By Dennis Edwards

Columnist

They show up every day around 11am to talk and share lunch at The Plaid Turnip. Six or seven of Suffolk’s leading men.

The table is in the Turnip’s front window. It provides a birdseye view of a downtown these men have spent a lifetime promoting and understanding and in which they’ve invested a great deal of love and money.

I call their rendezvous point the “The Round Table” because around it sits more than a century of collective knowledge about Suffolk and the people who’ve lived here.

They can tell you the names of every business owner, manager, janitor, salesperson and anyone who’s worked in downtown during the last 80 years. They’ve seen downtown at its best and worst, and yet their love affair hasn’t waned in the least.

They’ve also lived through devastating personal tragedies on top of the residue of the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the peace Movement, the women’s rights movement, sexual revolutions, rock and roll, soul music and many presidential administrations.

That’s the kind of change that could leave most of us dizzy.

Yet they’re still friends. It seems to me we could learn something from them. At this table, I dare say, the nation could learn how to stay friends over a lifetime.

Who are the knights at this round table? There’s the quick-with-a-joke Mac Saunders (real estate); a dapper and mischievous G.S. Hobbs (men’s clothing); Harold Barrett (paint supplies), who brings an intense skepticism that almost matches the pragmatic spirit of the younger guy in the group, former City Attorney Joe Johnson. Insurance man Ken Taylor adds a unique kind of open-mindedness and Jack Nurney’s (insurance) quick wit keeps everybody honest. Ben Plewes adds a sense of balance.

The group is not exclusive of women. Gail Williams (banking) stops in occasionally to lend a beauty and intellect all of the Knights appreciate. Why, they even let me sit in sometimes.

So what do they talk about? And how have these men been able to maintain friendships longer than most of us have been alive? They talk about everything. No subject is off the able. And they genuinely enjoy each other while disagreeing about more than you’d imagine.

With our nation facing huge divisions, I often wonder what we can learn from these successful men.

Ken helped me with the answer: “You don’t take issue with things you don’t agree with. We state our position, explain it, disagree or agree where we can, talk about it and then leave it alone”

Ken said, “People take disagreements too personally these days.” He caught my attention when he said people need to “know when to leave things alone. If you don’t agree there’s no need to get upset about it.”

Sounds like the antidote to what ails our marriages, political discourse and work, doesn’t it?

Could it be that the same thing that keeps a group of old friends together might help keep a nation together.

There’s a blessing in breaking bread together, in the kind of candor that only friendship can produce. Around this table, perfection isn’t the standard. Humanity is. So are shared values.

Many of these men knew my father and my stepfather. They may very well know you or your parents and grandparents. Stop by and say hello. Some of their goodwill might just rub off on you, like it rubbed off on me.