The string no longer vibrates...

“…For what is your life? It is even a vapour,

that appeareth for a little time,

and then vanisheth away."

- James 4:14: Bible

“…and in the end, it's not the

years in your life that count. 

It's the life in your years. 

- Abraham Lincoln

“Please forward this as I don’t have access to all reunion addresses on my phone.”

And so it was that I learned of the death of one of my high school classmates. The subject line of the email read: “Arrangements for Dick J.”

A different time and place…

It was 1957 and our family had just moved to Fairmont, West Virginia from Cleveland, Ohio…more precisely from Euclid, Ohio where my father pastored the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church.  It was a small congregation of 300 or so souls, and his first pastorate in the United States.

We had come from Toronto in 1951 in the night.  If our first ‘Green Card’ pictures were any indication, we looked to be Eastern European immigrants rather than a small family unit a mere 285 miles from the city in which we were born and my parents had grown up.  There was excitement, however, in this new land with similar language and only nuanced differences from the country of the Union Jack – the flag subsequently replaced by the Maple Leaf.

We spent six years in Euclid in a lower middle class neighborhood, where the parishioners were factory workers, bus drivers, mailmen and other such folk.  Good people…hard working people.

A little religious background…

The Baptist Church – that would be ‘American Baptists’ – does not have much of an organizational infrastructure.  While Baptists had been around since the late 1700s, it was a split, with what became the Southern Baptists, during the ‘Second Great [spiritual] Awakening’ in the mid-1800’s, when the American Baptists found their own feet – the ‘…First Great Awakening…’ had swept the American Colonies in the early 1700s.

Baptist churches are independent, meaning they are each responsible for their own affairs including the recruitment of new ministers.  When they have a need, they send a small group of elders to hear someone preach somewhere.  The visit is not necessarily announced.  When they find a minister they like, they invite them to preach in their church…you know, to ‘squeeze the melon’ to see if it is ripe and a good fit.  If it all works, an offer is made, negotiated and a deal done.

So it was that Dad was visited by the First Baptist Church of Fairmont, West Virginia in 1957 and before we knew it, we headed into those “…almost heaven…” West Virginia Hills, and our assigned home at 912 8^th Street where we would reside through my high school years.

A place to find a friend…

Once settled, it was off to a new school...new people,  and peculiar new southern accents to understand.  Butcher Elementary was the starting place.  There were two things that stood out about that school:

•       The fire escape was a circular slide from the upper floors to the ground, and
•       Dick J was my first friend

It wasn’t that I made any effort to befriend him…I was new and pretty uncomfortable.  He simply captured me and treated me as though he and I had known each other our whole lives.  Even at that age, he seemed to have that way about him…a comfort with practically everyone.  Dick had made me his friend, and that gave me credibility with the other kids. 

He lived on 1^st street near the bridge on Fairmont Avenue and I lived on 8^th street near the high school.  There is little doubt his presence made my transition to this new community as seamless as it possibly could have been.  In the second year, just before junior high, he and another friend Tim S, came with my family to our cottage in Canada for a week or so.  You see Dick wasn’t just my first friend in Fairmont, but the only friend I had had to that point in my life.

The river flows…

As junior high turned into high school, athletics took over most of my discretionary time, and while Dick and I remained friends, the time we spent together became less and less.  After high school we lost touch, and it wasn’t until my 40^th class reunion that we saw one another again. 

When we met that year and caught up with one another’s lives, I learned he had suffered some significant health challenges, but that smile, the twinkle in his eye, the genuineness of his spirit transported me almost immediately to the playground at Butcher school when it seemed that he had always been in my life. 

I experienced a twinge of regret that I had not gotten to know him in his adult life…the wine had matured…clearly richer, wiser and even more thoughtful – I had missed something. 

Subject: Arrangements for Dick J…

The funeral home had a website with an electronic guestbook you could sign…I left a note, and as I read the comments from so many others, it was clear Dick had touched a lot of lives with the same spirit I had felt, lo those many years ago.  It wasn’t that I was special…it was his spirit that made me feel special…a gift…a gift he undoubtedly cultivated his entire life.

There is something about early connections in life…something about the sparkle of youth…something about the genuine and authentic spirit that never diminishes.  This week I found myself transported to another place…another time…and wept for that fearless little boy who had made me his friend...

- ted