Franklin Palmer Norman, 1910-2005

The end of an era. Why does the quiet death of a 95-year-old man bring such a thought to mind? He's hardly the only one. Hope Hornback, too, died at 95, earlier in the year. Alice Hill, very much of the same generation, died just days before Franklin.

Franklin was somehow different. A small, modest man, he loomed larger than life just in spite of himself. A small town doesn't have much of an "upper class," and tends to deny or resent whatever it does have. Yet Franklin can't be appraised apart from all the Normans, a "dynasty" almost in the old world sense.

W.F. Norman comes across as a Victorian, fairly Dickensian figure, a smalltown "robber baron." He did what came naturally to energetic men of his day, prospered, and did as much for his hometown as any other individual. And was begrudged and hated for it.

When the Norman factory burned in 1909, arson was rumored, and a few even smiled at the thought of the local "rich man" getting his taste of misfortune. It was an article of plebeian faith that old W.F. kept local wages beaten down, all by himself.

Of his four children, Neil died young in a gun accident. Glen and Eloise never married, leaving only Clyde to carry the family on for another generation.

Clyde showed up as the "most human" Norman. His brother and sister living almost as hermits, he was the only family member people really "knew." Very much his junior, I played chess with him in his home. A member of the Historical Society's first nominating committee, Clyde himself was proposed for office, but begged off on grounds of age and infirmity.

"We've got to have a Norman," declared Jim Denman. "We'll draft Franklin!" In such offhand manner, then, began Franklin's long service to the Society. He remained a hands-on officer for some 35 years, giving of himself probably as much as any other one individual throughout the Society's leaner, darker days.

So also began my own close acquaintance with him. I'm still unsure whether it rated as really a friendship. Franklin wasn't the only man, seen as "well-off' by others, who could strike them as "stand-offish." The explanation, I've concluded, rather may really be something like shyness, or the fear of intruding where one isn't wanted. Many a conversation I can recall having with Franklin, when, just as, to me, we were reaching the point where trivia had been disposed of and the moment was approaching for sitting back and getting intimate, Franklin would bolt to his feet, utter his curt "Goodbye!" and rush off. Less from a wish to keep one at a distance, I think, than fear he was overstaying his welcome and risking being kept at a distance himself.

Perhaps he had friends, close friends, to whom this rings utterly untrue. I never knew who they were. Franklin was a very private individual, and had little to say about himself. Not 'til lately did I know he was a World War II veteran. I'm told he was active as a veteran; but certainly he never struck one as a "joiner." Apart, of course, from the coffee club! Franklin took his place in the family firm in the depths of the Depression, and he felt its pinch like everybody else. It was said he was as poorly paid as the lowliest hired help, and most of their lives he and his wife occupied a modest, indeed almost tiny home. Doubtless he was irked that many Nevadans tended to judge all Normans on the basis of W.F.'s large, if not exactly palatial, home on South College, which was never home to Franklin himself.

Despite that Dickensian beginning, under his father's and uncle's thumbs, Franklin did pick up the habits and temperament of management. It became second nature to him to make decisions and issue instructions to be carried out by others. His daughter is emphatic: He wanted to be "in control!" This could be a bit irksome, amusingly, to his friends after he retired. The sight of Franklin in the doorway could mean but one thing: He'd had a new brainstorm, gotten another bee in his bonnet, sure to mean lots of work for others than Franklin! The hitch was, his ideas were often very good ideas. Our favorite gadfly, I dubbed him, forever goading us for our own good, like Socrates the Athenians.

Looking back at all the civic contributions of Franklin and men like him, one despairs of the future.

Where are they going to come from, the future movers and shakers, men with experience of administering large enterprises and managing people? Small towns don't turn out such folks nowadays. The movers and shakers are in other places, far away.

With Franklin and Alice Hill gone, only two of the handful of original moving spirits of the Historical Society and the Museum are left: Joe Kraft and me. And what strikes me, looking back, is that we all came from a common background. Franklin, Joe, and I each had fallen heir to a local business dating from the 19th century. Our associates were bankers and lawyers and owners of businesses, of both sexes. Alice Hill had been private secretary to no less than James Forrestal, the secretary of defense. Is it my imagination that either such people no longer give of themselves to civic causes, or they just aren't there at all any more? Writing about local changes in the 20th century, I encountered curiously opposing memories: The country, said Bill Sterett, had undergone a moral sea change in the 1920s. No, Franklin disagreed, the moral decline didn't start till the 1960s.

"Franklin's led a sheltered life," was Bill's smiling rejoinder.

Maybe we'd all do well to lead more sheltered lives. Certainly Franklin throve on it. No vices shortened or marred his days. In his 95 years, he told me toward the end, he'd had but one blip of ill health: an appendectomy. He only gave up his daily walks during the last months, or even weeks.

And his end was about as painless as they come, these days.

Perhaps he did have no real friends, in the intimate sense. Or perhaps, in the deepest sense of all, we were all his friends. His passing may not leave a stark or dramatic hole in our lives, individual or communal, yet we're all going to feel it, that something's missing, something's gone, and we're all the poorer for it.

And yet, at the same time, for having known him at all, even just a little bit of him, the richer.