What kind of friend was I to David Kamyszek? A coward

“…I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then. Gonna have a good time then.” — Harry Chapin, 1974, “Cat’s in the Cradle”

While sporting glass in hand and monocle at ease a few years ago with old trout fishing buddy Jim Wasserman, I told him I often walked past the house of David Kamyszek on Mill Street, where he once threw a going away party for Irv and H Helmey in 1986.

I said the place didn’t seem the same and I worried he was no longer there because I was aware he had serious health issues, particularly complications from diabetes. Wasserman wasted no time in telling me to look him up before he’s gone.

In my pathetic lackadaisical response, I promised that someday I would look up the old friend and colleague and offer my best wishes.

Too late. David died Friday morning at age 67.

David Kamyszek was one of those characters whom you had to get to know before you appreciated him. Often quiet, he nonetheless was gifted with a terrific sense of humor.

I first got to know him in late 1975 when he joined the staff at the Wayland Globe as a graphic artist, meaning he was charge of making ads look good.

David was ahead of his time as an entrepreneur. He would buy snacks and soft drinks and store them downstairs. This was before many businesses had those snack displays put up by traveling servers.

On occasion, David would announce to everyone in the Globe office, “For the next 15 minutes, Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies will be on sale for 15 cents apiece. And go…”

Some, including me, would scramble to the site of his snackery and gleefully pay him his fee. Of couse, he made some money on the transactions, doing markups for the convenience. He was a budding creative businessman.

I got the the biggest kick out of his requoting the Dancer’s Store slogan, “The place to go for the brands you know” into “The place to go for the brand Sunglow,” while announcing a special on a soft drink then peddled on TV commercials by no less a celebrity than Al Kaline.

David was chock full of witty sayings and he had a knack for mocking me very effectively.

But in September 1976, I left the Globe to work as sports editor of the daily Albion Evening Recorder and our paths didn’t cross for another 10 years. When I returned in 1986, he was still working there, but I heard he had been in a traffic accident and just wasn’t quite the same. I lasted only a couple of months at the Globe until it was sold, but David stopped in at my house to ask how I was doing. I was surprised and impressed.

I learned not long afterward that he was one of the last, if not the last, of the old gang at the Globe to be laid off to make room for the new batch of employees.

I learned from him that he took a job as a meat cutter for D & W Supermarket and later caught up with him at Harding’s Market, where he was a cashier. I couldn’t help but notice that he had lost a hand and surmised it was the result of his diabetes.

I often walked past his house on Mill Street and noticed his name still on the mailbox in cursive writing. But I began to see fewer indications he was actually there.

So why didn’t I stop in and just say hi? I was a coward.

I learned from his relatives that he had been living in a nursing home and had continue to suffer physical pain in his last years. One relative mentioned that now that he had died, he no longer was in pain.

It made me said. And ashamed.