11/4/22 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

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Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

One of my jobs down at the Columbus Crew Lower.com Stadium is to be a doorman of sorts in the West Lobby, which is the entrance to the premium suites as well as the exclusive Huntington Club down at Field Level. Although the soccer season is over, I occasionally work the door for private gatherings.

Last Friday I worked such an event, holding the glass door on the street side and greeting guests at a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Group. The event was called “Sips and Wiggles.” I heard that it raised over $26,000 to help fight this terrible birth defect.

The following evening, I stood outside of our very own blue awning door as about 150 middle school students, many in costume, entered the school for a dance. I was there to do an unobtrusive screening of our young guest, answering questions for parents dropping off their children. Later, I monitored the door so that no one wandered off outside until those same parents picked them up.

These consecutive nights of being a door man brought be back to many weekend nights at Deibels in German Village. Of my many jobs there, from busboy to cook, from waiter to bartender, on busy Friday and Saturday nights I sometimes worked the front door for crowd control, answering questions and checking IDs. There were nights that the line snaked outside the building all the way to the corner of Whittier and Jaeger Streets. Sometimes, on very cold nights we would bring out Styrofoam cups and pour the chilled patrons hot coffee while they waited to get inside.

At Deibels on the weekends the job was not called “doorman” but bouncer. When you mix crowds and alcohol there were times that things got a little out of hand. Sometimes, instead of keeping people from getting in. My job was to escort people out. They usually didn’t want to go. One unruly customer grabbed a fellow employee’s tie on this way to being forcibly removed and started wrapping it around his fist so tight that Steve was choking. I ran and grabbed a knife, not to stab anyone, but to cut Steve’s tie off!

For several years, we had two brothers, Tom and Mike, working the door. They had both played football at Ohio State and were big and strong young men. We felt that we were in good hands with them there. Confronting a patron whom we were asking to leave, I was standing in the middle of the two of them. The customer decided that he would express his displeasure by taking a swing at us. He wasn’t a fool, this customer, he wasn’t about to hit Tom or Mike, so we went for the little guy in the middle, me, punching me squarely in the jaw. It hurt.

Fortunately, these incidents were exceptions rather than common place. And I have not been punched either at the stadium or here at school!

I have also worked the front door in the mornings at schools where I have served as principal, saying good morning to sleepy high school students, or waving to parents as they dropped their elementary children off for the day. Here at Our Lady of Peace, we have the wonderful Mr. Bryan Ashmus serving in that role and I admit to being a little jealous of him at times.

Being a door man is mostly about being welcoming. A door man is the first person one sees, and that first impression should be a good one. To be a good doorman you need to be friendly, you need to enjoy standing outside in all kinds of weather, you need to like people and to express that with a warm smile and quick greeting.

One day when I am no longer a principal, I think that I would like to just do that. Hold the door open for people and greet them. But I will never be a Walmart Greeter. That’s a bridge too far. And when I think of heaven, my first thought is of St. Peter at the gates. He is a doorman of a sort as well. I only hope that he smiles when he sees me and allows me in!

Jim Silcott