A Memory in Memoriam

The first time I met Paul Newman was on a chilly early Spring day in a small wood in Ashford, Connecticut.  It was at The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, which Newman had created as a fount of normalcy for kids with life-threatening illnesses, and where I, along with a few actually talented Vermont woodworkers had been invited to build a treehouse for the campers.  We'd been at it for a couple of months already, and as we were living in situ, we'd gotten to know some of the camp's permanent staff quite well.  They were a mixed lot, but had two things in common: enormous pride in their work, and a dear, almost paternal love for Paul Newman.  "He's just a down to earth guy," they'd tell you.  "And he loves that the kids who come here don't have the first clue who he is."  I was never sure how true the second part was, but was fond of a story I'd heard at various times from nearly everyone at camp.  Newman had apparently sat down to eat with a few of the campers at a table laid from end to end with Newman's Own products.  He noticed that the little girl sitting next to him was looking at him with some concern and that her eyes kept darting back and forth from his face to a carton of lemonade in front of her.  He asked her if anything was the matter, and after a few moments' hesitation and a final check of the picture on the carton finally asked, Are you lost? 
It's a sweet story, but I think that's only part of the reason everyone liked telling it.  In addition to emphasizing Newman's everyman persona, the story also encapsulates the wonderful equilibrium that existed between the actor and the campers.  They gave each other a sense of normal life and normal interactions: the kids forgot that their baldness or wheelchairs made them feel self-conscious, and Newman forgot that most everyone he met on a daily basis wanted to gain something for themselves from a famous man. 
He was by all accounts a person who felt himself inordinately lucky and knew he had to do something big to even the score.   Newman's Own was a good start, but despite its $250,000,000 given to charity, wasn't enough.  He felt he had to give of himself as well, and I'd wager it was this impulse that made Paul Newman at once a great actor and a terrific person. 
You sensed that when you met him too.  At least I did, that first time, on that grey snow-dusted day, when he came up to have a look at our treehouse.  He was wearing what appeared to be Blue Blocker sunglasses, and we'd had so many visitors that at first I wasn't sure who it was.  But then he took off his glasses and I saw those eyes.  He stuck out his hand in my direction, "Quite the job you fellas are doing here," he said.  Newman was 77 at the time, but before we knew it he was helping us guide a joist into place and talking about stringing a zip line from the treehouse to a platform on the lake below.   A couple of weeks later the two of us were shoulder-to-shoulder for a while at the grill, knocking out burgers and hotdogs at a celebratory party that marked the project's completion.  We were all excited that the treehouse was finally built, but no one was more fired up than Newman.  He pictured all of the kids who'd climb on it, or roll on it, or swing on it, and through him we saw it too.