Day 198 - Lincoln Jones, You've Been Gone Too Long

Image of scuba divingby SLU Madrid Campus,
via Flickr.com

In addition to packing up books, video cassettes, puzzles, games, and hobby supplies for the long nights in Qatar, I took a couple of other actions while I was still in the U.S. before leaving for Doha. I signed up for classes through Free University and First Class to get an introduction to water sports I wasn't familiar with. I completed an introduction to scuba diving class one evening. It wasn't a certification course, but it helped me get a taste, enough to know that I would like to get certified. I also completed a windsurfing course on the Chesapeake Bay. Unfortunately, there was no wind on the bay that day so I didn't get much practical experience - just the theory.

There was one other club in Doha that met more than monthly that I looked into joining, the British Sub Aqua Club. That's British for scuba diving club. BSAC not only organized scuba diving events on the weekend, but they also provided the training needed to get certified. The British certification is more complicated than the American version. It requires several hours of classroom instruction, in eight weekly sessions, before even entering a pool with scuba gear on.

Over the Christmas holidays, BSAC decided to try an accelerated course with the classroom sessions held twice a week for a month instead of spreading them out over two months. One of my colleagues, Arnold, and I decided to try it.

And that is where we met Lincoln Jones. Every time I heard the Bananarama song, Nathan Jones, I heard Lincoln's name in it.

Lincoln was an American who had been in Doha for several years working for a British company. His wife was British. Lincoln was in his early 60s, but he had a special ability to be able to talk with anyone, from 6 to 60, as if he was the same age. He was so comfortable to talk with, most people didn't really have any idea of his age. He didn't just wait for people to approach him. Lincoln never met an opportunity to meet a new person that he didn't grab. Both Lincoln and his wife were BSAC instructors.

I didn't complete the BSAC training. After a pretest session in the pool at the Doha British School, I decided that it was just a little too much to ask of my body and my brain to make the adjustment to survive under water when it was clear that just wasn't the natural order. If it normally takes 8 weeks to complete the training, then I would wait until I could find 8 weeks.

Even though I didn't complete the course, Lincoln and his wife and the others from BSAC included me in their non-diving activities. On a Thursday (Gulf Saturday) evening in April, they invited me to a party at Lincoln's home. I was delighted and looked forward to the evening.

The Monday (Gulf Wednesday) before the party, BSAC held its in-the-pool training session for the new class. After the training session, several of the instructors continued swimming in the pool. On that Monday, things didn't end well. While Lincoln was underwater, he suffered a massive heart attack. The other swimmers pulled him out and applied CPR, but he didn't recover.

I wasn't part of that class, so I didn't hear about Lincoln's death until the next day. I was in Arnold's office when our receptionist came in to tell him there was a phone call for him about an American citizen who had died. Arnold was the consular officer at post, so he was responsible for handling the embassy's responsibilities on the death of an American citizen. I left Arnold's office and as I reached the lobby, the receptionist told me there was also a call for me. The voice on the other end of the phone was a British man who first told me that Lincoln Jones had died the night before and then asked if there was anything he or his colleagues could do to help the embassy deal with it.

At a small embassy in a country with a small American population, it is all too likely that the death of an American citizen also means the death of a friend. Dealing with deaths of Americans in Germany was not like that. That is why his first statement was such a shock that it took awhile for me to realize how shocking the second statement was. People don't call to offer help to embassy staff. They call to tell the staff at the embassy what they want us to for them. But that is the kind of guy Lincoln was. He had friends everywhere and they were all willing to help him, even in death.

My initial reaction was that the receptionist had connected Arnold's call to my extension and my call to his. When I realized that both callers were reporting Lincoln's death, I thanked the man who had called me and assured him if I learned that we needed help, I would get in touch.

The Odd Couple by SarahSierszyn,
via Flickr.com

The Thursday I had been planning to be at Lincoln Jones' home for a party turned out instead to be the day of his memorial service. As I got ready to leave the house where the service was held, I realized that I was about to go home to an empty house with nothing to do that evening, nothing to do until the next morning when Lincoln would be laid to rest in the Christian cemetery on the other side of the country. Unless I did something right then. I thought about Lincoln and how he never allowed an opportunity to meet someone pass. I recognized a couple of people from Doha Players at the service, so I asked if there was anything I could do for the performance that evening. It was the night of the last performance of The Odd Couple, that American play the group was so glad to have me around for since I could answer their questions about what props would be typical in a New York apartment. I had already seen the play, so I agreed to staff the souvenir table before the play, during the intermission, and after the play. I took many steps in the direction of behaving like an extrovert that evening, thinking all night about how Lincoln would have used the opportunity.

The next day, Arnold and I drove to the other side of the country to be with Lincoln's wife and friends at Lincoln's final resting place.