By Robert Perea
I was making good progress with my to-do list Sunday evening—the website updated, a handful of short stories finished, notes for a couple of other stories transcribed. Then I opened Facebook to check the time for next week’s 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony, expecting logistics. Instead, the top notification on my feed was a post announcing the death of my friend Joseph Maino.
A lot of great things have happened to me in the years since I started the Fernley Reporter online in 2016, but one of the best was meeting Joseph.
I had only been publishing for a couple of months when he emailed me offering his services as a photographer. We met a few days later at Starbucks and connected right away. My first conversation with him felt like a resumption, not the beginning, of a friendship.
Before coming to Fernley, Jospeh was the Chief of Optometry at the Kansas City VA Medical Center, and during that time he had gotten into photography and became a regular contributor to the Kansas City Star.
As he told it, photography was a natural hobby for an optometrist, but it seemed much more than that to me. He had the eye of an artist, and the photos to prove it. The walls in his home in Fernley were adorned with all sorts of beautiful shots – bridges, landscapes, portraits and action shots.
He invited me over once to help me with an issue I was having with my camera and appalled at the cheap equipment I was working with, gave me an old Canon D50.
Over the next few years, he contributed numerous photos and a few stories to the website, each time asking for constructive criticism on his writing.
We talked and emailed often during the first couple of years, he teaching me technical things like how to open the aperture to blur the background of a photo or how to get a decent shot even in low light. When he complimented me on some photos I took during the 4th of July, me offering tips on phrases, tempo and other aspects of writing.
That fall in 2016 Joseph went with K and I to the Shakespeare Festival at Sand Harbor and I’m still amazed at the panoramic shot he took of Lake Tahoe.
The following February I had to go to the University of Utah medical center for an operation, and the day after we got home, Joseph showed up at my house with a pot of pasta and a Shepherd’s pie that fed us for a week. Turns out he was as good of a cook as he was a photographer.
During his time in Fernley, Joseph was one of the original members of the Board of Directors of the Fernley Community Foundation and he served on the Lyon County Library Board.
When Joseph moved to the Bay area a few years ago to be nearer his son and daughter and “grand littles” as he called them, I was sad for me but happy for him.
He stayed in touch even after he moved, often sending me photos of activities in the senior living community he moved into, or of his family.
Seeing the notification of his death was a punch to the stomach.
He had many close friends in Fernley, much closer even than he and I were, and I feel confident in saying his loss is a blow to a lot of people.
Joseph didn’t just take great photos, he saw people. I’ve missed him since he moved away, but I’ll miss him even more now.
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