Journalists meet hundreds, maybe thousands, of people during their careers. Some make us joyful. Others give us the creeps. Some are healers. Others need to be healed.
Often, we don’t know about the special folks in our community unless someone tells us about them. And sometimes we don’t know about characters like Cliff Hammett until they have passed away. Luckily, we met Cliff just before he took his talents to heaven.
He was a colorful guy. At 87, he spent every night of the week showing off his musical talents at area bars and restaurants. He was a World War II cadet pilot in the Army Air Force and spunkier than a new puppy.
Cliff loved karaoke, and when he didn’t show up last week at the Gameday Grille in Jackson Township, I looked up his address on my smartphone and drove to his home in Green. Something felt wrong as I looked in his car and around the outside of his home. He didn’t answer the door, he wasn’t in any of the area hospitals, and he hadn’t shown up the night before at another local spot to sing. So I called 911, and soon I was joined by Summit County Sheriff deputy Timothy Paul.
Together, we worked to locate Cliff’s son, Chuck. As we waited for him to arrive, I chatted with Paul about the man who just two days earlier had me bent over with laughter at a Panera Bread, where I had interviewed him.
I told the deputy that Cliff golfed during the day and sang karaoke seven nights a week in establishments from Massillon to Stow.
“He’s living the life of a 21-year-old,” the deputy said.
When Chuck arrived, he and the officer went inside. Regretfully, the father of six was found slumped over in a chair, breathing but unresponsive. He died the following morning.
“Daddy was a wild man. That’s the way we always described him,” his daughter, Lois Ann Brown, said, chuckling. “He sang karaoke until the wee hours of the morning, he was funny, he was sharp and he had his wits about him. He had more energy than any of us.”
“This is my social life,” he told me. “I have fun. Life is too short not to.”
His children described their father, who once raced motorcycles and super modified stock cars, as a jokester.
“I sing for the blue-haired ladies. They are the ones who used to throw their panties at Tom Jones. Now, they throw their adult Depends at me,” Cliff told me as he nibbled on a nut roll at the restaurant. “It’s a sick joke, but it’s kind of funny.”
He shared some of his mischievous shenanigans — “Not for print,” he whispered, leaning in toward me.
Cliff owned the Goodyear Heights Dry Cleaners until he retired. For eight years, he took care of his bride, Margie, until she died of Alzheimer’s in 2001.
He was a cadet pilot in World War II. He had passed several exhausting rounds of tests to qualify as a pilot when he was in the Army Air Force, but fate intervened. The United States was winning the war and “they killed the cadet program. I never did get to finish and we never got our wings or commission,” he told a reporter in 1998.
Pilot license earned
So, to fulfill his desire to fly, he earned his private pilot license at the age of 71.
Bobby Martin, a local karaoke DJ and a good pal of Cliff’s, said people loved watching the spirited senior citizen sing, and sometimes took videos of him performing to share with friends. Still, there were times when Cliff would get upset with adolescents who sang songs with disturbing lyrics.
“Several years ago, this guy got up and sang a song laced with ‘F’ this, ‘F’ that and ‘down with USA.’ The more I listened, the madder I got,” Cliff lamented.
After the boy was finished performing, Cliff took the mic.
“Young man,” he said, “60 years ago, 405,000 kids died so that you would have the freedom to stand on this stage and spout that filth and garbage out of your mouth … I’m not sure it was worth it.”
Cliff remembered the audience becoming quiet, seemingly absorbing what he had said — then breaking into applause.
Though it’s always difficult to lose a loved one, his family knows Cliff did what he loved right up to the time he left to be reunited with Margie.
Son Jack Hammett of Spotsylvania, Va., recalled something his father often said: “You live as long as you can — and then you live forever.”
Thanks, Cliff, for allowing me to meet you and share your story before starting your forever life.
Kim Hone-McMahan can be reached at 330-996-3742 or kmcmahan@thebeaconjournal.com.