Holding Each Other Together

Part III

Previously, “When the Masseys and the Davises Came Together”

The way his mother relates the story, Lt. Curt Massey, killed a year ago last week by a wrong-way freeway driver, joined the Culver City Police Dept. only after missing out on his first few career choices.

[img]775|left|||no_popup[/img]

Actually, being a firefighter came next after he tried out desk jobs — too confining — in other fields.

Since the Fire Dept. was not hiring, young Mr. Massey learned of an officer opening in the school drug program DARE, and that was his portal of entry to a career that will be recalled long past the present generation.

At 5-foot-7, Mr. Massey, short of stature like his mother, she noted, needed to work extraordinarily hard at the Police Academy to sail through a program where many colleagues overshadowed him, but only physically.

One classmate stands out in memories, said Mr. Massey’s mother, Padric Davis. Milt McKinnon was the fellow officer who grew into a lifelong friend. Ironically, at the anniversary Mr. Massey’s death, Mr. McKinnon was promoted to lieutenant last week.

“Milt McKinnon has been a constant presence and comfort,” Mrs. Davis said.

Especially in the early days, shock, perhaps disbelief, were the dominant emotions among the 41-year-old officer’s struggling survivors.

For the first six months, Lt. Massey’s mother traveled from her Santa Barbara home to Pacific Palisades almost every weekend.

Grandma was there to offer succor and a familiar helping hand to her son’s widow, Melody, and their three stunned children, 10 and younger.

Her mission: To keep everybody and everything together.

Mrs. Davis would trace footsteps her beloved son had trod a thousand times. The ache was scarcely beneath the surface. Memories were ubiquitous. They filled every room like a gigantic balloon with no space for walking. They were unavoidable, no matter how you would try.

Fatherhood was no different from all other enterprises in Lt. Massey’s life. He knew how and where everything went and where all parts fit.

He was in charge, perhaps best of all.

Oh, yes, he did like that part.

He played dad with an infectious zest that spilled out and splashed onto everyone around him.

“Curt loved being a father,” said his mother, and she almost turned “loved” into a four-syllable term.

“He took it seriously. He did homework. He took the children to the grocery store with him. He coached all of Nicholas’s games with another buddy, Mark.

“Curt was determined that his children would have the same kind of experiences he had. Curt felt he had a wonderful childhood, growing up in the Palisades.

“He found Corpus Christi for his children. And that is similar to St. Matthew’s, where he went to school.

“He re-created a wonderful lifestyle, a neighborhood where everybody knows everybody else. Everybody cares about everybody.

“His children are growing up in a community, which is what he felt he did,” tucked into the serene, comforting small town-type of environment in which he rose to manhood.

The Curt Massey legacy will be carried into the future by 11-year-old Emily, 9-year-old Nicholas and 4-year-old Christian Curtis.

“All the children were special, but Christian was the delight of Curt’s life,” Mrs. Davis said. “He understood each child so well.”

But there hjave been rocks in the road that can be like boulders.

“Curt’s little family is having a hard time,” Mrs. Davis said. “But they are survivors, and they will survive.”

We said earlier in this memorial series that if you knew Curt Massey, you knew his mother. And the reverse.

Perhaps it would be fitting to close with an account of remarkably tender feelings from Padric Davis’s mourning heart that she penned on another tragic occasion, when the father of her two sons left.

She wrote:

“I would rather be a Mother than anyone on earth,

“Than paint the pageantry of faith or walk among the wise.”

The end. But not really.