On Dec. 25, my oldest living friend sent me a merry Christmas text message. Best Christmas gift I’ve had in years.
I always look forward to hearing from Jack Prohaska (and his wife Liz Prohaska, too), though I’ve reached that point in time when a part of me fears that the next call I make will be the last one. I really should ignore that fear—it has caused me to make fewer calls rather than more.
Jack and Liz have been my friends since I was 12. It was 1973, probably May or June. They would become two of my teachers. They had their first child a year or two later. At the time of our meeting, Jack and Liz were co-directors of a now-defunct private school in Long Beach. Jack and Liz were just about the only good things about it.
Jack tried to teach me welding once. It wasn’t for me. Jack taught me to dissect a frog. Unfortunately, that was the only frog the private school had, so the biology class disbanded.
After that first year, the Prohaskas moved to Tucson, Arizona, to start a new life, a family, and a school. Alas, Sunset Hill School did not work out. (I still have a sample of their letterhead.) Liz went on to a successful teaching career and is now retired. Jack went on to be a successful clinical social worker and is now retired.
They are still in the house they built on the edge of Tucson, Arizona, nestled between two hills. My last visit was in 2015.
During most of my teens I made an annual summer trek to Tucson to see Jack and Liz and also to get a couple of weeks away from my family.
One time when my father and I were not getting along—since I was a teenager, let’s just assume it was my fault, OK?—I told Jack I was thinking about running away. Jack told me to run to his place. He’d let my father know I was OK, but wouldn’t send me back until I was ready.
Of course, I never ran away.
I also never figured out how Jack and Liz could know me as a teenager and keep their sanity. (Never mind keeping in touch with me for five decades.)
Jack was the first adult who seemed to take the child version of Charles seriously as a person.
Background: I was born with a heart defect. My survival was not guaranteed. My mother was convinced my days were numbered.
When I came home from my first Tucson summer, Jack told my father: “Everyone treats him like he’s a delicate little flower that will blow away in the wind—and he’s not.”
I suspect that Jack deliberately spoke to my father in my presence to send a message to both of us.
During another Tucson visit, when Jack’s nephew bullied me during a summer visit, it was Jack who insisted I defend myself.
Jack wasn’t siding against his nephew. He was trying to teach us both a useful lesson: don’t mistreat others and don’t put up with mistreatment.
During one summer visit to Tucson, I think I was 14 at the time, a diamondback rattlesnake showed up near the house. I told Liz about the snake. She brought Jack a shotgun. It jammed. Liz brought him a .22 rifle. It jammed. Liz held the diamondback down with a hoe while Jack beat it to death with a shovel.
Jack later told me that if he had encountered the snake while walking in the desert, he would have left it alone.
Jack encouraged my writing, though I don’t know if he thought I could make a career of it. (So few do.) He thought I was a better writer than Mickey Spillane. Since Jack wasn’t a Spillane fan, I don’t know if that qualifies as a compliment. In those days I was obsessed with detective stories. One day, Jack asked if I wanted to become a police officer.
I remember thinking: I can’t take stress, I hold grudges, and I am always angry. I said “No” in roughly two heartbeats.
Charles M. Kelly is associate editor of the Sun Newspapers.
