If Richard Bean misses work, you’d best believe he’s got a good reason.
I haven’t been able to nail it down for sure, but I think he’s worked for Knox County for longer than anybody, having celebrated his 51st year of employment on February 1.
If anybody’s worked for the county any longer than that, I figure I’ll hear from them. And I ought to put quotation marks around the word “celebrated’ for reasons I’m about to explain, because the past few weeks haven’t been much fun.
Richard L. Bean stands at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center.
You’ll never run across anybody who loves their job as much as Richard does, and he’s a stickler for showing up on time. Early, even. You’ll find him hoisting the flag every weekday morning over at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center, a regional facility for under-aged offenders from Knox and surrounding counties. It is a highly regarded place, as jails for kids go, because it has amenities like a school with certified teachers, a Boys and Girls Club, a barber shop and access to the outdoors.
Richard’s office has an open-door policy, and if you drop in on him, you’ll want to be looking your best because he’s going to take your picture and put it on his wall of fame, which long ago outgrew his office and now stretches down both sides of the hallway.
So, when his friend Billy Stokes told me that Richard was out sick, I knew something was bad wrong.
Billy said Richard had been suffering with a kidney stone that went septic. He’d been admitted to intensive care at Parkwest and things were looking very grim. Another two weeks passed before I was able to find out much more, when I finally reached him over the phone in the rehab center where he’s staying, he told me what had been happening.
“I went home from work that Monday, sicker than a dog. I like to never made it home. My boy (Garrett) came in the next morning and called an ambulance. I didn’t even know I was in the hospital. Lynn Tarpy came to see me, then came back two days later, went in the room where I was, and I wasn’t in there. He thought I’d done kicked the bucket. That’s how bad it was.”
To make things even worse, his wife, Lillian, has been feeling poorly, too, and needs 24/7 home nursing care. It’s a very hard time for the family, but their kids, Sara, Garrett and Rebecca Bean Headrick, have stepped up.
“After I got out of ICU, I asked my daughter, ‘Sara, when are they gonna operate on me?’ She said they already had. I thought it was maybe cancer or something. Didn’t know what it was … I was in ICU for six days with blood poisoning from that kidney stone, I’ll be here for another two, three weeks at least. I was in the hospital for 16 days.”
At first, he was too sick to understand what was going on. He was as confused as Tarpy had been. “They never told me nothing after I got out of ICU.”
Richard’s longtime assistant Kay McClain has stepped in to keep things running right during Richard’s illness, and he’s quite proud of her.
“She’s been with me for 30 years. Her mamma, Midget Honeycutt, worked for me for 21 years,” he said. “She calls Lillian and tells her stuff, and Lillian calls me and lets me know.”
Meanwhile, his job is to get better, and he intends to go back to work as soon as he can. He’s been moved to Creekview Health & Rehabilitation in North Knoxville to recuperate. He isn’t well enough to see anyone other than family yet and knows it’s going to be a hard slog getting his health back. But he’s working hard at rehab and his sense of humor is unimpaired. He is hopeful.
“The woman that brought me my supper last night asked me how old I was. I told her I’ll be 83 this summer and she said, ‘Seems like you still got your right mind.’”
I’ll post updates as I hear them.
Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.