Glendale Contractor’s Nobel Gesture

Randy Mate spent years pounding shingles into place and patching holes in walls before the Glendale contractor became interested in building character.

Thus was born an idea worthy of Alfred Nobel: Mate and his wife, Becky, began to give away small cash prizes to poets, artists and writers whose works celebrate virtue.

Mate, who often works at fixing other contractors’ mistakes, has been a local arts patron for the past two years, in between mending homes with Spackle and nail. He said he was “getting pretty tired of seeing other contractors do poor work, rip people off.”

The idea of awarding the prizes, he said, shifting his tool belt as he leaned across a conference-room table, is to “encourage the kinds of values that I think are important.” The couple, who also work together in their contracting business, said they want to enrich local culture; not just live and work in town but make it a better place.

Works are judged several times a year in categories such as honesty, friendliness and tolerance. Contest winners get a cash prize of generally no more than $25, and the work appears in a newsletter. The prizes--small as they are, virtue being its own reward, after all--are advertised by word of mouth.

Becky Mate said she and her husband didn’t set out to start another Nobel Prize. “But everything has got to start somewhere,” she said. “Who knows how much this will grow.”

Usually a dozen or so people enter works for each contest, and the couple hope that number grows. “But for today, I am just happy to do my part in bringing values and the arts to Glendale,” said Randy Mate, 40. “There just aren’t enough places for people to express themselves in positive ways.”

Not sentiments typical of a contractor, generally thought of as men of hardware, not of letters. The connection, he explained, is that “too many contractors do shoddy work. I’m trying to make up for it in my work and with these contests.”

The response from contest participants seems to confirm the couple’s belief they are making life a little brighter--one writer, one artist, one dreamer at a time.

“I think it’s fun, if nothing else,” said Doug Crowder, 46, a lawyer who lives in Glendale. “Writing has been my second career of sorts, and this helps me get better.”

Crowder’s love of science fiction earned him first prize last year in the short-story contest. It was, he said, a story about the importance of trust, “set way in the future.” Virtues apparently are ageless.

The judges also appreciate a global view of diversity, evidenced by Eunice Ratnaike’s first prize for poetry in the tolerance category, awarded earlier this year. The 71-year-old woman, who has lived in Sri Lanka and Thailand, included in her prize-winning poem the line, “How dare we even dream of judging all by one standard?”

“The prize, the contests, they are small potatoes now,” said Ratnaike, who has lived in Glendale for six years. “But Randy is on to something. Comparing him to Nobel might be grandiose, I thought, but it’s also a little accurate. He spends his own money and time on this. It could grow much bigger.”

Mate won’t give up, not even if his contest remains a local oddity--an urbane gesture by a blue-collar worker. It’s too important, he said.

“I’ve made money in my business, not a lot, but enough to support me and my wife comfortably. But money isn’t the issue,” he said.

It’s about making life a bit better--whether through drywall or prose.