July 12, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

A few months back, I wrote someone that perhaps it’s just a handful of people who make an impression certain and deep in individual lives. She was one in mine, and I had never told her. I finally did. Time is finite.

Today I add to the list of those so owed, though I no longer can tell my quite recent friend Ken Myles that he made more than a great impression in the short moment we came to know each other. He passed recently, unexpectedly.

Ken seemed a brother – alike in thought, alike in background. He had deep appreciation for the ordinary person, the guy and gal who just wants to live a life of peace in decent health, with modest income and family/friends to share both warm moments and the reinforcement we all need in life. From the comments he made, in response to my writing and otherwise, Ken without doubt came across as a humanitarian, a man with empathy.

It turns out we shared time in Spring Valley, N.Y., in our era a country village. His grandparents came from Canada to manage the orchards at the former Lakeside Farm, and his father Eugene worked locally. Ken’s cousin is Gordon Wren Jr., the retired Rockland County director of fire and emergency services.

Ken and I shared affinity for the ordinary folk, as did our working-class families. One comment Ken offered was about the local small-town diner – Tiny’s – where he went Saturdays after working with his father. He wrote, “Every town then had a diner. Workers of all kinds, sharing stories of every kind. Waitresses tough and kind who knew everything about everyone. It’s the working men and women I remember and how in the diner all seemed as family. They all knew life and the role they played in it.”

If that doesn’t ring of the better moments and promise of America, I don’t know what does. In these days of ultra-partisan politics, even hijacked politics by those who seek division for power and money, anyone who recognizes decency, who shares ups and downs, who lives with the basics is a builder and protector of the American Experiment. However it stumbles, it progresses with we the people.

Ken Myles was one of them. He made that impression, and I thank him and others for their decency.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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