Chaulking one up
Senior receives perfect surprise from Buddy Wasisname’s Wayne Chaulk
Wayne Chaulk answers senior’s request with personal delivery
Eleanor Parrott of Petley says she is usually a shy person.
But that didn’t stop her from phoning the Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers office to ask a favour of Wayne Chaulk, one of the Newfoundland group’s members. Parrott, who will turn 81 in July, had recently begun planning her funeral, and thought the song “Carry Me” would be almost perfect for her funeral. But it needed some adjustments. “The song, it starts off slow and mellow, but then it speeds up. And I asked (Chaulk), could he do anything for me. … It was nice, but not for what I wanted it for, so I asked him could he change it for me, and do a disc with that one particular song on it,” Parrott said.
You’d never know if you didn’t ask, she figured.
Parrott didn’t hear anything for about a month, until Chaulk called her last week wondering what her address was so he could mail her the disc with “Carry Me” rearranged and rerecorded just the way she wanted it.
If Parrott was surprised that Chaulk rerecorded the song for her, she was doubly surprised when he hand delivered it to her Friday afternoon.
“I wasn’t expecting him. He didn’t say he was coming. He called me the night before and said he had my disc done,” Parrott explained.
“I gave him my address, and that’s all I thought. The next evening after dinner, around 2 o’clock, my daughter was here out on the patio, and I thought I heard her speak to someone. And when I looked, here he was, standing right in the patio door. I opened up the door and said, ‘Oh my God!’ ’cause I never met the man before.
“What a visit we had. He was the sweetest person I think I ever spoke to. He was some beautiful. He did a lot for me, and I can’t appreciate it enough. We had a wonderful evening.”
Parrott said that apart from the unique disc she had requested, Chaulk gave her a free Buddy Wasisname CD and poster.
She also said the new recording of “Carry Me” is “perfect to a T.”
“He did it just perfect, the way I wanted it.”
Chaulk said that of all the requests the band gets, this one might have been the most unique.
“As soon as the salesman told me her story, I said, ‘Well, we got to do something,’” he explained.
“When it was done, I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be lovely to hand it to her instead of delivering it in the mail.” So that’s what he did.
“She’s a lovely lady, a lovely person, who knows what she wants and who she is, with a big, happy family all around her. To do this was a real delight.”