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South Main Street Wilkes-Barre bar Donahue’s reopening Saturday, March 12

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Former Dupont cop convicted of letting drug dealer off the hook in exchange for prescription pills

<p>Call it the real World Wide Web.</p><p>There&#8217;s Tommy Flaim on the front page of our paper. We grew up neighbors. His older brother John and I hung together incessantly as kids. Trying to stay up all night, checking at midnight to see if ghosts really haunted the Markle mausoleum, playing knights with wooden swords and shields crafted by my dad.</p><p>We joined Boy Scouts and spent a week each summer at Camp St. Andrew, including 1969, when we stood in the canteen staring at a tiny black and white TV watching a fuzzy Neil Armstrong take &#8220;one small step.&#8221;</p><p>I bought my first car from John, paying $400 for a Mercury Capri he had rolled in North Dakota, crinkling the roof but otherwise keeping it intact. I joked it was &#8220;the car that met Godzilla.&#8221; It sprung so many exhaust leaks I couldn&#8217;t close the windows while driving outside Washington, D.C. visiting Brad, a friend met in the days I ran a bicycle shop. Brad moved to Colorado, lost touch, and died of pancreatic cancer. Mortality gobsmacked me good.</p><p>John became an optometrist and bought a house in Ephrata where he raised a big family with a loving wife. He&#8217;s still my eye doc.</p><p>Through all that, Tom remained the quintessential younger brother: Always on the periphery.</p><p>Tom&#8217;s younger brother, Jimmy, grew up to buy the corner store that had sated our candy cravings as kids. I <em>loved</em> Jim&#8217;s &#8220;Flaim&#8217;s flaming (chicken) finger hoagie.&#8221; It was the meal of choice when I lived in Kingston and rode my bicycle home.</p><p>If you read the story about how Tom saved Steve Mocarsky&#8217;s mother from a fire at their house, you know he got into the house without breaking any windows or doors. Steve had given Tom&#8217;s mom, Dori, a key.</p><p>That&#8217;s one of her roles on that block among long-time residents. Need someone as an emergency contact? Dolores Flaim is your woman. Once, when we couldn&#8217;t get in touch with my mom, I called Dori and she went over to check. Mom had forgotten to put in her hearing aids.</p><p>Steve was a neighborhood bud of my younger brother. During a spell when some of us met Tuesday evenings with friends at a new bar, Steve joined the group. I told him about an opening at this newspaper&#8217;s Hazleton bureau (closed long ago) and he&#8217;s worked here since.</p><p>Tom Flaim and West Hazleton police officer Chris Conarty &#8212; who arrived in time to help save Steve&#8217;s mom and her dog &#8212; received commendations at a borough council meeting. Council President Mark Yeager read the proclamation.</p><p>Mark is the son of Irene Yeager, daughter of my uncle Ray. Mark&#8217;s older sister Sandy and I played together when she visited her grandpa in the house on the corner. He had a bench swing in the back yard, a big old maple tree I loved to climb, and a color TV. The kids in our clan headed there most Sundays to watch The Wonderful World of Disney &#8220;in living color.&#8221;</p><p>Uncle Ray provided my father&#8217;s livelihood and thus fed our family of nine kids by running a small plumbing business with dad as the chief plumber.</p><p>After uncle Ray passed, Irene gave me the two dressers from her mother&#8217;s long-vacant bedroom. One dresser bears burn marks from when she set up a bunch of candles as a child and left them lit a little too long.</p><p>This isn&#8217;t intended as indulgent nostalgia. It&#8217;s dew drops glistening in the morning sun, caught at the intersections of strands in an astoundingly complex web, visible only when you&#8217;ve stumbled into the right place at the right time.</p><p>We all have such moments. For me, a fire prompted a neighbor to action. Suddenly the links of a life &#8212; the value of friendships and acquaintances deep and slight &#8212; unfold before your eyes.</p><p>And regardless of woes and concerns and frustrations, you are, like George Bailey, reminded: It really is a wonderful life.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption"><strong>Beyond the Byline</strong> Mark Guydish </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_Guydish.jpg</photo0><caption0><strong>Beyond the Byline</strong> Mark Guydish </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Beyond the Byline: One moment triggers a lifetime of linked memories