In Memory--and Celebration--of a True Public Servant

It never seems fashionable in this county to praise a bureaucrat, and Robert Merryman would be doubly puzzled by my timing today, given that he died of cancer last week after nearly 30 years in county government.

I didn’t know him, and to be honest wouldn’t have noted his passing at all unless a colleague, Marla Cone, hadn’t told me he was a man of particular substance. “I’ve run into a lot of people as a reporter,” she said, “but none that I found so trustworthy, protective of the public trust and genuinely warm and good-humored.”

That got me to thinking about how we seldom acknowledge public servants, unless they do something wrong.

Finding Merryman admirers was easy. Colleagues described this 60-year-old man, who for the past 15 years headed the division that oversees a wide range of environmental health issues, as combining both commitment and courage.

His job was enforcing regulations to ensure that our food, water, air, soil and beaches weren’t being polluted. You may not like government, but without people like Merryman and his employees, we wouldn’t be able to depend on private business to guarantee such things.

“Before the hazardous-waste program started [in 1983], we were seeing spills all the time,” says Jack Miller, a Merryman friend and colleague. “We probably had five spills a week. There were just deplorable conditions where hazardous waste was stored. Now, we’re seeing dramatically improved conditions. The business community wants to comply.”

That was the result, Miller and others say, both of Merryman’s willingness to give polluters a chance to comply and his swift legal retaliation if they didn’t.

“It took courage to do some of the things he did,” says James Huston, another former colleague. “When you’re faced with uphill battles, it’s easier to find the easy way out or not deal with it. That’s not his style. He took on the challenges, chased the windmills.”

Miller recalls Merryman’s early days when the two inspected restaurants. They had a report of sewage spilling out the back of the restaurant, went to the scene and confirmed it. “He went in there and I’ve never seen anything so dramatic,” Miller says. “He stopped all the drinks at the bar and stood right there in the kitchen and stopped the waiters from sending plates out. He wasn’t just concerned about the job. He was concerned about protecting public health.”

Sharon Tabscott had a special vantage point for watching Merryman. A former part-timer in the typing pool, Merryman liked her work and hired her as his secretary when he became director in 1981. She admired his toughness in not bowing to pressure on the job but also prospered under his friendship. “I felt like he was the big brother I never had,” she says. “I could go in with any kind of problem, whether business or personal, and he never turned me down.”

Merryman’s cancer was diagnosed a little more than two years ago, Tabscott says, and that’s when the true measure of the man presented itself. Those who revel in depictions of lazy bureaucrats didn’t know Merryman, Tabscott says.

“He’d come to work and say, ‘Sharon, you’re going to have to help me.’ He would come to work in the morning, have his chemotherapy in the afternoon, and then come back to work. His doctor even got mad at him once. He said, ‘I’m trying to cure you of cancer!’ ”

As the illness worsened, Tabscott took office business to Merryman’s hospital bed or his home. “I knew, sometimes, he’d be at work and be in pain,” she says. “I knew what he was going through, because I had cancer myself. He said, ‘Sharon, you’re an inspiration to me.’ I was able to help him, and he would thank me all the time. I’d say, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ and he’d say, ‘Yes, you did.’ ”

Tabscott saw him for the last time a week ago Friday, when she took work to his home. Merryman’s wife, Colleen, thought the next day he was getting a bit depressed, so the staff decided to have a “Celebrate Summer” party at the office.

The party was scheduled for this past Thursday. Earlier, Merryman had written a note to the staff which read, in part: “As I embark on my home vacation, my thoughts are with each of you. During my absence, please continue the outstanding work you have done in the past. Thank you for your dedication, commitment, integrity and support.”

Merryman didn’t make it to the party. Two days before, just before falling into a final, deep sleep, he asked his wife for his appointments book. “But you’re on vacation,” she told him.

Still, he wanted the book. When he got it, he turned to Thursday, the date for the office party and wrote down the time of the party and this final notation:

“Celebrate.”

We should all have such a last thought.

“Even in his last days, he was thinking about other people,” Sharon Tabscott says. “I don’t know too many people who would be doing that.”

Not many of us outside county government knew about Robert Merryman. He was a man who devoted his professional life to making all of us safer from real but unseen dangers.

Most of us never thanked him for that, so I just wanted to make sure today no one ever thought of him again as a faceless bureaucrat.

* Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.