Theater was his life; he’ll be in a play once more on screen

What follows are updates on three columns published in 2018:

One more time on stage

Community theater actor Justin Tinsley’s hope was to perform in 100 shows with the Edmonds Driftwood Players. When he died a week ago, two years after learning he had lung cancer, he was more than 60 plays short of that dream.

Yet the Lynnwood man, featured in this column Sept. 2, will be part of a theater production one more time thanks to technology and an understanding director, his mother said.

“He got into another play, even on hospice,” Joan Tinsley said Wednesday. “Red Planet Blue,” by Seattle playwright James Lyle, is scheduled to be performed Jan. 10-13 by the Edmonds Driftwood Players.

Justin Tinsley, who turned 47 on Sept. 20, shared his love of acting in an interview late last summer. That passion, which never faded, began with his Edmonds High School drama teacher, Sue Roberts.

A former janitor at Denney Juvenile Justice Center, Tinsley’s cancer had progressed to the point that by late August he wasn’t sure he’d ever act again.

It was 2016 when he learned that a cough and a broken leg were the results of lung cancer that had spread to other parts of his body. Along with chemotherapy, he had undergone Gamma Knife surgery due to brain lesions. He’d been cast for a role in “Farce of Habit,” staged at the Historic Everett Theatre in August, but had to drop out due to a seizure.

Joan Tinsley said her son died in the home they shared on the night of Dec. 21. Earlier that evening, he had been in the kitchen rehearsing his lines “like he did every time he was in a play,” she said. “It was a typical day for him. He was ready to get a night’s sleep.”

He had been receiving hospice care since September, when he developed pneumonia and stopped all cancer treatment, she said.

She is grateful to Zachariah Robinson, the director of “Red Planet Blue,” who cast her son in the play despite his condition. “I drove him to all the rehearsals so he didn’t miss any,” she said. Just moving had become hard for Justin. “He refused to let it stop him,” she said.

Because his role involved artificial intelligence — “he’s like a robot,” she said — Justin will talk from a screen in the play. “I think they’re going to have huge crowds,” Joan Tinsley said. “Before this even happened, I was getting messages from theater people planning to go to the play to support Justin.”

In her grief, she also has great gratitude for the local theater community. At the Historic Everett Theatre, one seat now has a plaque with Tinsley’s name on it. And in July, he was feted at the Wade James Theatre, home of the Edmonds Driftwood Players, at a potluck tribute.

Randy Yamanaka, a fellow actor and retired Seattle police officer, was an especially kind friend, Joan Tinsley said. “He made a point of getting Justin out of the house every week,” she said. Before her son died, they were planning to have dinner with Yamanaka last weekend.

Way back at Edmonds High, Justin won a drama competition for playing Atticus Finch in a scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird.” His mother said she got him a medallion at the time. It said “I Act, Therefore I Am.”

“Truer words were never spoken about anybody,” Joan Tinsley said. “His whole life was theater.”

Grandfather’s artwork is home

Artist Susan Ringstad Emery was featured in a Dec. 2 column. She recently spent time at the Anchorage Museum studying artifacts related to her Alaska Native heritage.

On Dec. 17, Emery shared that the Herald article brought an unexpected gift.

“One amazing outcome,” the Everett artist said via email, “one of my grandfather Teddy’s carved scrimshaw artworks has come home to us through someone who read your article.”

A Chicago man, Anthony Pfeiffer, reached her through her art webpage after reading the column. He had seen one of her late grandfather’s carvings — one of which was described in the Herald column as being signed “T.S.” — on an eBay auction from Goodwill Industries of Northern New England in Maine. “Unbeknownst to us, he decided to try and win and return it to our family,” Emery wrote. Due to a technicality, the auction was stopped before the art was sold.

“That’s when Anthony emailed me and gave me the details. Sure enough, it was my grandfather’s work,” Emery said. After contacting the Goodwill in Maine, she received email from a senior vice president there.

“Long story short, Goodwill sent me my grandfather’s artwork,” Emery said. “It now sits surrounded by the artworks of his late brother-in-law and grandsons, and treasured by us.”

With thanks, the Everett artist made an online donation to Goodwill of Northern New England. She let the Chicago reader know that the artifact “came home to us.”

He replied by email. “Hi Susan, My heart soars like the eagle, you made my family and me so happy,” wrote Pfeiffer, who said he was glad “your grandfather’s art has returned home for Christmas.” And he added, “if you are ever in Chicago let us know.”

Boy’s cancer battle

Readers of this column met 8-year-old Quintin Hall on Aug. 1. The Idaho boy suffers from stage 4 neuroblastoma, a cancer that begins in nerve cells. While he had T-cell therapy at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Quintin and his mom, Jacqy Vorderbrueggen, spent about six weeks over the summer with Woodway’s Lisa and Justin Marquart and their four children.

Since the Marquarts’ goodbye party — with Popsicles and Silly String, a rollicking day for the kids — Quintin and his mom have spent considerable time at Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in Spokane through the Providence Pediatric Oncology and Hematology department.

Through Quintin’s Quest, a closed Facebook group, Vorderbrueggen documents her son’s treatments and their ups and downs. On Dec. 14, after weeks at the Spokane hospital, she posted, “Discharge tomorrow!”

That didn’t quite mean going home to Idaho. With Quintin getting TPN, total parenteral nutrition, and injections, they had to stay in Spokane a few more days before Christmas. In a Dec. 15 post, the boy’s mom wrote, “So fancy!” after social services placed them in a deluxe Spokane hotel.

By Christmas Eve, they were back in Idaho. Vorderbrueggen posted a shout-out to a “magic elf” who makes the holidays happen through “Christmas 911,” a program of the Orofino Police Department. Quintin also had a visit from Santa before Christmas.

And a few days before Christmas, Vorderbrueggen posted that doctors had approved plans for Quintin to spend his upcoming birthday in Hawaii.

“This sure beats treatment,” she wrote. The mom, whose son was diagnosed with cancer at 6, noted that she has “a few options to suggest” to Quintin’s doctor “in case this treatment is no longer helping.”

“Please pray that it is,” she wrote.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.