A Rose by any other Name

I have never been able to get in to Shakespeare.  I do recall one little line.  “Does not a rose by any other name smell as sweet.”  I have spent a little time noticing that for all intents and purposes my name, Stanley, has pretty much been retired.  For some reason for the past 30-40 years when any TV show writer wanted to depict a character that was not all that smart or just a little strange they would name that guy Stanley.  Even when I lived in the Netherlands the teachers changed my name to Serge.  So they must have suspected something about the name as well.

Even with all of this, I kind of like my name.  There was a baseball player years ago by the name of Stan Musial and he was known as Stan the Man.  For some reason some of my friends started calling me Stan the Man Unusual. Never really figured this out but maybe it applies. You be the judge.  The trucking community calls a name a “handle.”  I do know a few people who have had to wear a handle that might have had even more burden.  We had one of the nicer girls in my High School with the name of Sharon Titsworth.   It was always an interesting moment when the role was called in the morning.   I can recall some of the boys always making a big deal of this.  Fortunately she was quite a confident person and I might add wore the name quite well.

Speaking of interesting names, some of the Vietnamese families we assisted in the resettlement days had some names that were worthy of some note.  Mu, Man, Phang, Nam and Phouc were the first names of the men of the families.  A man by the name of Jim VanderGalien and I, somehow were involved in helping find employment for these guys.  Knowing how people in factories could sometimes react to things I became concerned.  (Factories were the chosen course of potential employment due to the language barriers.)  I was worried that there would be some teasing and jokes about these names and I was particularly concerned about the name Phouc. (pronounced Fook but with a noticeable leaning to more of a U sound in their dialect.)

So I suggested to him that perhaps it might be better to take on an American name for a work name and then retain his name for use with the others of his culture who already resided here.  (Deb had warned me to not get involved in this.) What ensued is one of the more convoluted conversations I have ever been engaged in.  With the language issues that existed I was just not able to get my point across.  After several attempts he asked me to draw a picture of what I was talking about.  At that point I decided to just give up and let things stand as they were.  In a few years he adopted the name of Mike and today resides in California with his family.

When Phouc got his first job I received a call from the owner of that plant asking if I knew any more like him. He was an amazing man and over the years has owned businesses, owns his own home, has educated his whole family and runs one of the neatest homes I have ever seen.  One of his two children, a 1^st grader by the name of Vin broke her arm the first day she was in school.  Deb felt so sorry for her.  She was climbing on one of the pieces of outside gym stuff and slipped.  It was lucky to have Deb around as she knew exactly what to do as she did on many more occasions with these families. I have one more amazing story about their family. Let me tell it.

When he got off of the airplane he only had 2 of his 5 children with him.  Due to immigration issues 3 children and his wife were detained in Vietnam.  For 8 years he carefully did the work, made the money, and filled out the paperwork needed to bring the remainder of his family to this country.  He and all the others we helped had a deep love for family.  I will never forget Deb and I and others standing in the GR airport at the end of the airplane shoot (pre 9-11) and seeing this family being reunited after 8 years.

We have enjoyed many meals with him, attended his children’s weddings, and received a couple of platters of egg rolls from him every Thanksgiving.  You can call a rose anything you want but you will not be able to remove the beauty.  One more story the next time on our work in this era.  Am I allowed to say, is a good one!.

Stan the Man