Les was more for Othello

In this business, sometimes you get to talk to certain people almost every week, and at the end of the day you still wonder if you truly know them.

Other times, you get to talk to them once or twice during your career, and you end up so thoroughly convinced of their quality as a person that the reporter's cynicism goes out the window, and it's replaced by a person's reverent respect for another.

That was the case with me and Les Clemons.

I had only met Clemons twice before. The first time was when his work on the creation of an interpretive center for Othello got him named the 2004 Citizen of the Year. The second one was when developer Roger Brooks came to talk about turning Othello into a tourism hotspot, an idea that endlessly fascinated Clemons.

"We could be a Mecca of tourism," he liked to say.

I did not know his middle name, his political views or where he had been born. I only knew that I liked the guy, the stories he told and the fact that nearing 90, he still felt like he could contribute to his city, and did.

He could talk to you about everything, and nearly did, stretching the morning cup of coffee well into the afternoon. His detail-filled stories made him a reporter's best friend and a deadline's worst enemy.

He loved telling you how at an age most people have begun to slip, he could still get things done. A sign that says Othello on SR-395? How about two. An application for $2 million for the interpretive center? Done deal. For 22 years, Les was more for Othello.

And now he is gone. Hard to believe that a person left too early when they live nine decades, but the truth is, Clemons did not deserve to go, much less go the way he did. He still had so much to contribute and he deserved to see at least the laying of the first brick of his beloved dream, the interpretive center.

He lost Dot, his wife of 64 years, a month ago, and perhaps to deaden the pain of losing her, he immersed himself into his work, always keeping up with what was going on in the world. And it was while doing exactly that, picking up the morning paper, that death found him, leaving a family without its patriarch, a church without an elder and a community without a leader.

He also left a reporter with a heavy conscience. I never got to bring him copies of the article about him winning Citizen of the Year in 2004 like he had asked me to many times. I wish I could say I have an excuse, but I don't. I never forgot, but I never got around to it, either and now I have to carry around the dreadful feeling that I let a friend down.

I know that what I feel is nothing compared to what his family must be feeling right now, and that is who my thoughts are with. I am also thinking of the next time Clemons and I meet — there will be no deadlines and there will always be one more story to tell. Here's hoping there's plenty of coffee in heaven.

Sebastian Moraga is the Columbia Basin Herald's city and political reporter.