CATASTROPHE CAN STRIKE IN A HEARTBEAT

The message of this story is that catastrophe can strike in a heartbeat and change your life forever– so live every day to the fullest. Writing this also gives me an opportunity to recognize a major behind-the-scenes player– Art Winstanley– who helped make the original Blue Paper successful over the last decade or so. Last month, Art flew up to visit family in Pennsylvania and collapsed while getting off the plane. While the doctors are trying to figure it out, he is sitting in a wheelchair at his sister’s house in Gettysburg. But the good news is that the doctors are saying that Art ain’t going to die– not just yet.

Before I retired and discontinued publication of Key West The Newspaper last November, Art had been our art director for more than 10 years. This was a key job. Not only was he responsible for making up the ads for the paper, he also provided the technical magic each week to somehow get the finished newspaper document out of our computer and to the printer. He also pulled an all-nighter every Thursday night to pick up 9000 copies of the paper at the printer and deliver them to hundreds of locations around the island to make them available to readers every Friday morning. He got accustomed to the cops occasionally pulling him over– not to arrest him, but to get copies of the paper.

In lieu of a reasonable salary, I told him often how much I appreciated the important role he was playing in making KWTN possible. But I never wanted to say out loud that “important role” was an understatement. As we had made the transition from paste-up to digital, Art had literally invented the procedure to put our newspaper document on disk in a way that it could be read by the computers at the printer. Nobody else knew how to do that, especially me. What if he went on vacation or had an emergency that would cause him to miss a deadline? But that never happened. He did take a couple of vacations, but he scheduled them so that he would always be here on our Thursday deadline day. And he did have a couple of emergencies– but he seemed able to even schedule those so that he did not miss deadline.

Like many Key Westers, Art was over-qualified. He is a graduate of the Parson’s School of Design in New York City and he ran his own design firm in Philadelphia for a number of years. He gave up the rat race up north and moved to Key West in 2000. He went to work for Key West The Newspaper in 2001.

After I shut down the paper last November, Art went on to other endeavors. But last September 20, as he was getting off the plane in Baltimore, “My legs turned to rubber,” he said. Fortunately, the airline people were able to quickly produce a wheelchair and rolled him outside, where his sister was waiting with a van. “They had to literally muscle me into the van,” Art said. “I could not use my legs.”

Doctors are just starting the tests, but the preliminary diagnosis is multiple sclerosis (MS). Art says he had a minor bout with MS a number of years ago which caused some numbness, but it went away. Nobody knows right now if the current bout will go away or even improve. In the meantime, Art says he is learning to cope with basic needs like needing a walker to get around the house, a raised toilet seat to go to the bathroom and a bench in the shower. “After all,” he said, “if your legs don’t work, you can’t take a stand-up shower.” Lest you think that Art might be over-positive about a bad situation, he added, “There is nothing about this that doesn’t suck.”

Another of Art’s immediate challenges is to get Maxine, his cat, transported from Key West to Gettysberg.

Art’s email address is [email protected]

NOTE: Although Dennis is officially retired, he is planning another adventure– he has applied to spend a couple of years in the Peace Corps. While that application is pending, he is continuing to contribute a regular column to the Blue Paper on line.