The Sentinel

The Sentinel

By Colin Hickey

Initially, I heard they condemned his house. But that proved untrue. Turns out they gave Bobby a warning, and it was from the city’s welfare department. Apparently, the city’s welfare officials had major health concerns about his household, and they needed Bobby to resolve them, which I figured meant clean out or move out.

Bobby would do it. I mean what choice did he have? Where else could he possibly go? He grew up in the house. For all I know, he was born in the place. He had a narrow world - a narrow, cluttered world. But the cleanup. That would be hard for him. Really hard. I envisioned blocked passageways and heating ducts covered with stuff.

William F. Byrd IV.

That was the name on the masthead - 35 years ago. Next to his name, the paper listed Bryd’s title as chief copy editor. Being a newbie at the Somerset Sentinel at that time, I pictured Byrd as a distinguished balding old gentleman with gold cufflinks on his pressed white dress shirt and a pair of silver wire spectacles dangling precariously from his eyes. Naturally, I assumed he had an office on the third floor with the other bigwigs.

 The bald part is the only one I got right.

It was during the nightly cookie handout that I discovered the truth. Bobby - I only knew him as “Bobby” at the time - was kind of our utility guy. He answered phones, read copy, kept the coffee carafes filled, and bought discounted cookies from the local Hannaford - the cookies he handed out around deadline.

Stanley Archer, one of the Sentinel’s veteran editors, a guy who used to work at the Christian Science Monitor, announced his gratitude for the sugar-packed snack - having forgotten his lunch pail that day - with a resounding “Thank you, Mr. William F. Byrd IV. You are my savior.”

I was dumbstruck. Bobby. He was the chief copy editor on the masthead. 

A frail gnome of a man, he had the skin tone of a vampire and the hooked beak of a bird. Yet in doing his newsroom duties, he exhibited a crusty toughness common for those raised in a mill town. Bobby used to hop on the back of fire trucks to get the inside scoop on the latest conflagration in town. He entered the profession in the golden age of newspapers, back when any normal Joe with curiosity, gumption, and an ability to string a few words together somewhat intelligibly could earn a job. Newsmen are an eclectic crew, a collection of odd ducks in many respects, people who labor day and night to report on life, and do so as objectively and fairly as humanly possible - or, at least, the good journalists do. Journalists also tend to be an accepting bunch, and this, I think, gave comfort to Bobby, gave him the reassurance that he belonged, that he was a valued member of the community.  

By the time I started at the paper, Bobby had long retired from fire truck hopping. He came in late and stayed late and lived on frozen food meals and Pepsi - always in a 12-ounce can. His desk was easy to find. It was the one with a stack of frozen food containers - spotlessly washed - abutting a cardboard box full of empty Pepsi cans. Once, by accident, of course, Bobby brought a Diet Pepsi to work. He took one sip and immediately sprang from his swivel chair with the offending soda in hand. He returned minutes later with the can, now empty and dented. Nobody in the newsroom said a word. The anger was gone from his face. In its place was what seemed a mixture of guilt and atonement. Bobby never disposed of the can. He kept it on his desk, in a far corner, a wayward child, but one Bobby, apparently, had deemed fit to forgive.

In the old days, people called Bobby and his like “pack rats;” today, the term would be hoarders. For me, though, neither term did justice to Bobby. With him, the keeping, the accumulating, stemmed from caring, from warmth, a kind heart concealed by a tough, crusty, pale exterior.  In his case, though, in the isolated, lonely world in which he dwelled, one that never went beyond the 45-mile stretch he drove from his Lewiston home to the Sentinel office in Somerset, the objects of his affection were just that: objects.

I finally came to understand this the time I was looking for a second vehicle. Bobby had three cars - all of them Toyota Corollas with more than 200,000 miles on the odometer. He talked about them like they were his children. I remember one had an issue with its carburetor that drove Bobby to distraction. We would get daily updates on the state of the carburetor, including the theories of Al, the next-door neighbor who served as Bobby’s personal mechanic. For most problems, though, Bobby was convinced that dry gas was the solution. He would buy dry gas by the caseload, viewing it as the caster oil of the automotive world. 

During a period of relatively good health for all his vehicles, I asked Bobby if he might be interested in selling me one of his Corollas. He stared at me silently for what seemed an interminable amount of time. I regretted the inquiry immediately. How foolish of me. How could I have been so clueless? Those Corollas “were” his children. And here I was trying to purchase one.

Bobby surely would have acquired a fleet of 200,000-mile-plus Corollas had he possessed greater financial resources. But the meager pay at the paper limited Bobby to his tattered trio. 

The same could not be said about the newspapers. Bobby took a Sentinel home every night, had done so since his first day at the paper in 1962, and he never threw them out. Never. And there was no disputing the validity of this information. Bobby was the source, and Bobby didn’t lie.

At the time of the welfare department visit, I estimated Bobby would have had more than 21,000 Sentinels stacked meticulously throughout his home, which, according to Stanley, is a three-story working-class abode, a century old, at the bottom of a steep street. Stanley had never stepped inside. In fact, nobody from the Sentinel had ever stepped inside Bobby’s house. Bobby wasn’t one to invite people for a visit. He lived a solitary existence and drew a clear delineation between his private and working life, so Stanley, who had simply driven by the residence after doing some business in Lewiston, provided the only insight into Bobby’s other life.

When Bobby retired from the Sentinel in 2012, nobody from the old crew heard from the former chief copy editor for several years. I had left the paper by then as well, switching careers to become an English teacher at a local high school. Most of the old guard assumed Bobby had died. They couldn’t imagine him lasting long without the paper. I felt differently. In my mind, Bobby simply was too tough to call it quits. In my mind, Bobby would get up early enough to get a Sentinel at the corner drugstore, maybe grab a bite at the closest Denny’s, and then go back to sleep until night, waking at his normal shift time, the one he worked for half a century.

How many rooms can 21,000 newspapers fill?  One of the guys from circulation said three rooms might do it. But Stanley pointed out that Bobby would also need space for his frozen food trays and empty Pepsi cans, and this only accounted for objects he accumulated at work. Undoubtedly, he saved other items at home. 

It pained me to think how distraught Bobby must be over the welfare department warning. He would be paralyzed at first. No question.  Still, I knew - I was convinced - the papers would save him. While his Toyotas might have been his children, the Sentinel was his first love. I realized this about Bobby early on. His fidelity to the paper was unconditional, and he saw himself as the sentinel of the Sentinel, its guardian, its protector. He saw the preservation of its history, I think,  as fundamental to his duties. So Bobby would find a way to overcome this latest obstacle. Perhaps he would dispose of his Pepsi cans or toss his plastic trays. Whatever the method, whatever the sacrifice, Bobby would do what was necessary to stay true to his soulmate. 

Sure enough, that seemed to be what transpired. The crisis apparently came to an end, and for years, we heard nothing, neither good nor bad, about Bobby -  and then the story appeared. 

“Lewiston man found dead in home filled with more than 23,000 newspapers.”

That was the headline on the cover page of the Lewiston Star’s local section. Stanley alerted me to the article, written by one of the Star’s veteran reporters. Authorities said Bobby had died of “natural causes” and that he had been dead for at least several days when a welfare worker found him. The story went on to report on Bobby’s long career at the newspaper and that every newspaper stored in the house was an edition of the Sentinel, some as old as 1962. The newest edition discovered, the reporter wrote, was published less than a week ago. 

That piece of information gave me great joy. Bobby never relinquished his duties. He never ceased to be a newsman. He remained a sentinel to the end.