Upriver Drive flagger, friend
Most likely, the overwhelming majority of motorists who encounter Donnie Stone on Upriver Drive, a mile or so west of Argonne Road near Boulder Beach, think of him simply as a flagman for North Star Enterprises.
Spend more than the few seconds it takes to pass by his roadblock – if you have good reason to enter the sewer construction zone he guards that is, or the moments it takes to do a U-turn if your reason isn’t good enough to pass – and you find out there’s much, much more to this man in the orange vest and hard hat.
Stone, an 11-year veteran with North Star, and with nearly 20 years of keeping both motorists and construction crews safe along the streets and highways across the Northwest, has been on duty at his most recent post since early May.
That’s when crews from Knife River Construction began the job of installing sewers in the Pasadena Park area of Spokane Valley. But to eventually provide residents with a septic tank solution and some smooth new roads, they first had to turn neighborhood streets into the equivalent of an off-road vehicle testing ground.
Enter Stone, a 6-foot-2-inch or so man who has not only the physical presence to deal with motorists who – despite signs a mile-and-a-half earlier that tell them the road is closed – still have every reason under the hot sun to pass by Stone’s orange traffic cones.
Stone will tell you he likens himself somewhat to a bartender – you know, the one who’s part marriage counselor, shrink, doctor, lawyer and preacher.
Only difference is Stone is a real preacher, too, in his time away from the “office,” a patch of generally blazing hot asphalt measuring 15-by-30-feet. He’s a card-carrying assistant minister with the Full Gospel Mission for All Nations in East Spokane and comes from a long line of preachers.
Stone insists that it helps him deal with the nature of a job where he is really “just the messenger.” He hopes that motorists he has to turn around, or is unable to answer specific questions on construction progress, will remember.
Doing what Stone does of course takes tact but also training that entails 5,000 hours spent in the classroom and good old “OJT (on-the-job training),” Stone said.
So far, it’s been a great gig for Stone, in fact, his best ever, and “99.9 percent of the people I’ve dealt with have been wonderful,” said Stone, who had to quickly break away to let one neighborhood regular pass, and offer a special thanks for the gift certificate she had presented him for a job well done in her mind. “That’s a first,” Stone said.
A few days ago, Stone thought he would be transferred to another post within the North Star service area of Eastern Washington. Not only was he a bit disappointed, but so were the regulars whom Stone has gotten to know by their vehicle and usually waves right through, but not without a bit of his wit.
While not everyone he deals with is like the lady who offered Stone the tip, “The bad outweighs the good,” he said, regulars from the neighborhood are quick to ask,” Donnie, do you need water? Donnie are you hungry?” and so on.
It was not exactly a rocket-science revelation, but to Stone, when dealing with the occasional irate motorist, “it’s all in the way you talk to them.”
Some don’t take the news that their trip will be delayed and call Stone names and “lay rubber,” as they spin back in the direction of the multiple signs that warn the road is closed ahead.
The bottom line for Stone is to keep motorists and the construction crews safe as one group tries to avoid the holes, trenches, humps and bumps the other creates.
Stone uses his training as a “man of the cloth” to deal with the day-to-day duties on the often hot and dusty road. He had one motorist whose mother recently died and offered to pray for her. She did the same for Stone, whose son’s mother recently died. Working everything from high-speed freeways to congested downtown arterials, Stone has been “given a brake,” as the ad slogan suggests. Stone said that he’s had “no close calls,” and that “I’ve been blessed.”
It’s likely that most drivers who encounter Stone, either in the few days he has remaining at his Upriver Drive post, or wherever his travels take him in the future, will say the same.