Canton loses Mr. Bright, a selfless citizen

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Of course he had to die sometime. He was 86 and much as we wish it could be, people don't live forever. But it seemed that he would. It seemed as if he would always be sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch, his wife beside him, or making his way down Chapman Street to the L'il White Store, Cassie's now, but always the L'il White to him.

That's where we met, 37 summers ago. I was the new girl behind the counter, the only girl - the Mullens had always hired boys. And he was one of the men who came in every day, smiled, paid his money, glanced at his paper, stood around making small talk and then left. He must have bought other things, milk, bread, everyone did. But all I remember is hearing the door squeak open and Mr. Bright stepping in, his name just right because he brightened up our days, "How are you doing?" and "What's going on?" more than questions he asked to be polite.

He was the kind of man who stuck around to hear the answers. He was 49 back then. But he was ageless. He listened to Nellie tell long, meandering stories. He talked to Mr. and Mrs. Mullen about town politics. He even asked after me. He never talked about himself. That wasn't his style. He asked questions and he listened and when he spoke it was about his family and he spoke about them always with pride.

In his later years, he wore plaid shirts and suspenders. But he had the manners of a man born to tuxedos. He never said a harsh word. He was never in a hurry. And when you were talking to him he never took his eyes off you. "If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue; and walk with kings nor lose the common touch," Rudyard Kipling wrote in his classic poem "If," a poem in which he praised the qualities a real man must have. Trust yourself, wait, serve, keep going when you want to quit, lose but act as if you didn't. Mr. Bright lived these attributes.

I ended up living down the street from him. When my children were small and if we ran into him walking his dog or raking leaves or cutting the grass or just sitting with his wife, he would stop what he was doing and talk to them, the way he talked to everyone - as if he had the time and as if they were the most important people in the world. And when they grew up and moved away and it was just the dog and me, Mr. Bright would commiserate: "How's it going? How's the family?" I never saw his age. I just saw him.

I saw him the last time five, maybe six weeks ago. He looked the same. He was fit and trim and as interested in everything and everybody as he always was. He was a hardy perennial, appearing every spring in the garden and flourishing through summer and fall, brightening not just a little area but the lives of everyone passing by.

That he would disappear in the winter wasn't unusual. Come spring, there he'd be, as strong and vibrant as ever.

He had pancreatic cancer. It killed him in three weeks.

I never knew he was sick. I picked up the paper Monday and read that he had died. I knew so little about him. And yet I loved him. A neighbor summed it up. A few years ago, she and her family left to live on a boat. When they returned, the local sub shop, D&E, had been sold. "But there was Mr. Bright still walking up and down Chapman Street so Canton was still the same," she said.

He was not in our day-to-day lives, but he was part of our lives. He was a constant and his absence changes our world. He will be missed.