Sometimes the best stories come after a reporter’s tape recorder has been turned off – or before it has been turned on.
Sometimes people say the most telling things or touch a particular chord as you drive off in your car — with a notebook tucked deep into your back pocket. And sometimes the best part of an interview comes well after it is over.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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Such was the case when I interviewed Joyce Galleshaw last week at Wright’s Farm Restaurant in Burrillville.
Joyce owns the place. She and her late husband, Frank Galleshaw, II, made it a labor of love, quite literally, turning it into their own family business.
You’ve probably been there. If you haven’t, you should go. That’s not a free plug. They don’t need it. Business there is booming. It’s just sound advice from someone who has made the long drive up Route 7 on several occasions. The chicken falls off the bone. The salad – drenched in the restaurant’s own dressing — is delicious.
Frank Galleshaw, II died after a tragic moped accident in Bonnet Shores a year ago this month.
That’s the kind of thing you have to ask about. And before you do, you wonder for a split second if it is going to bring a grinding halt to an interview that seems to be moving along just fine.
So I asked Joyce about her husband Frank – about what the restaurant had meant to him and what he had meant to the restaurant. No grinding halt. She was very gracious. She told me that Frank had cared so much for the employees – that he was determined to make it a real family business. She talked about how her husband never let his ego get in the way – that he never believed only he could run the show.
“He was very honest and up front, for example, in teaching our son at a very young age all about the business,” she said.
After our 45-minute visit, I went on my way. Joyce had to get back to work and I was confident that my tape recorder and notebook contained a thorough enough retelling of the story of Wright’s Farm.
But the next day I received one of those reminders a reporter gets every once in a while. It’s the kind of thing that wipes out a lot of the late nights and pressures of meeting deadlines. The kind of thing that makes you forget – at least for a while – those times when you struggle to find the right word – to track down the right person.
It didn’t come in a big package. It was a simple hand-written note. Joyce wanted to share some more thoughts about her husband.
In person, she wrote, her emotions were just too strong. So, when we talked, she said, she held back a bit. A year’s time had done little to ease the pain of her husband’s death.
Had she been stronger, wrote Joyce, she would have told me that when Frank died Wright’s Farm lost the “captain of its ship.” That personally, she lost “her best friend, her soul mate and the love of her life.”
Every day, wrote Joyce, her family faces “constant reminders of the wonderful accomplishments Frank had business wiseand our loss as a husband, father and grandfather is at times too much to believe.”
I think sometimes there is the perception that for a journalist, covering the business community is somehow different. That it’s all about numbers and studies and economic forecasts.
But it’s not different at all. It is about those things, those numbers and charts. But more importantly it is about people. People like Joyce Galleshaw, who owns a business as successful as any in Rhode Island. People who get frustrated, who laugh and cry – like everybody else.
Joyce reminded me of all of that — after the tape recorder had been turned off, and my notebook had been long since tucked away.
