Being the landlord of a single rental property is largely a passive source of income–except when tenants turn over. When that happened to Dreisbach House early last month, I spent a week cleaning it. That same week, my wallet was stolen, one of my dogs got sick all over the house I live in and the air conditioning did not work when I turned it on for the first time this season.

But, to quote Stephen Colbert, I’d rather be grateful for than mad at. The person who stole my wallet removed my driver’s license and insurance cards and left them in my purse…boy, howdy, am I grateful! My 16-year-old son offered to clean the dog sick from the carpets…and he did a good job! Furthermore, the dog recovered without a (costly) trip to the vet. My AC had simply tripped the breaker and while I paid $135 for a technician to flip a switch, it could have been worse.

As for Dreisbach House, Jack, the contractor who renovated it last year, walked through it with me and wrote out a repair punch list. But two weeks later, when he was scheduled to do the work, I’m happy to report that Jack was too busy with other projects to do the job. He asked his mostly retired mentor, Paul, to do the work instead.

Paul first worked on Dreisbach House shortly after I purchased it in 2003. In every room of the house, I can point to something and say, “Paul built/renovated/fixed that.” A superlative contractor, he also leaves a space cleaner than when he started and has a sagacity that comes with decades facing life’s challenges head on, no excuses. For over 20 years, I’ve made it a point to sit and talk with Paul during his lunch breaks whenever he’s worked for me.

I first met Paul at the K-8 school his two sons and my four attended. Ten years later, when my eldest son, Claude, was home from college, he worked for Paul for a few weeks before returning to Ann Arbor for a summer program. When my second son, Hugo, learned how well Paul paid his workers, he wanted to work for him, too.

“No, way, Hugo,” Claude and I both told him. “You’d not make it through the first week.” We said this not because Hugo is lazy − he isn’t. At 14, he groomed dogs at a salon where clients can bite and void their bladders and bowels on their groomer, and sometimes did. At 16, he quit the salon to work at Old Carolina Barbecue, a job that infused his jeans with the aroma of slow-roasted pork.

But Hugo is both independent and has a tinge of Tom Sawyer. How often did I find one of Hugo’s brothers doing the job I had assigned to him because he had convinced them it would be better if he did something else (i.e., “You keep raking the leaves while I look for a bigger tarp.”)? Many, many times.

Hugo worked for Paul the last two summers before he went to college. He’d regale us with stories of the projects he’d worked on, and told Claude and me years later that whenever he was tempted to quit, he’d resisted because he didn’t want to give us the satisfaction of being able to say, “We told you so.”

Once, when remodeling a house’s second floor bathroom, they smashed the original cast-iron tub into sections to remove it. As Hugo carried out a large piece, a floorboard gave way under the weight and he was thrown to the ground. The impact shredded the skin of one of his forearms.

“Your arm better not be broken, Hugo,” Paul said as he inspected the bloody wound, “or your mom will kill me.”

With a knot in his stomach, Hugo would watch Paul inspect his drywall work. Paul would solemnly walk up to the wall, putty knife in hand, then slowly slide the flat edge of the knife down the section where Hugo had spackled over the nails and then sanded. If the wall was not as smooth as a mirror, Hugo had to redo it.

When he left for Eastman School of Music to study opera vocal performance, Hugo took a tool box he’d assembled with the money he’d earned working for Paul and would let his former employer know when he fixed things in the dorms. After his sophomore year, Hugo held a Leider concert in Akron to raise money to attend a voice program in Austria. Just before the concert began, I went backstage to see if he needed anything.

“I’m fine, but have you seen Paul? Is he here?” Paul, and his wife, Nancy, had arrived early and were seated near the front.

Was Paul a tough boss? Yes, he was, because he was fully invested in my son, as he is with all his workers. Paul’s consistent commitment of time and attention as he taught Hugo how to repair and remodel homes did more than just give my son handy skills, it also helped fill a father-shaped hole in Hugo’s heart.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 7, 2026.