Dear Dan

August 11, 2013

7:00 a.m. Sunday

Dear Brother Dan,

I have spent a weekend with the class of ’63.  It was fun to see people I used to know a little.  They were the class below me and the class right ahead of you.  I saw them at school, on the bus, some were active and so I knew of them more than others.  I watched them at the social hours they had on Friday night, dipping down to read the nametag before approaching someone—I remember that from our 45^th reunion—I hadn’t been to a reunion for 25 years and I didn’t recognize anyone except Richard Morton and Vickie C. Holt.  I went to this stuff because Kay wanted someone to go with her.  Her husband, Jim died in 2007, I think it was and her boyfriend of 2 years bailed on her for good, so I was it.  I think she needed the moral support and I figured I could be a designated driver.  So that’s why I was there.

But I’m writing to you because I was moved to hear people talking about you.  When they had figured out who I was so many of them said, “I knew Dan!”  Most of them knew you had died in 2003.  Jerry Campana remembered you from sports (and riding the school bus together), Tom Demick was the same.  A guy named Mike Haugen told me he had a pretty messy alcoholic childhood and you were the person he wanted to be.  You had lots of friends, were smart, good at sports, funny.  He thought you were the person that had it all together.  He was so sad that you weren’t here anymore.  He’d gone through some really tough times, met a good woman who helped him turn his life around.  We both wondered if that could have happened for you.

 

Last night at the big reunion at the Kitsap Gold and Country Club Jerry Green was the one who was stunned by your death.  He almost went white after I told him.  He loved you, Dan.  He was astounded that you could have gone so young.  When I told him you’d used drugs over the years and struggled with mental health he remembered another mutual friend of yours that had also died young from the same kind of thing that took you—heart disease.  When he had his meal, he bowed his head for a while—I wonder if he was remembering you in his prayers.

And you know who else I saw and had a good time with?  Jack Gray!  He told me he has a print of the “urchin” boys picture you took, dirty faces, tattered t-shirts—a photo I have, too.  He said he’d been meaning to give it to me, but when I told him I have a copy he seemed happy to keep the one he has.  I think he misses you.  Jack and his partner, Dale, live up at Chimicum—Jack grows a garden, like you did and like I do.  It sounds like he has a nice piece of land with good sunlight.  His partner is nice and was friendly to me.  They might have had a conversation about you later and what you meant to Jack.  I have Jack’s email and want to keep in touch with him—maybe it’s a way of keeping in touch with you a little bit.

David Walworth was there, too.  You would not believe how exactly the same he looks.  He is very involved with his church along with his wife, Ginger.  I liked Ginger.  She’s as easy to talk to as David.  She showed me a picture with David, Roy, Rupert and Lloyd.  Leonard wasn’t there that day.  David told me a story about you and all the boys putting their swimming suits on in the middle of the Walworth house, when their Mom came walking through the room.  The Walworth boys thought nothing of it and neither did their Mom, but you pulled your pants up fast and panicked!  I told David that at our house Mom and Dad were so modest that we all dressed in our own rooms and we always closed the bathroom door.  He remembers thinking your reaction was so funny.

Do you remember Janet Cavallaro?  She is full of energy still and happens to be reading my blog.  She’s been married 45 years to a sweet man she met while they were in high school.  I wish I could recall his name, but it’s not in there, sorry.  You probably knew him, too. 

I so wish you could have heard all the positive things people said about you.  It filled my heart.  I doubt if you knew all the people who cared about you and who have happy memories of you.  Do any of us know that?  You should have been able to attend your own 50^th class reunion, which will be next year.  But as you said at Dad’s memorial service, you never reached the level of his success, you never had a family or children, you might have felt that you failed in life.  That might have kept you away from a reunion.  But it would have been a mistake not to go.  So many, many people cared.

I promised lots of people I’d let you know they think about you.

I love and miss you,

Your Big Sister, Chris