While many people in the Mahomet community will miss Wes Carpenter, they will be strengthened by sharing stories of how he impacted their lives at his celebration of life on Saturday at the Church of the Nazarene.
Carpenter passed away on June 7 after his battle with cancer. But friends of the “Mayor of McDonalds” said he approached cancer with courage and life with grace.
“He said it’s just another bump in the road,” said Mike Waddles.
McDonald’s manager Jeff Millan said as a daily customer at McDonalds, Carpenter ran the restaurant through talking to the customers and directing people where they needed to go.
“I didn’t know him from Adam,” said Don Lynn. “A couple years ago, he walked up to me, shook my hand, and after that every time he walked up to me he shook my hand. Once he met you, he knew you.”
Carpenter’s customer service at McDonald’s went outside the restaurant. When lifelong friend, Denny Loughhead was in the hospital, he asked a preacher to come pray with him at the hospital. The pastor asked Loughhead if he missed going to McDonalds every morning.
Loughhead told the pastor he didn’t. All he had to do was call 1-800-GoldenArches, and McDonald’s would deliver. For Loughhead, the camaraderie he found at McDonald’s each morning came in the form of food delivery and a visit from Carpenter.
“He tried to treat everybody right,” Loughhead said. “He was a friend to everyone in Mahomet. All three of my daughter’s visited him quite regularly when they’d come down. He was just like a dad or granddad to them.”
A McDonald’s employee delivered coffee to his house when Carpenter couldn’t come to McDonald’s anymore.
“I can’t tell you have many times the doorbell rang and he’d say, this is a cup of coffee for the Mayor of McDonalds,” said Carpenter’s wife, Gayanne.
As a new cashier Carpenter told Marcy Cadman she had beautiful blue eyes. When he raised his sunglasses for her to see his blue eyes, the two had an instant connection where Cadman referred to Carpenter as Mr. Blue Eyes.
When Wes became too sick to go to McDonalds on his own, Cadman recognized Gayanne ordering coffee for him. Gayanne was too embarrassed to order his special “a large fresh decaf coffee at a senior rate,” but Cadman encouraged her to order it that way in the future.
Gayanne said that although Carpenter enjoyed talking to and helping other people, their relationship was special.
“I always felt like I was number one,” she said. “I know I was. Always.”
Last July, the Carpenter’s celebrated 50 years of marriage.
More than 75 family members will begin to filter into Carpenter’s house Thursday as they prepare to honor his life on Saturday.
“He’s as close to his third cousins as I ever was to my first,” Gayanne said.
With so many people, the family plans to gather around the poker tables to tell stories about Carpenter.
Without children of his own, Carpenter encouraged his nieces and nephews to go after their passions in life.
“He would tell our great nieces and nephews, ‘I don’t want you working for $3 an hour, but I don’t care. If you’re working for $3 an hour, don’t quit until you get to $4 an hour,” Gayanne said. “He was a big believer in you have to get up, find something you really want to do, so when you get up to go to work, you never dread going to work.”
Although Carpenter wanted to be in the front row when his great niece graduates with a Ph.D. of Veterinary Medicine in two semesters, Gayanne said she knows he will be there in spirit.
Carpenter followed his passion out of high school when he joined the military to receive special engineering training. After six years of service, Carpenter became an excellent crane operator, who was welcomed into local unions based on his skill set.
“I can really say as a heavy equipment operator, he never dreaded going to work,” Gayanne said.
As a member of the Village zoning board of appeals, Carpenter made it a point to visit with the people who applied for a zoning request.
“He always felt that because they paid money, he should understand what they wanted to do so he could argue the point,” Gayanne said. “This was his town and he wanted it to survive.
While Carpenter liked that Mahomet was a small town, he understood it was not going to stay that way for long. Carpenter often talked to construction workers or business owners to understand their business plan or what they offered the community. He made sure that as the community grew, it was kept as nice as it could be.
As a veteran, he also made sure that people respected the United States during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner at events by removing hats from people around him.
It was Carpenter’s zest for life, though that have left his friend’s celebrating. Loughhead said Gayanne asked him and a neighbor to carry tools inside to place under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. When Carpenter woke at 2 a.m., and saw his present under the tree, he was so excited he had to wake Gayanne.
“He was an adult, but he also had a child’s though to him,” Loughhead said. “He was like a six-year-old boy at Christmas.”
When asked to donate his time and skills to put a steeple on top of a church in Mahomet, he asked Gayanne to come out and watch. After one try, Carpenter landed the steeple perfectly on top of the church. Once the steeple was secure, the group planned to go for coffee.
Before they left, he asked Gayanne to get in the bucket of the backhoe so he could lift her up high enough to see the sun over the fall leaves. Once up, Carpenter shut the backhoe off, leaving Gayanne suspended in the air for 15 minutes until he returned.
Gayanne was laughing by the time he returned.
Because Carpenter was all about living life, Gayanne decided the best way to respect Carpenter is to share his stories with others.
“I told Wes God would take him when he needed a storyteller and a crane operator in heaven,” Gayanne said.
“Will I miss him?” she said. “Every day of the world, but I don’t miss what he went through at the end. Your prayers start changing. At first, I prayed for the treatments to work, and they did. But then he started going downhill, and you can’t fix it. Then your prayers change. I thought what did he do to have to go through this, but you can’t think that either because you’ll go crazy.”
The day before Carpenter passed away, he spent time with Reverend Lutz Braunig, who he met at the Hen House years before. Braunig will officiate the celebration, which starts at 10 a.m. at the Mahomet Church of the Nazarene on Turkey Farm Road.
