Remembering Tom Heidlebaugh, from The Distinguished Poet Series

A daffodil beside the moving marchers was too long unclaimed so I went and got it. It is impolite not to pick them up, but at that point the daffodils are fresh. And I met the canoe from the canoe project, stepped back from its dark side with words in Native American language. That left me with thoughts of Tom Heidlebaugh. I worked with Tom Heidlebaugh from 1993-1996 on a poetry series.

When I worked with poetry with a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, several poets from readings in Tacoma united to do The Distinguished Poet Series at Arts Walk downtown. Although my heritage group has been The Order of Runeberg because my grandmother came from Finland, I studied some Johan Ludwig Runeberg and Scandinavian Culture at the University of Washington.

Johan Ludwig Runeberg was a Swedish-Finn who was a national poet of Finland. To understand national poets of Finland and Finland one might think of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha was modeled upon the Kslevala, and used the metrics of Elias Lönroth's recreation of the Finnish folk tales. The national poets of Finland used the official language, Swedish, to enrich the cultural consciousness of all of Finland.

With Tom Heidlebaugh's Canoe Story group, I could contemplate this outreach of cultural consciousness, Elias Lönroth and the Kalevala, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the Song of Hiawatha, myself and Tom Heidlebaugh's Canoe Story. And our series turned out to be very multicultural.

Earlier than that, after Tom Heidlebaugh had been diagnosed with cancer, he established a road trip poetry voyage through Mexico to Central America. Actually, I remember when I met him, at the Antique Sandwich Company at a reading when he presented a story of his travels. He was able to work although he was not well. Each group member gave a reading themselves, I remember The News Tribune wrote an appreciative article about his reading. We were often at the Pantages Rehearsal Hall. The group members met one week after each reading to talk about how it went and work on plans for the reading of the next month.

Tom Heidlebaugh died early in 1997. Around the end of June, 1997, there was a memorial service for him at Steilacoom's Sunnyside Park. One week later I found myself heading back there. I wrote about it in a journal:

I thought of the readings followed a week later by meetings - that if by any chance Tom's spirit had returned for the meeting someone would stop for a little at Sunnyside. I walked up the beach and past the shelter.

In the water skin divers, from the walk out of Steiacoom I could not tell if they were pilings or birds or seals - only a few people at the parking lot -

At the Lakewood Mall there was a rose show and I smelled a Queen Elizabeth Rose - one my mother had - I smelled a Queen Elizabeth Rose again...

At Sunnyside I was thinking of Tom's t-shirts he left to people - and found a green hair-tie washed up in the rocks - which reminded me of a pink hair-tie from Scandinavia and the walk to see Blå-Slipper - and I guess I did not want a bird to eat it - the color green- natural.

At the memorial service people watched a small object on the horizon become a canoe as it came near - the rowers pulled the canoe up the rocky beach and they carried a box which contained t-shirts that had belonged to Tom Heidlebaugh, which were awarded to friends at the service.

Tom Heidlebaugh's canoe book's title - Great Canoes: Reviving A Northwest Coast Tradition