BAKERSFIELD, CA-

The orange truck came speeding south on H Street. My kid Landen, 17, said, “There’s that orange truck. I see it everywhere. It’s following me.” He was half joking, but it’s true. I recognized the orange truck’s driver. He lives with his wife in a little bungalow on Blanche Street, close to St. Francis of Assisi Church.

Sometimes I see the same person everywhere. There’s a disfigured man who seems to haunt me. He passes on a bus, walks past on streets. He once roamed campuses while I attended local colleges. He appears in libraries and grocery stores—even on Internet sites. I’ve seen him for nearly 20 years and have pointed him out. He’s everywhere.

It’s strange because other paths seem to never cross even though people live in the same town.

A few minutes before seeing the orange truck I saw many teary faces in St. Francis Church. Doug Sharratt’s memorial service had just ended. There were faces I hadn’t seen in months. Some of them probably watched me on ABC23 (KERO) while I spoke about the Internet twice a day. But I never saw them. All I ever saw was a camera, reporters, cameramen, producers, monitors, my old fishbowl office. Yet, out in the community was a sea of faces looking at me like detectives through one of those fancy interrogation room windows.

A moment of solitude during the memorial of Doug Sharratt in Bakersfield, Calif.

Every once in a while I would hear a report that I had been seen on TV. People asked how I was doing but rarely asked for themselves. It was always a third party report. People are too chicken, too reserved, or maybe were making meaningless corporate conversation. Who knows? Faces unseen.

Some of the people in the church had tears in their eyes as I exited. Others didn’t. That’s just how funerals and memorial services go. There’s no telling how everyone internalizes such moments.

Doug Sharratt was a business man. I learned that as a small boy his family moved from Canada to America and then spent several years in France. He was placed in a Jesuit school and for years could only write in French. For six months as a six-year-old boy he never spoke in school until one day he asked a teacher a question, in French: “Can you help me, I have lost my pen.” He’d picked up the language.

I call Sharratt the “Bill Gates of Bakersfield” because he later started an industrial computer business in his garage. After some years, ProSoft Technology blossomed into a multimillion-dollar global automation company. Its automation helps control oil and water flow in pipelines and waterworks across the planet as well as automate portions of the military, popular amusement park attractions like the Pirates of the Caribbean and national landmarks like Mount Rushmore.

ProSoft Technology is built on relationships with Rockwell Automation, Siemens Automation, Schneider Electric, and other corporations who cater to the automation world of manufacturing, process and batch control and wireless technologies.

Sadly, Sharratt died in a plane crash in Bend, Oregon while trying to land his aircraft.

According to reports, the plane flipped several times and caught fire. I’ve heard reports that some members of his family watched in horror as the ordeal unfolded.

I was resigning from ABC23 the day my former boss, Sharratt, died. I was in my office and heard either the police scanner or the news director say a plane was registered with ProSoft Technology. I didn’t make any phone calls or ask any questions. Something in me just knew. Soon after, the media started inquiring of ProSoft about the plane.

I later phoned the news director. I said, “He was the Bill Gates of Bakersfield…”

Sharratt is the second person I’ve worked for to die in a plane crash. Mike Davis was the navigator on a water tanker aircraft. The wings fell off during a wildfire. The plane turned into a missile and crashed, killing all three onboard. It was caught on camera. Davis was a good man who volunteered in prison ministries. Sharratt is the second former employer of mine to pass this year. His is also the second funeral I attended this year as local Bakersfield actor Jim Padgett died. Jim Padgett was going to be in a film adaptation of my novel, Lords. He’s the second person affiliated with Lords to die. Sharratt is the second ProSoft employee to die in recent years. The other was a woman who had confided in me she had a drug addiction. Her heart gave out.

I remember Sharratt not as a regular guy, though he dressed down most of the time as you think a regular guy might. He wore polo shirts or simple button-up collared shirts. He wore jeans a lot. He had a head of grey hair and a dazzling smile. He wore glasses, was good looking. I remember the ladies at ProSoft swooning for him and it wasn’t just because he had money. He wasn’t regular, because what was on the inside was vastly different than anyone working beneath him.

He was smarter than most people and a better networker and business-minded gentleman. He could make deals. He bought companies, partnered with companies, made friends, built an empire of products that sold themselves. I always likened the products to primitive Star Wars C3POs: protocol-driven mechanisms that help machines communicate with each other and with people.

I never spoke to Sharratt much. I think though he liked out-of-the-box thinking and recognized the power of creative minds, he had a difficult time understanding them, quantifying them. It bordered on distrust. But that’s the corporate world and he was a master of building and creating in his own way. He used the power of capitalism to strengthen his own broken family into one of powerful young minds, well educated, and in the world exploring, as he once explored while a young scout on camping trips.

My lasting memory of Sharratt isn’t thinking of how he probably constantly shook his head as I joked around on the job with designer Mike Willis just outside his office. It was a simple moment. I was walking in Baltimore with a group of people past the waterfront and into Little Italy to a restaurant. I remember the fall evening was brisk. I remember footsteps, a fire engine, Sharratt walking with everyone. Lights strung across the dark street marked the area. At dinner I remember wine, a proud toast from Sharratt, sparkling white lights, an angelic white tablecloth, a dim room, glasses clinking together like a cherubic melody.

Father Craig said during the service, “People have come seeking answers.” He said he was still seeking answers to his own sister’s death. He seemed as confused as many of the attendees as to how generous, good people could die while others less benevolent walk the planet. He didn’t want people to blame God for Sharratt’s passing.

I could hear in the priest’s voice something as if he was momentarily speaking to himself about the passing of loved ones. Don’t blame God for your sister dying, I imagined him saying into a mirror.

Post-Sharratt memorial, St. Francis Of Assisi Church, Bakersfield, Calif.

“Doug was a good man,” Craig said more than once. He also said he was intimidated by the brightness of Sharratt’s mind, once again, the “Bill Gates of Bakersfield,” though he didn’t use the term.

Outside I walked through a crowd of salespeople and corporate representatives. There were dark glasses on forlorn faces, wrinkled suits and pants from sitting in pews. Outside, some people seemed to be networking while others seemed to stare in disbelief that their boss was dead. I was with several others and we skirted the somber, groaning crowd and went into the reception hall to say a few words to two of Sharratt’s kids.

Poorly captured still shows somber mood outside of St. Francis Church, Bakersfield, Calif.

Soon I greeted Michael Sharratt. “Someone said you’re the one who called my dad the Bill Gates of Bakersfield,” he said.

I told him I did. He’s always smiling. So I felt comfortable to tease him. “You know why your sister Cara gave a better speech? Because she spoke into the microphone.” He laughed and I told him his writing had gotten better. I’d helped him with a college entrance essay a few years before.

He had said in his speech that people should take something from his father to apply to their own life. I said I would.

Later, I was in a conversation with Melody Saberon who works at ProSoft Technology. “God doesn’t take people. He chooses them,” she said.

I’m not sure I agree. I told her there’s a fine line between taking and choosing. Either way, you’re gone.

After greeting Michael and Cara, we walked toward our car. Melody twisted her ankle slightly and grumbled. Then we waited to cross to where we were parked on Forrest Street.

Traffic came from both the north and south along H Street, including a bike that was about to cross in front of us.

The orange truck continued to speed south on H Street. “He’s haunting me,” Landen said. The bicyclist headed in the same direction but I was watching the truck. The orange truck’s driver-side window was down. He turned his head and yelled, “Right turn!” as if to warn the bike rider at the last moment. The truck swerved as if to barrel down Forrest Street from H Street. It was an impossible move. The bike rider could never have heard the man yell at the last second the way he did, especially since he was on the right side of the vehicle. He had just been riding with the flow of traffic. There was no time to stop. Everything happened in the intersection of where Forrest meets H.

Somehow, the bike rider was spared and the truck slowed. The driver cursed as the bike rider passed and continued pedaling along H Street.

And then the surreal became the surreal. The driver of the orange truck sped after the bike rider and tried to run him over from behind. The bike rider swerved. He jumped off his bike onto the sidewalk. The truck swerved too and finally stopped. The man got out of his truck as the bike rider didn’t know what to do. I’m not sure, but it looked like the driver pummeled the bike rider and cursed. Time moved slow. The scene seemed to melt as if Dali had thrown in atmospheric brush strokes.

I used to be the neighbor of the orange truck’s driver in a little bungalow apartment where I could often hear he and his wife yelling, “I ought to kill you!” to each other. And here he was again, yelling and screaming like this bike rider were his wife who could never leave him. “He has gout,” she once said to me.

I can hear their voices as clearly as I can think of the church bells of St. Francis from that bungalow. The bells would echo among palm fronds. Their chimes bounced down alleys and between buildings.

A woman ran across the street yelling at the driver of the truck to stop what he was doing. The sun beat down. The memorial plodded on behind us.

The driver jumped into his orange truck.

Tags: afterlife, Bakersfield news, Bend News, Death, Doug Sharratt, gout, industrial automation, plane crash, PROFIBUS, ProSoft Technology, spiritual news, St. Francis, wireless

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Death, Family, France, Heaven, Jobs, News, Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.