What Will People Think Of Us ?

                              What Will Others Think of Us?

            The thought occurred to me again last week when, for the third time, my e-mail account was hacked. A missive was sent out under my name. I have no idea as to the content and can but hope that it was a harmless commercial usage. It gave me pause to remember a story about a very dear and much admired older friend who has now passed on to the great beyond.

           Paschal C. Rubino was one of Buffalo’s more prominent Funeral Directors, as had his father been before him. It was an honored legacy of service to the public spanning many decades. A former President of the Buffalo Board of Education, member and director of countless Corporate Boards of Directors and prominent charities, Pat Rubino was a man much admired in our small portion of the world in Western New York.

          During one Mayoral campaign, over many luncheons and conversations, we became fast friends, even though the disparity in our ages spanned some five decades. Pat often tried to impart to me some of the many pearls of wisdom that he had acquired from the long life that he had lived.

          One of those truisms that I most remember and still recall was his notion of people talking about you.

          “ Joe” he said during one memorable nine-hour luncheon at Chef’s Restaurant on Seneca Street, “No man or woman alive, however accomplished, gets up from a table and leaves a room without people talking about them. You have to be comfortable with that concept if ever you reach any level of prominence, which I assure you that you will.”

          He further added something that has stayed with me these many years.

           “Your friends will always think the best of you and believe only what they know to be true, disbelieving anything to the contrary. And as for the others,” he shrugged and smiled. “Who cares what they say or think?”

            It was a simple concept really that was to help sustain me through the next three decades of the searing heat of ward politics, Buffalo style.

           Depending on whether you were up or down that season or year, you could either receive public credit for sliced bread and the rising sun, or be held accountable for the sinking of the Titanic and the setting sun. Both cycles of opinion are obverse sides of the same coin of public opinion. You had to learn to accept them both with equanimity. Pat’s earthy wisdom helped me to do that.

          I told the story so often that I much shortened it to describe the point, albeit somewhat irreverently

            “If I heard that Pat Rubino shot the pope, I would have but one unequivocal reaction.”

            “ Then the son of a bitch must have needed shooting.”

            I think often and fondly of this esteemed philosopher and the earthy wisdom that he tried to impart to me during the brief tenure of our association before he met his heavenly reward.

            Vaya Con Dios, Mr. Rubino. I will always remember you and fondly.

                                                                        -30-

                                                                (517 words)

                                                         Joseph Xavier Martin