Smith: Mom inspires Healdsburg playwright

As a New York City kid, Audie Foote spotted a man living on the street and remarked to his mother about the “bum.”

She stopped short.

“That ‘bum,’ as you call him, was a child like you once,” Katherine “Kitty” Foote, instructed her son. She impressed on the boy that it wasn’t right to label someone whose life and qualities and challenges he knew nothing about.

Audie, now a longtime Healdsburg resident and playwright anticipating an opening night Friday in Santa Rosa, would in time learn why his mom was so protective of people about whom most others seemed to care naught. The tale she shared became her son’s favorite story, and inspiration.

In 1948, Kitty was a young woman who rode the bus to and from her job as a dinner-shift waitress. Her passage home required a transfer in a sketchy area of the Bowery.

Her son said, “She was scared out of her wits on a freezing January night when a homeless man prevented her from being beaten and robbed.” From that night, Kitty’s guardian, a strong, well-spoken man, was right there when she stepped off the bus and he watched over her until she boarded the next one.

In return, she brought him, and also other of the habitues of the area, doggie bags from the restaurant, cigarettes and clothes. This went on for two years.

The homeless men took to calling her “The Angel of Chatham Square.” You might have guessed that’s the title of her son’s play, which opens an eight-performance run Friday at the Wells Fargo Center’s East Auditorium.

Audie Foote, who wrote and staged a one-act play and then expanded it, appears in the North Bay Stage Company production as a denizen of the street. His mother saw a video of the play shortly before she died last year at 101.

She told him, “I was really good in that story, wasn’t I?”

FIERI FEEDS: Hunger fighters at the Redwood Empire Food Bank are even bigger Guy Fieri fans since he donated some 28,000 pounds of groceries.

The food came off the shelves of the supermarket in a Santa Rosa warehouse that’s the set for “Guy’s Grocery Games.” The market isn’t real, but the fresh and packaged foods are, and they must be rotated.

The more than 40 pallets of food donated by Guy and The Food Network won’t go to waste, but to people who need it.

AT SAFEWAY in Rohnert Park days ago, shopper Ron Martin couldn’t put his finger on what was different.

Scanning the six open checkstands, it dawned that he’d never before seen all of them staffed by men.

FROG-LIKE, Bruce Kyse is taking a leap to Calaveras County.

The ex-PD publisher will leave Santa Rosa for San Andreas - town motto, “It’s Not Our Fault!”- to publish the twice-weekly Calaveras Enterprise.

“I miss being at a newspaper,” said Bruce, who’s been consulting since he left the PD late in 2013.

He and his wife, Robin, were attracted to the Mother Lode as a gathering place for their children and grandchildren. Bruce noticed an opening for editor at the Enterprise and when he inquired, owner-publisher Ralph Alldredge suggested he come run the paper.

This is a hopping year there: It’s the 150th anniversary of the story by Mark Twain, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” source of inspiration for the famous annual Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp.

GIVE A THOUGHT, if you will, to Rick Bates, a Rohnert Park Public Safety officer, and his partner turned pet, Viper.

The man and the Belgian Malinois worked together seven years. Viper sniffed out drugs and drug money, and by his mere presence persuaded suspects to behave or to come out of hiding. And he watched Bates’ back.

“He was the best partner I ever had,” the officer said.

Since the K9 was retired in 2013, he’s been the Bates family dog. All was good until a degenerative condition attacked Viper’s hind legs. It now cripples him.

Bates believes it is time to have Viper put gently down, but the policeman’s heart whimpers and moans.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD