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The Lincoln Town Car pulled up to James Gesicki's house at 7 a.m. Friday. Two hours later, he was facing a camera at a Tampa TV station and telling the anchors at CNN in New York just how much he loves his mom.
The everyman who until last week maintained ditches, lakes, canals and ponds for the city of Largo had finally, and reluctantly, made the big time. He got to tell the world how he refused to come to work when it looked like Hurricane Charley was headed our way. He chose to stay with his 81-year-old mother. The decision cost him his job. He was fired last Tuesday. Gesicki moved his mother, Catherine, from a retirement community near Lake Seminole to his home in Spring Hill and stayed with her as the storm approached. He could have put her in a Largo shelter set aside specifically for the families of city workers, but he simply wouldn't consider it.
"My mom has all these physical problems," he said, when I asked why. "She's scared to death, and she doesn't have a husband anymore and she's still mourning him. Can you picture her on a cot with a bunch of kids running around and strangers and her needing help?"
I can envision her, just as I can envision Largo city officials drawing up the paperwork to coolly fire a 30-year employee. How would the city manage in a storm if everybody on the payroll did what Gesicki did?
But here's the fuller picture. If you have a heart, you can relate:
Sure as the winds gather, certain feelings come together inside you. Maybe it's the psychological shift caused by fear and anxiety and not knowing what's next. The first thing you want is to reach out to your loved ones. You don't want to separate. The mere idea can bring you to tears. If you part, you wonder - and especially with what turned out to be a Category 4 storm bearing down - whether and when you'll see them again.
Now, before somebody tells me that Gesicki could have put his mother with friends, he said he had that arranged. Then a man in the other family suffered a stroke, and Gesicki felt obligated to make other plans.
Yes, friends and relatives are supposed to fill in during crises like these, but that won't always work. What if you're new to town, have no relatives around, few friends, are a single parent and absolutely have to work? Do you just drop off the kids at the shelter as if it were the mall? How could you bring yourself to hand a baby or toddler to a stranger?
The day before Charley almost came to town, Gesicki filled sandbags for hours, no easy task for a guy who's 61. Now he's hunting, without much luck, for a lawyer. He's thinking of suing to get his job back and wonders what he'll do when his two weeks' severance pay runs out. He worries that nobody will take a chance on a guy who's just a year from retirement.
I'll play the optimist.
This guy Gesicki sounds like the perfect lead - and I seriously date myself here - for a Jimmy Stewart movie.
Who wouldn't want to hire a guy who loves his mother most of all?
Who wouldn't want a guy around who lets his heart lead, and his mind follow, when it feels right?
And, finally, who wouldn't want to make an elderly woman feel better? His mother blames herself for what happened, Gesicki said.
There's a small PR campaign mounting on his behalf, seeking to get his job restored. Local 3179 of the Communications Workers of America, which represents some city workers, is speaking up for Gesicki, even though he isn't even a member.
And there's all that publicity.
First it was CNN.
Then a big radio station, WGN, in his hometown of Chicago called to interview him.
This week, you might also see his face on Inside Edition.
It's not quite a feeding frenzy. But it is an irresistible story, about a man who loves his mom above all else, and a set of bosses who are probably asking themselves now why they were dumb enough to fire him.
- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.