Portrait of a thankful man.

Eighty-year-old Bill Church sits in a straight-backed chair parked close to the flickering gold glow of his gas fireplace, the only source of heat in his dark and powerless Spokane Valley brick rancher.

It is day seven since the wind blew and the trees toppled and the lights blinked out. Yet Church, who lives alone, has resisted repeated offers to come stay in the warm illuminated comfort with family.

Why?

“I am very blessed,” he tells me, leaning forward. “I don’t like to leave my home. I like it here.”

This guy’s a treasure.

Five minutes of chatting with the former high school teacher and I want to have him bottled and served as an antidote to the sourpuss masses.

Upbeat. Articulate. Full of joy and hope. Bill Church is exactly what I was hoping to find, and then some.

“I always lived in the country, so I don’t mind this at all,” he says. “I wouldn’t like living in an igloo, of course, but it’s 57 right now so it’s pleasant.”

Church laughs.

“And my neighbors have been really good. They bring me hot coffee and soup.”

Diogenes, I’ve been told, wandered around ancient Greece looking for an honest man. I drove into a region of the still voltage-impaired Valley the other night, searching for someone inspirational to write about for Thanksgiving.

Nothing planned. Just knock on doors and talk to whomever you can find. Sort of like fishing, except with a notebook instead of a Fenwick.

Struck out with one guy who was getting out of his truck.

Too busy to talk. Too stressed from keeping his homestead in survival mode.

I parked my truck in a lightless neighborhood off University. My compadre, S-R photographer Colin Mulvany, and I got out and started hoofing it, searching for signs of life.

The faint glow from a fire through a living room window caught our attention. A few knocks later and Church opened the front door with flashlight in hand.

My lucky day. One of my readers.

Soon we were led inside and listening to Church count his blessings like that old Sunday School song – one by one.

There’s son Michael, an attorney. And daughter-in-law Lisa.

And the grandkids: Leah, 5, Lindsey, 10, and Lauren, 12.

“I think they know that grandpa has a mind of his own,” he says of how they’ve absorbed his decision to hunker down and stick it out at home.

“I’m not worrying. I’m not suffering.”

Besides, he adds, there are unforeseen benefits like, say, getting to take steam showers. “It’s 42 in the bathroom,” says Church with a laugh. Turn on the hot water from his gas water heater and – Voila!

“Stay in there 40 minutes and it’s wonderful, like a great sauna.”

I ask Church how he manages to exude such a positive attitude.

“It’s my relationship with God,” he says. “I have a close walk with God. I’m a Christian man.”

The pastor at his church dubbed him “a social butterfly,” a term he accepts gladly. “Somebody has to make people feel friendly and welcome.”

Church says he grew up poor in Roseburg, Ore.

How poor?

“So poor we actually lived in a chicken coop. But I was happy, so I didn’t know I was poor.”

His father, Howard, was a logger before he landed a job with the Bureau of Reclamation, he says.

Church came to teaching later in life, after being fired as a sheep rancher (He laughs: “it was humiliating”) and pulling green chain, the old, brutal method of grabbing and sorting freshly cut lumber as the boards roll out of a sawmill.

Church eventually earned his college degree and says he was 38 when he landed a job teaching agriculture at Rainier High School, a job he truly loved.

“I’ve had struggles in life. But I have no complaints. You can gripe about what’s going on, but I’m not going to waste my time with that,” he says.

“I really have been blessed. I have lots of great friends and a lot to be thankful for,” adding: “I’m gonna live to be 125 the way I’m going.”

(COLUMNIST’S NOTE: Grandpa Church, by the way, got his power restored about 6 p.m. Tuesday. He plans to spend Thanksgiving dinner with his aforementioned son, daughter-in-law and beloved grandkids. I’m betting they’ll have loads to talk about.)

Leaving the dark home, the last thing I hear is Church’s voice behind me in the shadows of his doorway.

“Well,” says the thankful man, “if I don’t see myself in the paper on Thursday, I’ll know you found some other old guy who’s even more colorful than I am.”

Yeah, Bill. Like that’ll happen.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.