I managed a men's store called The Centurion for John Erdman in San
Francisco in the late sixties ... early seventies. John's wife, Mary,
was an OR nurse. They both smoked a pack or so every day. One day he
came into the store and announced they had quit smoking the night
before. She had been assisting on an operation where they opened the
lungs of a smoker who smoked about as much as they did. The inside of
his lungs was BLACK as a result of the smoke. Mary came home, tossed
every cigarette in the house out and told John "they" had just quit
smoking. Nothing like seeing the results to make you decide very
quickly not to smoke. He said later that the sudden announcement with
no build up and the finality of her decision for the two of them was
what made it easier for him to quit.
Shelley Silverman, a salesman friend, used to help out at the Centurion
when we sales. He lived across town but used to drop in to visit quite
often. I had known Shelley for perhaps fifteen years at this time. He
had always smoked a pipe and used a very high priced tobacco that
smelled wonderful. After we moved back to Utah we stayed in touch with
he and his wife. We took him to dinner one night when he was in town
and during the course of the evening found; 1 ... it was his sixtieth
birthday and 2 ... that he was going to see a doctor when he returned
to San Francisco from the trip because of a persistent cough. A month
later they operated on his esophagus to remove a major throat cancer.
When we saw him a year later he was talking through a hole in his neck.
Needless to say he wasn't selling his clothing lines any more but had
returned to college to get a degree in Geruntology with the intent of
working with cancer survivors. He made it for another nine years after
the surgery.
His Christmas seasonal job was as a Santa Claus in a store in
Stonestown ... Shelley explained he was an "ecumenical Santa". Made a
wonderful Santa with his pipe and all but the cancer ended that.
Wes
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