Remembering Cap'n Jack
by Al Pugh

I met Cap’n Jack West… well, I don’t know when I met Cap’n Jack West. He was one of those people you seem to have always known, ten minutes after you meet them.

He heard about my habit of sleeping in my car at Rodeos and he made sure there was a spare bunk open at a Rodeo for me. It was in a cabin, and he and his friend and I were to share it three ways. When I got in late and slept in my car anyway, he refused to take my third, and I think he would have fought me over it. I am 6’2” and 300 lbs. He was maybe 5’5” and 150 lbs in a driving rain. He might well have taken me.

He took my son (and me) fishing on the James as a favor because I didn’t have the money to get a good birthday gift for my son, and then volunteered to work out a deal to take my other son and his new wife while on their honeymoon. The river was too high; now Jeremy and Tina will never know Jack.

He took Barbara and I down one section of the New a couple of years ago. We dragged the raft around Penitentiary Falls, and then he sculled the raft sideways through the last two troughs in the falls, just so Barbara could get a good shot at a couple of pockets.

He was truly a master of his craft, whether “craft” is the raft, the fishing, or the beautiful stained glass he produced.

Were it not for Jack West, there is a very good probability that giant spawning brown trout would still be victims of snagging as they attempt to spawn in the tailwater of a dam on the Holston.

Were it not for Jack West, some folks might have been injured taking a canoe over Balcony Falls with one guy in the front “paddling” another in the back “paddling” and a third in the middle, sitting on the beer cooler. Jack gave them such a ration of grief for considering it that they stopped and walked the canoe and cooler around it. I know they did, because I sat with him below the falls on what he called a “lunch stop.”

The problem is, we didn’t tie up the raft and sit on the bank to eat lunch. As a matter of fact, he didn’t eat lunch at all, he was too busy keeping the raft ready, and watching, always watching. He watched, carefully, as a flotilla of canoe rookies shot the falls. He watched as two anglers turned half tied down tackle boxes into sea anchors for an upside down canoe. He let them learn, but he never let them be in danger.

If he knew a good guide, angler, writer, campground, fishing store, rod, bait, reel, or whatever; you knew it, too, and soon. Sometimes, he “knew” it too early, and got fooled, but he took it all in stride. The open hearted are often slightly gullible, and Jack was as open hearted as they come, but he was too tough to be affected by little slips.

Jack passed suddenly, the 6th of May, 2004. Such a man should never suffer, and Jack did not. It is just that this is so, since Jack would tolerate no suffering around him. No one waited on Jack, at least not often. No one did more for Jack than Jack did in return. It was a matter of honor to him, I think, that he gave to life more than he got. God knows, as does everyone that ever met him, that he was a sterling success at it.

The title “Captain” is earned in several ways. One may achieve the rank and title in the military. One may qualify for the title in the merchant marine. In every nautical case, it is the title conferred upon the person in charge of the craft, the ship’s master. Many people, perhaps most people, think that means he is the guy in charge. It doesn’t stop there, however, he (or she, today), is the person fully in charge, who, because they are also fully responsible for everyone in the craft, cannot abuse that charge. Therefore, there is now a third way… Cap’n Jack’s way… he earned it by the practice of proof, and this old Navy Chief dares anyone to say otherwise.

No, no one is perfect, and Cap’n Jack, like all of us, had faults, but when a person has to think as hard as I do to remember them, they aren’t worth remembering, so I refuse to.

Row easy the Jordan, old friend, I miss you already…