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12.28.2001 10:40
More than
a jack of
all trades
BY ARLINE A. FLEMING
Journal Staff Writer
Just when it seems George Silva, 76, of Wickford, has done it all, he comes up with something else.
The last time we met up with him, he was on a panel at North Kingstown's senior center talking about the changing faces of retirement. He told how he went from working with the Coast Guard for 22 years to working at Fleet Bank for 16 years to taking up running and being a part of the Boston Marathon six times.
Silva, trim and peppy, paints, cooks, bakes bread, has mastered computers, once constructed a small boat, does 100 sit-ups every day and just ordered a new piece of exercise equipment for his at-home workouts.
Oh, and he also mentioned that he's a ventriloquist.
"Some kids don't even know what ventriloquism is," he said, his wooden boy Jack on his knee, a loopy smile on the doll's face. Jack dresses something like George, looking fit in a red turtleneck and sweats.
When Silva takes Jack to birthday parties or to local schools to visit with the kids, the television-era students giggle, some gaze in astonishment, one even asked to lift Jack's shirt up to see his bellybutton.
"No, he's modest," Silva told him.
Silva never set out to be a ventriloquist. While it interested him years ago after a doll unexpectedly came his way -- "I won one as a kid, but I don't know what happened to it" -- life somehow came between him and his hobby until a day last year when he noticed a young boy at the library with a Howdy Doody doll.
"I just snapped," he said.
It brought back so many memories that he ordered one of his own. He began practicing in the mirror while Dot, his wife of 52 years and an accomplished seamstress, made the doll's handsome outfits.
Jack cost $300 -- "but he's worth it," said Silva, who would ideally like to take the doll to Hasbro Children's Hospital to entertain the kids.
If he can find the time.
Each day, in addition to the sit-ups and the exercise and baking the bread and making the meals, he and Dot stop to chat at North Kingstown's "BK Lounge" (Burger King) for a little senior citizen socializing. Dot even made them Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus outfits, but Silva said he has trouble sitting still long enough to play that part.
Performing for kids with Jack as his sidekick is the part he'd most like to play in the new year.
"It would be nice," he said, visualizing how he and Jack could make hospital-bound kids laugh with the jokes and riddles he collects for Jack's repertoire.
Jack smiles.
Well, Jack always smiles. And he always does what he's told.
"Say hi, Jack."
"Hi," Jack says, his falsetto as silly as his smile.
"He's got that little look," Silva says, a mischievous look he readily recognizes, having worn it many times himself.
"It's always something," Dot says, as her husband runs into the next room to show off his newest acquisition.
"I picked myself up a cowboy hat the other day. A nice black one."
George Silva models the jet-black hat with the flashy silver band around it, looking something like Hank Williams, though he prefers Johnny Cash.
Oh sure, country music is another of his interests.
Having purchased the hat at a local tack shop, George is asked:
Do you ride horses?
"No. But I ride a bike."
Dot, his lifelong audience, is laughing still as he jumps up one more time to show his new bread machine.
Is he a good cook?
She nods. "He doesn't burn it."
Silva returns Jack to his place at the foot of the bed.
"I got him tucked in."
A faint good-night sounds from the back room.
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