Grateful to have so many fine people in my life | Whale’s Tales

Published 1:30 am Friday, January 2, 2026

I have much to be grateful for what’s happened in the past year as I continue to struggle with terminal cancer.

Profound thanks are long overdue to many people, and I’m gonna give them here, though I cannot escape the odd feeling that it’s something like, “I’d like to thank the Academy … ” Well, maybe in a sense it is.

At the top of the bless-you list is my wife, Ann, to whom I have given so much grief in our 10 years of marriage. It has not been easy, for her, especially when we first learned of the cancer, and in several years afterward because the once confirmed former bachelor and 53-year-old loner in me was so unaccustomed to being fussed over. I acted like a baby, snapped at her when she refused to take “I don’t wanna” at meal- and pill-taking times, when snapping was in no way due. In fact, it’s never been due to her. She has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and that says a lot.

There is family, about whom I have written in my columns: big sister, Carole, big brothers Matt and Jack, and my younger sister, Diane. Guys, I know I have been delinquent in returning phone calls, and this is an area that I will improve on in the coming year. I still find myself missing our great parents, George and Irene Whale, and wishing they were here. So much to tell you.

My circle of friends, former jazz band pianist and ever-since buddy Mike Engen, former college roommates Ed Sugiyama, Randy Kerstetter and next room neighbor in Terry Hall, Ed Sumida. None of you can have the slightest idea how much your continued presences in my life have meant to me.

To my former co-workers, Michelle Gisi and Heidi Jacobs, whose support and humor have bucked me up when, as Oprah Winfrey’s character in “The Color Purple” said, “I was feeling mighty bad.”

Here at the newspaper, editor Andy Hobbs, who has borne that burden of my chemo-fuzzed brain and all of the chemo-fuzzed mistakes and errors I’ve made that defy explanation, and to our former human resources director Rebel Tavarez. They have made possible all of the columns and news articles I have written by keeping me on staff. I cannot leave out Marie Skoor or Laura Theimer in advertising, or the others I am just getting to know there.

Thanks also to all of the kind words and support from readers of this column met and unmet. Your letters and emails have planted day-long and occasionally week-long smiles on my face.

Last but not least, big, big thanks to the hardworking staff at Northwest Medical Services in Puyallup for all the care they have afforded me since May 2021. One told me that it’s “like a miracle” that I am still among the living to write this.

For Dr. Elizabeth Martin and her former assistant, Sarah Pratt, who have overseen my treatment, and in the chemo infusion room (first names only), nurses and assistants on down from RN Jan, Amber, April, Oakley, Debbie and others whose names slip my mind at the moment, and Treva at the door, whom I have never seen crabby. It cannot be easy for any of them to treat so many people at the ends of their lives.

So, onward and upward, folks.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.