The calls began before 6 a.m. the day my story of G.W. Mayo ran. Dozens of readers were incensed enough by one of our headlines referring to Mayo, a Navy sailor who served aboard the USS Nevada during the attacks on Pearl Harbor, as a soldier.

A sailor, the readers reminded us, was not a soldier.

What began as a small profile of Mayo turned into a full-fledged headache. The calls never seemed to stop. I called Mayo and left a voicemail, apologizing for the editing mistake. I then returned to several hours of fielding calls from irate readers.

By mid-afternoon, my nerves were shot. I hadn’t known this at the time, but Mayo called our reader representative line to say that it wasn’t a big deal and that he enjoyed the story – the soldier reference at all. About half an hour later, I received another call. I was expecting the usual tongue-lashing. I picked up.

“This is old man Mayo!” he yelled. “And that was just a fantastic story today!”

I asked him about the being referred to as a soldier in one of our headlines.

“Who cares?” he told me. “We were all on the same side, right? It’s an honor to be called a soldier.”

This lifted my spirits on what had become a grueling day. Before we hung up, he said we should get together again for coffee at Starbucks, where we met for the interview.

We never got together for that cup of coffee.

I learned yesterday that Mayo died last week. I never told him how much a simple phone call meant on a bad day. I never told him that his voice of reason pierced through the madness of dozens of knee-jerk phone calls.

I never will.

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I’m going to meet with a few folks about a mentorship program for middle schools on Tacoma’s East Side. I’ve also got a video from yesterday’s Zookeeper Olympics at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium coming soon.