Employees come and go in a newsroom. At The Columbian, we recently welcomed video storyteller Ariane Kunze and photographer Natalie Behring, and said goodbye to reporter Tyler Graf and photographer Zachary Kaufman. But one thing that remains constant are the gadflies.
That’s why it was a shock to learn of the death of Michael Kepcha on Thanksgiving Day. Michael was a faithful caller to the metro desk, and, unlike many callers, never had a complaint or called to promote a self-serving cause or political point of view.
Instead, he was a good-natured teller of all of the tales of his neighborhood way, way up the Washougal River. He wondered what would happen to the old George Schmid & Sons property along the Washougal River. (It’s slated to become a park.)
He was excited about the waterfront trail across the Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge. He wanted us to know that someone had fixed up a dilapidated house in Camas and turned it into an insurance office.
He was a faithful reader of the legal notices in our sister publication, the Camas-Washougal Post Record. He saw stuff that he thought was interesting, and he called me to let me know about it. Generally, I think most of those legal ads are mind-numbingly routine, but over the years Michael gave us plenty of tips that became good stories.
Michael wasn’t our only faithful correspondent over the years with a particular passion. The “Grammar Hammer” seemed to read every word we wrote, and he would let our reporters know when they misused one. He always did it gently, mixing critiques with compliments. A few of us met the “Hammer” once, just before he moved to New Mexico.
Another frequent caller was Larry, a map expert who must have memorized every road in the county. If we confused a circle with a court, or had an address on the wrong side of Mill Plain, Larry would call. We never did meet Larry, or learn his last name.
I never met Michael, either. I imagined a quiet, gentle sort of man, someone whose attention to detail could drive others a little crazy. I do know Michael lived alone, was disabled, and money was an issue. And this summer he said something about having heart trouble.
After he died, I recalled that he had run for public office. I checked our archives. Sure enough, he ran for an open House seat in the Legislature in 2002, the only Democrat in the race. “I’m for balance,” Kepcha told our reporter. “I want to run an even-handed policy on the Growth Management Act and follow the rules.”
Michael would have known every one of those rules.
Of course, he was defeated. It didn’t help that he couldn’t campaign much. His car had broken down, and he didn’t have the money to get it fixed. And his district ran all the way to Yakima. He ran again in 2004, with the same result. But I did find a photo in our online archives of a man who became a phone friend.
Michael, I’ll miss your calls.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
