TERRY MOSHER
Every time I drive over the Warren Avenue Bridge in Bremerton I feel a pang of guilt. When I remember, that is.
You don’t know what I’m talking about. But from the bridge I can see the building housing Claremont Senior Living and that is where perhaps one of the best characters downtown Bremerton ever had is now living.
For nearly 50 years, Cap DeMiero was a fixture downtown with his union barber shop (it was later changed to Cap’s Hair Design Salon to fit the changing times), cutting hair, telling stories, some of them maybe even true, swapping jokes and having more fun than normally allowed.
About seven years ago he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, although longtime companion Carolyn Irwin suspects it started earlier and that he hid it from her. Now he is in the memory care unit at Claremont where his conditioned continues to worsen, as is the case with Alzheimer. No one escapes its chilling effect. There is no known cure.
What makes me sad and leaves me feeling guilty is I have visited Cap just twice in the two years he’s been at Claremont. The last visit was Wednesday when Mary and I went. Cap grabbed on to Mary’s hand and would not let go. He finally fell asleep and we left him.
I feel we have short memories, that we soon forget those who have had a large impact on us when they die or, like Cap, are stored away in a nursing facility as they await the Grim Reaper. Maybe I’m too hard on myself. Maybe it’s just natural for family and friends to turn away, afraid to face reality, afraid of the hurt that facing it might bring. But I can’t be more than I am, and I’m sad when we lose people who have been good for us in some way, and sadder that in many cases they live their last moments on Earth alone, forgotten for who they were and the good things they did.
Cap, if you didn’t know, played football at South Kitsap and at Olympic College. He had started out on the 1950 SK basketball team that won the state championship, but had to quit because it was too difficult to get home in Belfair after practices. He often would stand for hours alongside the road tying to hitchhike a ride home, but that became too much to overcome.
He got a Purple Heart during the Korean War while serving with the U.S. Marines and right up until a few years ago he annually wore his Marine dress uniform and walked in the Armed Forces Day Parade in downtown Bremerton. He was a proud patriot and was not afraid to show it or talk about it.
Cap, in fact, was not afraid to talk about anything. That was the attraction at his hair salon. You got the news, good and bad, and some truth, along with that famous smile and his ability to charm, using his mixture of Italian and Pennsylvania (he lived there most of his early years) heritage to overwhelm visitors.
Because I covered the Seattle Mariners for almost 30 years, whenever I showed up at his shop the talk centered on the Mariners and what he thought they should do to start winning. I was always more interested in getting Cap started on music. He played bass for more years than I know with a jazz trio. In the last years it was with Bud Schultz (piano and vibes) and sometimes Mark Lewis on the sax, but also with plenty of other sidemen, including the famous Overton Beery on piano.
“It was back in the ‘60s when I was going to UPS,” says Schultz of when he started playing with Cap, who would show up as part of the fan base. In the early days Schultz said they played at the Harbor Inn in Gig Harbor and the Palace in Bremerton. They continued playing right up until a few years ago. Schultz and his trio now play Thursdays at Old Town Bistro in Silverdale.
If I could place tags on Cap it would be as “Mr. Downtown” for his loyalty to the Bremerton core area and “The Jazzman” for his local leadership for jazz. He used to take his own money to bring in jazz performers to Bremerton, hoping that someday it would be a big mainstay of Bremerton, much like it is in Port Townsend with that Jefferson County city’s annual jazz festival.
It didn’t happen, but it would be more than nice if some day there was a jazz festival in downtown Bremerton with Cap’s name attached to it. That would be the highest honor other than his Marine service that could be given to him, and would be well deserved.
Katherine Izzy of Seabeck, a former public educator, used to sit in and sing with Cap and his trio. She now does the same for Schultz at the Old Town Bistro. It is Izzy’s contention that something should be done to honor Cap.
“I hope it happens before he dies,” says Izzy. “It should be something big.”
Irwin, who has dinner with him every night at the Claremont and tucks him in at night, says Cap has a couple caregivers who take him for walks in the morning and in the afternoons so his living space is more than just his room and the hallways at the memory care unit. He’s taken a turn for the worse in the last few days, but he still flashes that big smile and still shows his ever present humor.
“He still is a very social person,” says Irwin. “He’s always positive with his comments. The last week has been troubling. It could be the beginning of a new normal for him. Alzheimer’s is really a hideous thing. The brain doesn’t communicate with the muscles that well anymore. All the muscle memory thing we do without thinking, a lot of that is gone.”
Cap has always been bigger than life, a man with a big and warm heart who I never heard say anything bad about anybody. He loved life and lived it to the fullest. I say this as if he was already dead, but in a way he is, tucked away from the mainstream and visited by just a few (Izzy sees him every few weeks).
It’s terribly sad that such a loud voice, and not just in the jazz world, but in our local world has been quieted.
“It’s hard to see him like that now,” says Izzy, wondering why such a good person like Cap has to go through this.
“He certainly has been a big presence and a big personality” says Irwin. “He loves people. He loves nothing better than to help people and to promote other people. That is just who he was. He was a hairstylist for 50 years and played music for 50 years and loved every minute of it.”
Oh, the things that happen to the best of us. Why oh why do they have to? But it is what it is and as I drive across the Warren Avenue Bridge I will always feel that guilt that I’m too busy to think about Cap to steer the car to the Claremont. I will try to be better with my visits, but it’s hard to see him this way.
May your days be blessed, Cap, just as you have blessed us with your wit, your charm, and your presence.