BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

I thought it was a normal question. I just wanted to know what night the local kids were supposed to trick-or-treat. 
My co-workers looked at me as if I were already wearing a two-headed-woman costume. 
That’s because I was in my first post-college job outside Ohio, working in a North Carolina newsroom. Beggars Night may as well have been drenched in tomato-based barbecue sauce for the reaction I received, because coastal Tar Heels prefer their trick-or-treaters to arrive on Oct. 31 and their pork to be bathed in vinegar.
Nonetheless, a reporter called the local sheriff to ask when trick-or-treating would be held, to which he replied, “Halloween is Halloween. It comes when it comes.” It was a grand proclamation of the obvious, stated earnestly, which helped make it one of those quotes that still makes me chuckle, such as when a crime witness told an Illinois reporter, “I thought I smelled something felonious.” 
So Halloween arrived on Oct. 31 in North Carolina. 
It came on Oct. 31 in a series of other states. Just as the Grinch couldn’t stop Christmas from arriving in Whoville, somehow or other, it came just the same.

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

From the summer shade of our front porch, I frequently saw our subdivision neighbors walk their dogs, ride their skateboards, jog with their headphones, and enjoy the fresh air with their families. 
That was pre-gravel. I mean “chip seal,” or “chip and seal.” Otherwise known as cheap seal. Poor man’s paving. Township torture.
Chip seal is a resurfacing technique, cheaper than asphalt, that has been increasingly used in Clinton County, around Ohio and in other states facing dwindling budgets. It is anywhere from 5 to 12 times less expensive than asphalt but about 100 times less user-friendly, especially at first, and not as long-lasting. After a tar-like emulsion is sprayed on the road, noisy, dusty gravel is placed into the black goop to sink in and resurface the street, which is then supposed to be rolled and later swept to remove the excess gravel. 
We waited three weeks, and the sweepers hadn’t come — because they weren’t coming. My neighbors called township trustees, as did my husband. There were no plans to clear the gravel from the roads. “In time, it gets pushed to the side,” said Michael R. Rose, Adams Township vice president. 

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

After almost nine long months of mental and physical preparation, the pain hits hard and fast, sometimes with a lot of screaming. Then it’s over, leaving a mess behind and even more hard work ahead. 
Some remember the pain, but apparently most forget. 
I’m talking about moving. 
Since adulthood, I’ve had one child, with epidural assistance.
In that timeframe, however, I have moved my stuff 24 times, not a doula in sight.
A few of the moves were in college, most with my military husband. They weren’t all major moves, because we didn’t always require a tractor-trailer trailing us wherever we went. At first, we had a futon, boxes of books and a hair dryer.
Now we have what the military refers to as “household goods.” Thousands of pounds of them. It took two days

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

I met Bruce Harrolle almost 30 years ago. Our parents were friends in Wilmington, so we were thrown together as kids before, thankfully, such things were called “playdates.” 
I hadn’t seen Bruce in more than a dozen years, but was stunned when my mother called me with the news of his death, immediately thinking of his beautiful family photo from a Christmas card. His young children, ages 2 and 4, would be without their father, who so obviously adored them. 
That he died saving lives is supposed to give comfort, but to me it makes his death feel even more unjust. This was one of the good guys. They’re supposed to ride (or fly, in his case) off into the sunset. 
I’ve spent time this past week reading all the entries on a memorial site for Bruce on www.legacy.com, where people who know him (and some who don’t) leave messages and memories. A week after his death, there were 45 pages full of comments, with more added all the time. 

​From those comments, you can tell that there was shock and sadness all over the world at the news of Bruce Harrolle’s death. There are comments from people who have worked with him, people who live in his neighborhood, people who went to Wilmington High School with him, and even people whose family members’ lives he saved.
People already miss his kindness, his humility, his bravery, his sense of humor and — most frequently mentioned — his smile.
“He always had a smile on his face.”
“… I was struck by his infectious smile and laugh.”
“Bruce was always bigger than life with an incredible smile on his face.”
“We miss you, Bruce, especially your smile.”
“His smile lit up our neighborhood.”
“Always that charismatic smile that could turn any bad day into a good one.”
“I will remember Bruce with the smile he always carried with him.”
I, too, can easily conjure Bruce’s smile in my memory, but have since studied it in photos online and now see it as the wry smile of gentleness, not the big, toothy smile of celebrity. His smile obviously put people at ease, and in the rescue business, that seems to be an added bonus. 
In the photos of him smiling, I also remember his sense of humor and have marveled at the obvious immense stature he achieved as a man. That thought made me laugh, though, because as I’m sure Bruce would tell you, using the word “stature” to describe him is in itself amusing. He was kind of, um, short in high school, apparently saving his height and strength for later, when he needed them in the real world. 
Roger Vanderpool, Arizona Department of Public Safety director, spoke at Bruce’s funeral about how reassuring it must’ve been to see Bruce coming to the rescue.
“That image must be something like a Boy Scout, Superman, Dudley Do-Right and Ponch from ‘CHiPs’ all kind of rolled into one Super Good Guy coming to the rescue,” Vanderpool said.
After high school, I only saw Bruce once, when my husband and I hung out with him one night when he visited San Diego. I kept up with his career moves and personal life through his family, though, and when he found me listed on classmates.com in 2000, he e-mailed me out of the blue. I kept his e-mail so I’d have his address, although after that we just corresponded with Christmas cards. 
In that e-mail from eight years ago, he was telling me how proud his was of his younger brother, Brad, who at the time was living in Hollywood, Calif. “He is always running into someone famous — Jim Carrey, Jennifer Love Hewitt and, my personal favorite, Erik Estrada from ‘CHiPs.’”
And regarding his new job with the highway patrol’s rescue helicopter, Bruce told me, “I pretty much hit the lottery.”
As if it had anything to do with luck.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

A life in the military has its pleasures and pains, but one aspect is both a pleasure and a pain: moving.
I come from a long line of movers, so you’d think I’d be used to it. My parents moved 15 times during my dad’s military career. The irony there is that they retired to Clinton County when I, the youngest of four, was a preschooler, so I attended Wilmington City Schools all my life — no out-of-state moves for 13 years.
Since leaving Wilmington after graduation, however, I’ve moved more times than I can count. And now, every few years, my husband and I get the urge to live somewhere new, to experience a different place.
We’ve always loved everywhere we’ve lived, and we have made close friends all over the United States. We’ve lived on both coasts and several places in the middle.
The downside is that we have left behind family and friends, some of whom we’ve never seen again. 
It’s hard to explain to people who’ve always had a choice where to live, but when the military tells you you’re going to move, you’re going to move. That’s why they call them “orders.” Sure, you have some input on your destiny, but the bottom line is that the military sends you where it needs you, when it needs you.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

You brush, you floss, you avoid all that Halloween candy. You try to take care of your teeth as best you can.
If you live in Wilmington, however, you can’t count on your city water supply to help prevent tooth decay. The city’s municipal water supply is not fluoridated.
Almost 91 percent of Ohioans served by public water supplies are served by systems with adequate fluoride levels, according to the Ohio Department of Health. 
Wilmington residents are not among them.
Wilmington is one of just 24 Ohio communities that is exempt from a state law that requires fluoridation of public water supplies that serve more than 5,000 people.
These are the kinds of things you find out when you have a preschooler with more cavities than she should have. 

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

I’m not even sure sunscreen existed when I was a kid.
Back then, we used “tanning oil,” a coconut-scented concotion that actually accelerated the sun-damage process. Sometimes we bought its cheaper cousin, baby oil, which we used to baste ourselves like Thanksgiving turkeys. Zero SPF, baby.
This was the goal of my friends every summer: Become as tan as possible by the time school started again. The process involved an awful lot of “laying out,” an incredibly boring and stupid pastime that only improved with the invention of the boombox.
“Laying out” was what we did on our tri-fold lounge chairs, on rafts in a pool, or on silver, reflective NASA-like inventions created solely for reflecting as much sun as possible onto our young skin, rotating our bodies to face the sun as it moved across the sky.
Tanning was easier for me, thanks to Italian DNA, than it was for many of my fairer-skinned friends. They often became a painful pink color before their sunburns “turned to tan.”
Either way, we were blissfully unaware of ultraviolet rays’ effects on our epidermis.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

When I’ve moved to new places, I’ve found myself in the middle of a conversation where I suddenly have no idea what everyone else talking about. Those are the times I am reminded that I’m not really a local.
And although I’ve lived places long enough to almost feel like a native, the only town I’ll truly be a local in is Wilmington, which I’m reminded of every time I speak these two little words: “Odd Lots.” 
Say “Odd Lots” to someone who hasn’t lived in Wilmington for long and they’re guaranteed to at least raise an eyebrow. On the other hand, if you say those two words to someone else from Wilmington, they won’t even blink.
With Odd Lots in mind, I started to think of other ways that Wilmingtonians can be sure they’re from Wilmington. I also enlisted the help of a few lifelong Wilmington friends in order to come up with this list, which is in no way exhaustive. I’m sure you have your own mental lists, but please allow me to share mine:
You know you’re from Wilmington if …
—If you still refer to that discount store with the big orange letters as “Odd Lots,” even though it was renamed “Big Lots” many years ago.
—You don’t think “fighting Quakers” is an oxymoron.
—You know how to correctly pronounce “Rombach,” “Sabina” and “Raizk.”
—You don’t even question why the mascot of an inland Midwestern school is a hurricane.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

It was a tearful morning Wednesday in Wilmington's kindergarten classrooms as 5- and 6-year-olds released the secure grips of their parents and started their first day of 13 years of public education.
The tears, however, didn't belong solely to the children.
Their parents were also feeling the full effects of separation anxiety, handing over their babies to strangers for an entire day, which would be followed by another entire day, followed by another entire day ..
My daughter, who is 4, wasn't among them, so I was not one of the shell-shocked faces leaving the elementary schools. I felt spared. 
But the majority of her little friends are a year older than she is, so we know many of those sweet kindergarten faces, and I enjoy the friendship of their mothers.
Over and over, they have warned me: “Prepare yourself now. It’s awful.”

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

There once was a little boy whose heroes were baseball players. He played catch with his dad until the only light in the Sabina sky came from fireflies. He fell asleep at night with a transistor radio clutched to his chest, static crackling through the names of Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Ken Griffey.
He was a Cincinnati Reds fan then. He’s a Cincinnati Reds fan now, through dozens of years, dozens of disappointments and a few World Series championships. He can still name the lineups, in order, of the 1975-76 teams.
My husband grew up playing baseball back when you could find enough kids in the schoolyard who wanted to field an impromptu game. He later worked nights at Airborne after full days of high school, fitting in baseball practice for East Clinton High School — catching sleep when he could.
He joined the Navy to serve his country, then left the service after 11 years to finish his college degree. He was taking his final nursing-school classes when terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and he felt helpless in his new role as a civilian. As soon as he graduated, he re-entered the military of a nation at war, this time in the Air Force, and he recently spent time in Afghanistan, treating wounded soldiers and civilians at the hospital on Bagram Air Base.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

Some turn to Zoloft. I turned to pizza. 
It started the first night my daughter and I spent alone, all those months ago, after my husband left for Afghanistan.
One of my neighbors called to say she was ordering Generations Pizza for her family and that she was ordering one for us, too. No “If there’s anything I can do for you …” Just the wonderful statement that she was bringing us pizza.
Not wanting her to go to any trouble, I almost blatantly lied and said that I’d already had dinner. At the time she called I was eating Kix cereal straight from the box, the picture of pathetic.
So my neighbor brought pizza, and I was happy, and my daughter was thrilled. We are big fans of Generations Pizza. I went to high school with owner Kerry Steed, back when he was delivering in the evenings for the family business, so I would probably occasionally visit his pizzeria out of loyalty, even if it were just so-so. But Generations makes fantastic pizza, consistently great, and it became such a gastronomical habit in my husband’s absence that I even stopped telling him when we’d eaten there. 
He’d ask anyway.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

A handmade card, a table full of flowers, blue skies, warm sunshine and a squeaky-voiced “Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy.” It was nearly perfect.
Finally, at 10:46 a.m., the phone rang.
My husband was on the other end. “Would you like to go to lunch on Tuesday?” he asked.
I could not have been happier.
Lunch? On Tuesday? That’s my idea of Mother’s Day perfection?
It is when the phone call comes from the Middle East, and the future lunch date is the first one in months, with a handsome Air Force officer who was called to duty in January.
My husband is coming home from Afghanistan, after a long, tough winter for everyone involved. 

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

“Dear Eileen Brady,” the letter read. “Your opinions and your satisfaction mean everything to us.” That’s why the YMCA chose me to take a member satisfaction survey.
Well, gosh, thanks for asking.
Let’s fill in the little “Excellent” bubble for staff friendliness. I love the people who work there. They’re extremely pleasant.
Member satisfaction, however, takes a downhill slide after that.
I’ve belonged to other YMCAs and have used fitness centers on military bases. I’d never seen cardio equipment located in a hallway, and I can’t say I’m a big fan of it. 
Aside from the dueling TVs blaring “The Price Is Right” and “Dr. Phil” in the daytime, the cardio hallways are a gathering place in the evenings for parents waiting for cheerleading practice to end. They stand close enough to catch sweat drops from people on the elliptical machines. 

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

Each March, I donate $5 to an NCAA office pool.
I don’t win, but I come dangerously close. My husband has won, and I got to share in his bounty, so that was almost as fun as winning.
I don’t even work in an office now. That didn’t stop me from being in an office pool, but it did lessen my guilt about draining worker productivity by this year’s estimated $1.2 billion.
For the past 13 years, my husband and I have participated in this year’s same office pool, with my former newsroom colleagues in Jacksonville, N.C., cheerfully organized each year by our friend Robert. 
My husband spews sports statistics like a “SportsCenter” anchor, so he brings that knowledge to his brackets.
Although I am a sports fan and often could make intelligent choices based on strength of schedule and tournament seeds, I never do. 

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

When she was a little girl growing up in early-1950s Detroit, Romaine Jeskey would lie down on a patch of grass in the city, with her eyes toward the sky, watching the airplanes soar above.
She wanted to fly even then, but her path to that dream would not resemble the straight line of the jetliner contrails in the blue above. 
At the time, though, Jeskey remembers telling her parents on an airport observation deck that she wanted to fly.
“I wanna do that,” she said.
“You can take a trip,” they told her. Or, “You can become a stewardess.”
But Romaine Jeskey wanted to fly the planes.    ...

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

Wilmington, as most of us know, has its own human Internet. Sure, some may call it small-town gossip, but you’ve gotta give it credit for its speed-of-light efficiency.
Accuracy, however, is always iffy.
See, the problem is, just like with the Worldwide Web, the Wilmington Web does a great job of passing along rumors and urban legends.
Nearly every group conversation I’ve had since for three months has included these words: Did you hear we’re getting a Kohl’s and a Target?
I heard it, time and again.
Except we’re not. Not yet, at least.

EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

​A man is off to war, desperately missing his wife, his daughters, the comforts of home. Although he initially does not question his duty or his mission, the realities of war and the atrocities he witnesses eventually alter his perspective.
He questions his own courage. He questions the justification for war.
This story is not a modern memoir, though it could be considered modern allegory. The book, “March,” by Geraldine Brooks, is set almost 150 years ago during the Civil War, about a man moved by conscience to serve as a chaplain for young troops.
The book won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and its beautiful language coupled with its compelling historical story make it a deserving choice, reminiscent of 2004’s Pulitzer-winning “The Known World,” by Edward P. Jones, though that book felt substantially stronger. 

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

One of the cruel byproducts of spending 13 years in public school and another four — ahem, five — years in college is that I never stopped expecting summers off. And I never stopped getting giddy about snow days. 
Although I had wanted to become a teacher so I could continue that schedule, I instead became a journalist, which meant that dangerous weather and natural disasters caused me to spend more time at work, not less. 
I never did give up wishing for snow days, even when I lived where it didn’t snow. There’s just something so precious about being given the unexpected gift of a full day of free time. 
So forgive me if I condone a recent criminal act involving an unexpected snow day.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

I was working near the coast of North Carolina when a colleague named Aileen (no relation) was taking a trip down memory lane, to a snow-covered driveway in Michigan, where she had shoveled snow. 
Although I was only in my second Southern year, that kind of heavy snowfall already was a distant memory, like a fuzzy nightmare I couldn’t quite remember. So Aileen and I gloated about our luck, we two Midwestern expatriates, for not even owning snow shovels, for throwing away our scarves, and for being able to hang outdoor Christmas lights in short sleeves. Then we vowed never to take warm winters for granted and never to move any farther north than we already were.
Before you could say “best-laid plans” or “never say never” or any other I-told-you-so phrase, I was breaking out the snow boots in the Midwest, this time in Illinois, where co-workers had to endure plenty of winter whining from someone with now-thin blood, and where I again faced cold winters and driveways covered in snow. A few years after that, we moved from Illinois to Ohio — same snow, one day later.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

I stood in downtown Lebanon with 39,999 other people early in December and thought, “What does Lebanon have that Wilmington doesn’t have?” I mean, we have a quaint and picturesque downtown, with its beautiful architecture, active business community and government offices that haven’t relocated to a strip mall. 
A few of the best restaurants in town even eke out business in the midst of a chain nation.
So why were thousands of people gathering in downtown Lebanon instead of downtown Wilmington? Why were people shelling out money all over Warren County?
A parade. A holiday parade.
Everyone loves a parade. But not just any parade, I’ve come to believe. A parade with a twist. A parade with specificity. A parade like Lebanon’s annual horse-and-carriage parade, which drew an estimated 80,000 people (40,000 in the afternoon, and 40,000 in the evening) and brought participants from hundreds of miles away.

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

Hurry up. Get to the next sentence. Time’s a wastin’. 
We’re a nation in a hurry, and we don’t want to wait. We don’t want to wait in traffic, and we don’t want to spend time on hold on the phone.
And we especially don’t want to wait on line in the grocery store.
Almost one in four people in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll picked the grocery checkout as the line where their patience is most likely to run out. 
“If you ask the typical person, ‘Do you feel more time-poor or money-poor?’ the answer almost always is time-poor,” says Paco Underhill, founder of Envirosell, a New York-based research firm. “We walk in the door with the clock ticking with various degrees of loudness in our heads. And if I get to the checkout and if I have the perception it’s not working efficiently, often that clock gets even louder.”

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

The problem isn’t dogs, it’s people.
The dogs, of course, suffer at the hands of people. Or they end up homeless because of people. Or abused by people. Or starved by people. Or tied to trees by people.
So when I offer to volunteer at a shelter, I tell the people in charge that I really don’t want to deal with the people who come through the door.
If only it worked out that way.
I’ve seen children sobbing in their cars as their parents bring their dogs in to give them up because A.) they’re moving; B.) the dog chewed up something or C.) the dog barks a lot. 
News flash: Dogs chew. Dogs bark. Dogs whine. Dogs pee. Dogs shed. Dogs knock things over with their exuberance.
And dogs, in fact, can actually move with you. That one’s my personal favorite: “We’re moving. We can’t keep our dog.”

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

The weather was unseasonably warm on that Friday night.
The weather was miserably cold and rainy the very next morning.
There were 5,100 people attending that Friday night football game between Clinton-Massie and Blanchester, people supporting high school warriors fighting to advance in the playoffs.
There were about 25 people — not including the volunteers or the speakers — attending that Saturday morning Veterans Day service at  J.W. Denver Williams Park, in honor of real warriors who have fought (and are still fighting) real battles around the globe.
Yet I’m pretty sure the weather had nothing to do with the disparity in attendance figures.