For me one of the most powerful themes of The Good Men Project has been the idea that by telling stories from and about as diverse a group of men as is possible, we can see the myth of our own isolation. When we did our very first event on our book tour in 2009 I went inside Sing Sing prison to speak to a group of lifetime inmates about the moments that had made them men. I was moved to tears—not by the difference I felt but by the commonality.
The power of storytelling when done with the complete honesty made possible only by raw courage it proves, again and again, that we are all connected. As human beings, our struggle is universal.
As I have written repeatedly (most recently in “The Illusion of Success”), my turning point as a man involved booze, small children, a bad marriage, and my architecting at a young age in the first-ever public sale of the 176-year-old Providence Journal Company—a media business of historic value—and the severing of many deep community ties.
Just over a year ago I found myself reading a New York Times Modern Love column titled “Helped to Heal by a Stranger’s Truth,” in which the author, Leah Carroll, writes about finding out the truth surrounding the circumstances of her mother’s murder when Leah was only four. Buried in the middle of the gripping and heartbreakingly honest narrative was a passage that hit me like a punch to the gut. Carroll wrote:
I told him my father, too, had worked for The Providence Journal; he had been in charge of East Bay distribution. It was his job to be sure the red boxes on the street corners were filled with The Providence Journal in the morning and The Evening Bulletin at night. I explained how when I was young, I thought my father had the most important job in the world: making sure everyone received their newspaper, their news.
I described how crushed my father had been when the newspaper was sold and he lost his job, and how he descended into alcoholism and vagrancy before being found dead in a hotel room by a desk clerk seeking overdue payment. Though my father’s death was not ruled a suicide, he had killed himself nevertheless, as he acknowledged in the letter he left for me in which he expressed regret about throwing his life away and not having been a better dad.
But he also used the letter to say that the proudest moment of his life was when I, at age 6, read “The Night Before Christmas” aloud to my stepmother’s family the year they were married. He told me to be sure at some point in my life to hear Beethoven’s Ninth performed live. And he closed by asking that I take care of my younger sister.
I was 18 by then, living with my aunt and attending community college. The police gave me my father’s possessions in a Ziploc bag. There among the change, the eyeglasses and the loose antihistamines was his long-expired Providence Journal employee identification badge.
I read and re-read the passage. I had not known this man but could still picture in my mind’s eye hundreds just like him. Men who had dedicated their lives to the idea of a newspaper company as a trusted community institution that had served as a beacon of truth and generosity for generations stretching back almost two hundred years. If you got a job at the Journal it was something you held onto for life. In Rhode Island there was no better place to work; the salary, benefits, and sense of mission were unparalleled.
Until I came along.
Sure, selling the company can be justified in retrospect from a financial point of view. Sure, there were plenty of other people involved. But I was the instigator, and I played a crucial role. I am pretty sure that the deal wouldn’t have happened when it did had I not shown up with my false innocence. But this one passage brought home for me on a deeply personal level, once again, the ramifications of my actions.
I sat down and typed an email to the Modern Love editor, unsure if my message would ever reach Ms. Carroll—and if it did, how she would receive it or if she would respond.
Ms. Carroll:
It was actually the description of your father’s death, not your mother’s, that sent a chill down my spine. I was the Chief Financial Officer responsible for negotiating the sale of The Providence Journal. Just after announcing the deal I was kicked out of the house, the 31-year-old father of two babies, for being a drunk. I didn’t see my kids that Christmas of 1996 and, as a result, decided to try to get sober rather than commit suicide. I have been clean for the 13 years since and, like you, have become a writer obsessed with telling the truth no matter how painful.
If my actions as CFO at the Journal in any way contributed to your hardship I am deeply and sincerely sorry.
Thomas Matlack
The response came within a couple weeks.
Dear Thomas,
Wow—I have to say this was an unexpected email. My dad was headed down an inevitable path and for years the Journal was truly wonderful to him—sending him to rehab and therapy. Howard Sutton [the publisher of the Journal] was at his funeral and I remember well seeing him weep. The sale to Belo and the loss of his job may or may not have hastened his downward spiral a bit, but was in no way the cause of his death.
But I can’t tell you how much an email like this means to me. I’ve looked at your website and am so impressed by the project. Your children are truly lucky to have a father with your kind of drive and determination to be a good person.
May I ask if you might consider talking to me a bit more for the research I’m doing on my book? I realize you didn’t know my Dad personally, but the Journal played such a huge role in his life and I’d be interested in hearing anything else you think you might be able to share.
Thank you again for reading the article and for sharing your story.
All my best—
Leah
Leah Carroll—the daughter of my unknown, anonymous, tragic employee—and I have never met, but we are certainly connected by booze, by Rhode Island, by the Journal, and by humanity. I have agreed to be interviewed for her book about her dad.
In the meantime, Leah is writing for The Atlantic and will soon appear here on The Good Men Project.
A good first-person story, told with truth and courage, is like that pebble in a pond. You have no idea what soul the ripples will touch. In this case it is Leah Carroll to whom I am indebted. She may have been writing about how a stranger helped her heal, but in so doing she, a stranger to me, helped repair a tiny piece of my heart too.
Photo Credit Dave Newman
Thank you Jim and Ann-Marie for your kind words.
The exchange with Leah is one of those things that leads me to have faith beyond any reason.
Hi Tom… A wonderful, heartfelt story of “mythological” proportions. Not to sound maudlin, but the fact that you connected with Leah Carroll in an almost “existential ” way, goes right to the heart of your story. That we are all connected in some way, that some word or small action might have saved another person or at least set them on a new course to redemption. There is a wonderful book(s) written by Joseph Campbell: “The Power of Myth”. It was also a PBS special a couple of decades back and featured Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell before his death.… Read more »
Your story touched my heart very deeply. I was Kevin’s wife, and Leah’s stepmother. Leah is a remarkable young women, and her father was a brillant man, who was just very broken by the events of his life. Your story made me happy, that you could bring yourself back from the devistation of alcohol, and how it destroys not just one person, but the entire family. Your wife and children are very blessed.
Ann-Marie