippewa descent ) when she quipped ,  " I'm thankful you men didn't catch more . You guys don't have to clean them." 
         Several decades later Bruce would visit Mr. Letourneau in a nursing home, listen to his demented Indian chanting, and weep over it.
          For an hour, Bruce absorbed the ambiance  of family-like friendship that warmed him more than the log- burning fire. He sat between his father and mother ,  Willete  and   Val Kuss, a  sales manger of an  International Harvester truck dealership in Chicago. My absent  father  was one of his salesmen and often  his fishing buddy.   Near nine o'clock,  everyone began returning to their log  cabins , some making an outhouse stop . Bruce rose reluctantly  , and when his parents exited the lodge , he  followed for a few yards , then halted  as they  disappeared into the night .
            " It was so dark that I couldn't see my hand in front of me  ,"  Bruce  later would later recall.  He looked up at the star-lit sky, so unlike his Chicago night . Somewhere from the nearby ink-dark lake came the piercing  and frantic cry of a bird , aptly named a loon. Bruce  stood still,  hoping to hear that howl of a lone wolf heard by everyone two nights ago. It never came. On this same lake , I would someday memorialize the death of my parents.   To Bruce's s right stood  the "Honeymoon Lodge" cabin, named for my parents  who honeymooned a week there as its first guests.  
         Bruce went to bed grateful for a  peaceful day,  especially for  the hours in  his father's presence. Trust them, listen to them, and things will go my way, a thought he would someday  share with me.  The thought through  ensuing years would often be put to the test ; it would also become a profound building block of his core character.

II
With sister Elaine: "I always wanted
a big brother to tell me about the
birds and the bees "
 
   We talked for any hour that day in the rehab center.  Bruce was high-spirited and full of memories he had wanted to express ever  since arriving there.  His  eyes moistened from   thoughts of  the beauty nature he used to   shared with Mom and Dad , like  when the family drove  through the Garden of the Gods  in Colorado when Bruce was 16.
        But that particular memory darkened at  roadside lunch  stop and the soon arriving  ambulance that took his  father to a Denver hospital . It was some blood disease doctors couldn't  diagnose . His father  remained  hospitalized in Denver  for two months while mother and son waited hourly for a diagnosis that never would be determined.  Gravely ill, his father, accompanied by his  wife,  was flown back to the family's home in Normal , Illinois . In nearby Bloomington,  Mr. Kuss had bought a partnership in a farm machinery dealership. Because  Bruce had no  driver's license, the dealership dispatched an employee  to  Denver  to  drive Bruce home in the family's new Pontiac.  "The trip home was painful ,  and I never forgot it," Bruce told me.  Two months , his father died. 
            Then glancing around him in the rehab center lunch room at all the other seniors  in wheelchairs waiting for food as he was, my friend  said, "Mom told me to be true and cling to people who cling to you . My biggest challenge was trying to be like my Dad. But  I've done my best. " He bowed his head.  " Maybe things would have been different  then if  I had had a Dad. " 

III    
  Back home,  Bruce and his mother decided to move to the Chicago suburb  of Park Ridge and enroll Bruce in  his senior  high school year before September.   They made  a down payment on a home. Mr. Kuss's  death and that torturous long vigil  in Denver had bonded mother and ever tighter.  Bruce committed himself to the dual role of friend  and permanent companion  to his mother. 
            Bruce toured the Maine Township high school before enrolling . Seeing a student population at least four times that of his high school  in Normal , Bruce was quickly overshadowed with anxiety.  The hustle and  bustle of this high school was  intense, so unlike his student life in  Normal. Social interaction around Normal was a kind which Bruce had learned to trust, for it did not demand any change in behavior inimical to his temperament and moral code. Walking  through the hallway during a class-break amidst the clanging of  hundreds of lockers opening and closing and feeling  his body repeatedly jarred by a stampede  of students during class-break,  Bruce felt overwhelmed . Though  quite aware of his five-foot-five-inch  frame—he would never grown an inch   taller— he was yet to see it as  a social or employment  disadvantage  nor yet to acquire a short-person's sometimes  sense of vulnerability . At one of my future  birthday parties I saw him interact gracefully with my friends—all several inches taller than he  and  having  an assortment of imposing  temperaments.   I gradually began to admire a few traits in my friend which I lacked.  He would become a likeable salesman, even under pressure. 
            " I wanted no part of that school, " Bruce told me decades later.  " Mom and  I returned to Normal, and  we lost the house down payment. "
            In  Normal,  Bruce attended a Presbyterian church and went to Sunday School ( he described his father as not " very religious " ) ,  earned a few more Boy Scout merit badges, graduated from high school, and dated a few girls, one of whom he proposed to. She was from a wealthy family , a fact eventually causing Bruce to break off the engagement  after acknowledging  he'd never be able to give her what she would want. " But I regretted that I didn't find someone who was right for me, "  Bruce said during one of our many talks. He would remain, by choice,  a  bachelor  for the rest of his life—no boyfriends nor girlfriends.  

IV
           Bruce enrolled at the University of Illinois and braved its campus for 4 years.  He studied business administration and  participated in the   R.O.T.C. program for two years. After graduating,  he volunteered  for the draft and soon wore an Army private's  uniform at Fort Carson, Colorado. Coincidentally, I was taking my basic training there at the same time   and, by chance, bumped into Bruce on an Army bus taking  us trainees with weekend passes to Colorado Springs.  We hadn't seen each other in several years  , and after a hurried  conversation,  wouldn't see each other for another three years.   All I remember from our meeting was Bruce's account of a fatal lightning strike he had witnessed  while on a training  maneuver at another camp a few weeks  ago.
            He recalled it one day in the rehab center: " We were marching into camp.  Three guys were a short distance behind me  when a lightning bolt hit them. It killed them right  there  ! "  His face showed   confusion  and deep thought, expressions which  Bruce , it seemed,  always kept sealed in mind and heart.  His voice trailed off saying, " Bad things happen to good people… "  Though these words for years would beg him to ask why? , I don’t believe he ever got a comforting answer.
         Bruce had  spent his draft time in  Germany driving a jeep for Army personnel,  an assignment he thought  " humdrum . " But  thereafter  he would honor any  military fund-raising  request with a few dollars of his always-meager  salary. 

V      Now living with his mother in a Park Ridge apartment,  Bruce went to work selling lawn care products for the Scotts Company. He had found his life's niche  in interacting with  people who needed something he could give them.  Customers sensed that this   smiling salesman  with the  blue eyes and  brown hair—now  a bit pudgy for a five-foot-five body  carrying  175 pounds—was someone who really wanted them to make a wise purchase  at a fair price. It was the kind of salesmanship his father and mine presented when selling International Harvester trucks , that is, telling  a customer the truth about the highly technical topic of gear ratios ; it would have all too easy to promote a much more expensive and— unnecessary— gear ratio.  Salesmanship like this would remain one of Bruce's  prime joys in his life . He would, however, be persecuted  for it .
            My friend was heading of a life-long , successful career at Scotts  when it begun laying off employees.  As his niece Connie Obrochta  remembers : "My nephew was always the "consummate gentleman,  gentle and thoughtful,  a hard worker who never complained. "  Arguably, my friend's  future  might have been colored  quite differently if he had done  some complaining  at the right times.  Being mild-mannered did not explain his behavior . An explanation for it was unfathomable to me at the time .
        When Scotts began unexpectedly  to lay off employees,  Bruce quit. " I quit before they fired me," he told me . Prudence  remained a virtue of his, along with a mouth which I never heard utter a profanity nor eyes I ever saw wink at someone's  uncharitable act. Quote honestly, there were times when all this goodness of Bruce's  discomforted me . Bruce made me think of   Pinocchio ,  the puppet who became a human being  because he  listened to his constant cricket companion and nag , Jiminy  Cricket, a conscience given to him by an angel. On a few occasions,  I judged Bruce's  behavior as foolish and weak, only later to be self- convicted of ignoring  my mother's exhortation when I was a child: Robert, soften your heart and  look for the good in people .
            Bruce and   his mother continued to share their apartment  for 23 years . "He was always the apple of his mom's  eye ," said Connie. Mother and son took  vacations  together   throughout the country. His sister, Elaine, now married, would often accompany them. " I didn't like to take vacations by myself, " Bruce said . They saw  Las Vegas three times  and took vacations to  Spider Lake in Wisconsin to relive  early family  memories.  Bruce loved to drop  a dollar into a slot machine or  bet two dollars on a horse race   (usually on a five-to-four  favorite )  when at the Arlington Park Race Track near his home . A  lifestyle of necessary frugality prevented him to wager more.  
            As his mother aged , Bruce assumed the role of caregiver, cook, and  part-time housekeeper . They became each other's best friend.  Then, at age 86, Willete  suffered a fatal heart attack . Bruce felt absolutely  abandoned . For reasons neither I nor his remaining family members would know,  Bruce from now on ,  lived a solitary life . 
          My friend tried to resume the church attendance with which he had been raised  but could not pray once inside.  "  I  became depressed inside  when  I thought of  all the people I knew who had died ," he said during one of our talks at his rehab center.  " Then I found out that I didn't have to be in church to pray but could pray in my   home. " Home now was a Spartan,  one-room , low rent , second-floor walkup apartment near the center of Park Ridge. His quarters  consisted of one large walk-in closet, a bath and shower, a hide-away bed , a refrigerator and a microwave oven he said he never used.  A block away was a bank where Bruce had a small checking account, and across this  six-corner intersection  was the  art deco Pickwick movie theater , built in 1928.  Bruce saw only  one movie here. His sister                                      invited him to see the life of cook and author  Julia Childs .  Next to it  was the Pickwick Restaurant where , when not  eating at  a McDonald's , Bruce dined on his favorites: either a hot beef sandwich or a bowl of pasta . 

This completes the first of this four-part article. 
( Parts 2, 3, and 4 were posted, respectively, on
Dec. 3, 10 , and 17, 2016 )


All comments are welcome.
© 2016 Robert R. Schwarz