It's more than a little sobering to contemplate a man's life work, his contribution to the public good on the day of his death, while sitting in a room where he held court--literally, as the village magistrate--working at a desk where he worked to solve problems that likely seemed insoluble given the resources at hand, twisting in a chair that he probably occupied between trips out among his "clients," the citizens of the small village of Dodson, where some years ago I decided to return to make what probably will be my "last stand" in a newspaper career that has gone on much longer than I ever thought it might back in an earlier life.

The man I'm thinking of is Alvin J. Wendt, Sr., best known as "Mayor" Wendt, from a period of service which lasted, not quite forever as his daughter Patricia verbalized it, but long enough for the title and the accomplishments of the career to be as much his name as his epitaph to those who knew him during his lifetime. Mayor Wendt died last night. (It's Friday, July 25, as I write this, to replace an earlier piece partially written that never quite gelled, anyhow.) He was 95, and had several up-and-down periods during the past three or four years while a resident of a couple of nursing home facilities in the area. Thus his passing did not come as a surprise--but when it comes, the reality takes some mental sorting out to find its location in the catalog of experiences that make up one's lifetime--as the soaking in of a summer shower takes time to percolate into all the places of a plant's unseen underground roots.

During most of the time I have been in and around Dodson--a period which goes back to the beginning of my life--Alvin Wendt has been a part of the scene. I did not in fact "grow up" in Dodson, but was always in and out, spending summers and other times with my grandparents who were long-time residents, and landed back in the community for most of my high school career. Then, and later, "Wendt" was around in several capacities, and wound up as a member of the town council when the village decided to formally become a municipal entity, in the post World War II period when finally, electricity, water, and other services began to appear.

I don't know, and could not immediately find anyone who does know exactly when it was decided to build a Town Hall. Sometime in the 1960s, is my guess, and only a guess. According to Dodson's present Mayor Loyd Vines, the Town Hall was built "a good while before" Wendt became Mayor in the middle 1970s. First as a Town Council member, and then as Mayor, Wendt was involved not only in making some upgrades in the Town Hall, but was the major force behind getting the present water system--including the 150,000 gallon above-ground storage tank--under municipal management.

During Wendt's era as Mayor, money for operations was scarce. As Mayor Vines said earlier today, "He got a lot done, when there was not much to do with." His daughter, Patricia recalls many years assisting her father on middle-of-the-night fire calls on the single fire truck owned by the municipality, as well as going out to repair broken water lines, and personally rendering service to citizens in many unusual circumstances.

Not long after Wendt's retirement, and Mayor Vines' administrtio began in 1995, planning was started for a new Town Hall. In 1997, the Piney Woods Journal opened in Dodson in a vacant residential building a block south of the Dodson High School. By 1999, the new Town Hall was completed for occupation, and at the instigation of Mayor Vines, we rented the old Town Hall building at 104 North 3rd Street, which is a fancy way of saying, in the middle of downtown Dodson facing U.S. Highway 167, underneath the big white water tower. When the office of government moved from the old building much of the furniture and fixtures were left in place. Thus, today, I work in the room where Mayor Wendt held court, where the Town Council met, and where the public came and went, paying water bills and speeding tickets. My work space includes a table top once used by the Mayor and Council to hear public issues and take actions for this and that. Patricia Wendt, the ex-Mayor's daughter, who has for the past eight or nine years sold most of the advertising which appears in the Piney Woods Journal, composes her work on computers that sit in an office, and probably at the same desk, that her father, and Mayor Vines later used during their years as Mayor.

It would seem here appropriate to quote, as best I can remember it, the famous statement by Southern novelist William Faulkner . . . The past is never dead; it's not even past.

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