Community rallies around ailing Sparks mayor

By John M. Glionna, Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 3, 2016

PHOTOGRAPHS by Randilynn Beach

SPARKS — Mayor Geno Martini recalls the day in 2010 when his doctor delivered the crushing news: He had Parkinson’s disease, a painful debilitating disorder without a cure. Later, he slid inside his pickup truck and started the ignition.

Then he just sat there.

There was no self-pity and no tears; those would come later.

Instead, he felt a simmering rage over contracting a neurological disease he knew would slowly sabotage his muscles and turn his body against him. He had to tell his wife, children and his elderly mother; not to mention constituents in this community of 92,000 residents, Reno’s sibling city in the eastern shadow of the Sierra.

“I knew I’d start falling apart. I was going to end up in a wheelchair,” he said. “And that eventually I’d be wearing a diaper.”

But the mayor didn’t follow the script. The son of a rancher who himself died of Parkinson’s in 1999, Martini told his wife, Ruth, but that’s where the disclosures ended. He closed off good friends and even his mother — he simply didn’t want her reliving the awful flashbacks of his father’s agonizing deterioration.

For the next five years, until this November, Martini kept his health a closely held secret, amid the imploring eyes of those around him. Each time he stumbled, he would blame his bad back.

Then, after a series of falls before Thanksgiving, Martini came clean. He told his family; then held a tearful meeting with his staff, confirming what they had all suspected: He was seriously unwell.

That’s when the 70-year-old Sparks native ad-libbed the script a second time: Instead of stepping down, he pledged to serve out his third term. Many here call it a gut-check decision by a man whose body may be failing him, but whose spirit has stubbornly insisted, “Not on my watch.”

“What was I going to do: Crawl into a hole and die? I can’t do that,” Martini said. “Can I make it three more years? I don’t know. But I’m gonna find out.”

Nowadays, the scene at City Hall is one of a flock tending to its shepherd. With word out on his disease, Martini can brandish the walker he was once too proud to use. And whenever he falters, a staffer, city attorney or councilman is there to catch him.

Martini doesn’t like the attention, but people here just shrug their shoulders. At the recent Christmas tree lighting ceremony, as the mayor wobbled, Councilman Ed Lawson was there to catch him.

“Stop hovering,” Martini barked. “Screw you, mayor,” Lawson shot back in the heat of the moment. “I’ll hover if I want to.”

The other day, Martini sat in his City Hall office surrounded by mementos of his nearly two decades in politics: the picture with NBA center Bill Walton, the Mayor Geno bobble-head doll and a caricature of him scrawled by local elementary students. At 6 feet and 265 pounds, he’s a large man with a bald head and graying goatee.

The relentless symptoms of the disease engulf him. As he talked, his body jerked in constant movement, his legs splaying as though summoned by another mind. Martini grew up idolizing his father, a plainspoken man with a third-grade education. Martini graduated from college and became a banker, a gentle giant always sure of his physical strength.

A few decades ago, before he entered politics, Martini saw Parkinson’s take his father, beginning with the trembling hands. The once-strapping do-it-yourselfer who rode horses and drove cattle would soon go from a walker to a wheelchair. In his final days, he had to be fed, as his mother ate alone at the table.

One holiday, she snapped at her longtime spouse. Martini, one of two sons, gave some stern advice: “Mom, you have to make up your mind to deal with this,” he said. “You have to realize how this is going to end. You have to be ready.”

Years later, Martini would see his own body fail. He began to lose his balance on simple walks. Eventually, each step caused piercing pain. He inched along, never knowing when he might collapse. Whenever he faltered — in public, giving speeches, even at the office — he would explain, “It’s just my bad back.”

One November weekend, Martini fell three times, twice while he ate lunch with his mother. In the end, he was forced to send her out to the car to get his walker. “A 94-year-old lady has to go get the walker for her 70-year-old kid,” he said. “It wasn’t good.”

That’s when his wife, Ruth, insisted he go public. When he finally told his mother, her reaction surprised him: You should have told me earlier, she said; I can handle this.

There were other surprises. Instead of calling for his retirement, city staffers have rallied around their mayor. When he broke the news of his disease, Martini broke into tears and couldn’t continue. The staff took over from there. But the end of the secret has brought a sense of relief: no more excuses. He can use his walker in public, instead of easing, limping on failing legs, as though on ice skates, praying for continued balance.

“He’s tough,” Mayor Pro Tem Ron Smith said. “We say ‘Geno, you’re our mayor for as long as you want to be our mayor.'”

And so they hover. One day, as Martini entered City Hall, stooped over his walker, he lost his balance on the stairs, but the city attorney was there to steady him. And although his hands have yet to start trembling, Martini struggles to get out of bed each day and resume his job as mayor — or visit one of his 12 doctors.

He worries how Ruth, whose own father has Parkinson’s, will cope with his inevitable demise. One night, after she nagged after him, he echoed the advice he once gave his mother: This will not end well. You must be ready.

For now, Sparks’ popular mayor — who won 76 percent of the vote last election — stays busy. He held the annual Can the Mayor day, inviting residents to donate enough canned goods to build a wall around his desk.

And Sparks hovers. Constituents wave to their mayor on the street, offering kind words and encouragement. One day, while Martini was shopping, another customer approached him. “I can only guess what you’re going through,” she said. “Will you give me a hug?”

He did.