When asked to fight outside a tavern in one of our local small towns recently, Vince Cavanaugh, world traveler, metal sculptor, painter, poet, and music lover, said to the much larger man: “We can fight. That’s fine, but you lose either way.” The aggressive stranger asked, “How’s that?” Cavanaugh replied: “Because if I win the fight, you lose. If I lose the fight all you did was beat up an old man.” The man who wanted to fight walked away.
Where would such wisdom and calm during crisis come from, you might ask?
Born a lonely child in Lake Preston, South Dakota, Cavanaugh’s best friend became his radio. A self-proclaimed “latchkey kid,” his parents worked, watched TV in the evenings and went out dancing and drinking on the weekends. Then they divorced and he was moved to Washington — taking his best friends and companions, his records, and his fedora, with him. After high school graduation and serving in the Marines as a draftee, Cavanaugh became a truck driver and married a woman from his church. He still has his music and a fedora, not the wife or the trucker job.
Cavanaugh became a Correctional Officer (a guard) in Washington State prisons. He supported his four children this way for 33 years, just retiring recently from this dangerous, difficult job in Monroe.
Keep in mind, that in the ‘70s he also rode a Harley chopper many places, and traveled throughout Central America in a van with buddies. They were shot at in Guatemala because as young people they didn’t quite understand what they were doing. He obviously survived and now has that wonderful story. However, many other
stories from his experiences he does not share because he has seen it all and that’s just not what you do when you’ve been part of a system that rightly or wrongly puts thousands of men in cages and then asks you to make sure they behave. People who haven’t been a part of a system like that like to hear those war stories, but they can’t really understand.
Besides, Cavanaugh has taken what he learned during that time and made it work for him in a positive manner. As a world traveler he has moved from his country home of 37 years and found a small apartment in downtown Snohomish from which he still does security work from time to time; but to him, much more importantly, he does God’s work. Looking dapper in tweeds and fedora, Cavanaugh walks the city streets and sits in the establishments to visit with people and share the program work he now does in the prisons, called Bridges To Life, a program he tells me Monroe Command chose as program of the year last year.
He does not see his work of saving people through the Lord as just a need in prisons. He sees it as a springboard to teach empathy, compassion and true forgiveness. And he doesn’t just share it with Christians, but anyone who will listen while he is out and about. Often correctional workers who have had difficult assignments upon retirement choose to forget all that they dealt with — not this man. He saw and still sees the good in the incarcerated he worked with. He still sees potential in the out-of-control drunk or drug addict on our city streets.
And he chooses, as he says to, “give that person he is talking with hope they can get off the merry go round and forgive themselves and heal whatever brokenness is within.” Cavanaugh can speak to many people, travel anywhere, share poetry, skydive and still work with inmates as a volunteer; but last month he chose to sing karaoke and he said it was the scariest thing he’s ever done!
Author Patricia Therrell’s column traditionally runs on the third week of the month. If you’d like to suggest someone to profile, let the Tribune know: 360-568-4121 or email editor.tribune@snoho.com
