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An old friend from high school just passed


jsharr

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I had not seen Peter since we graduated.  Maybe ran into him at a reunion.  Apparently he lived a life worth living and died with incredible dignity.  Makes me wish I would have kept in touch more.

Here is a memorium about Peter

https://www.gtu.edu/news/memoriam-peter-yuichi-clark?fbclid=IwAR2bBwbln_j8at_-FSn8W-VEZkd0L9Bie2kSbX8bOd5Tn_TEOH1HQF-rvoc

And here is one of the last articles he wrote in 2019

https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/JCO.19.00472?fbclid=IwAR2iEPWsgnAwPYuRoLdOX3iraf0TgQy6_kgba5ne-LGq4x0w8-zfNI4GCZ8

I also learned this week that another childhood friend passed away homeless under a bridge in Dallas.   Makes me wonder how we each ended up where we are at now and where the vagaries of life will take us in the future.
 

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Nice guy.

Been there, wonder when I'll be there again. It would be nice to have his composure, but I don't.

I wonder the same thing. I'm not a terribly social person, but I do wonder how things turned out for the people I've known.

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23 minutes ago, jsharr said:

I had not seen Peter since we graduated.  Maybe ran into him at a reunion.  Apparently he lived a life worth living and died with incredible dignity.  Makes me wish I would have kept in touch more.

Here is a memorium about Peter

https://www.gtu.edu/news/memoriam-peter-yuichi-clark?fbclid=IwAR2bBwbln_j8at_-FSn8W-VEZkd0L9Bie2kSbX8bOd5Tn_TEOH1HQF-rvoc

And here is one of the last articles he wrote in 2019

https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/JCO.19.00472?fbclid=IwAR2iEPWsgnAwPYuRoLdOX3iraf0TgQy6_kgba5ne-LGq4x0w8-zfNI4GCZ8

I also learned this week that another childhood friend passed away homeless under a bridge in Dallas.   Makes me wonder how we each ended up where we are at now and where the vagaries of life will take us in the future.
 

I also had an under-the-bridge shocker.

I once was the coach of my 15-years-younger brother Tim's 11-12 baseball team, the Orioles. The Tiger's coach, Steve, and I were picked as coaches of the All Star team due to best 1st half and best 2nd half records. Tim (currently the bass player I've mentioned) and the daughter of Steve were voted the two catchers on that traveling All Star team at the end of the regular season and we played in a couple Baltimore City championship tournaments.

Years later, in a bar, I ran into Pete who was the coach of "Pete's Pitiful Pirates," and we compared notes on the adults and kids we knew from that baseball league. Pete asked about our team's redheads. I told him our team's third baseman's sister, Jennifer, whose mother - they all had flaming red hair and everyone noticed them - used to bring to the games in a stroller, became our county's all time high scorer in high school girls basketball and got a scholarship to Tennessee where she played four years for the great coach, Pat Summitt. I taught at her high school and she, 5'7', used to slaughter me, 6'3", in one-on-one basketball every time we played.

Then it was Pete's turn amaze me. When I asked about Steve, Pete said, "He just snapped. He quit his job, quit his family, and began living under the B&O Railroad bridge in Brooklyn (southern edge of Baltimore). Some people tried to straighten him out, but he just kept withdrawing from society and his family more and more. I don't know where he is now."

This was a guy with a mortgage, a wife, and two kids - though they were probably grown by the time he snapped. I can't comprehend how his social and apparently mental collapse happened.  Did he do something to get himself fired that would keep him from getting other jobs so he just removed himself from normal society?  I was scary, too, because it happened to such a stable-personality, clear-thinking, happy guy. Could it happen to anyone? We did a beer toast to hoping nothing like that happens to anyone else we know.

 

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I went to a school with a gal that recently died that I knew pretty well.  Like most things in life, we were not close at the end but it was still pretty strange learning of her death.  She was my best friend's girlfriend at the time.  She liked to travel and see the world and was pretty care free -- although she did marry twice to men across seas. She always said she was going to leave home and see the world.  I don't know if what she did was fulfilling or not but she did what she set out to do from the onset, so I think most folks respected her for keeping true to her word. In many ways, we both started down a similar path but I reeled it in.  I'm quite happy being a married man and living the simple life. 

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21 hours ago, jsharr said:

 Makes me wonder how we each ended up where we are at now and where the vagaries of life will take us in the future.

My sophomore students are studying an autobiography, and this question has come up in discussion. My heart warms when I see 16 year olds reflecting on their choices and helping each other make sense out of their lives. 
 

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