September 16, 2022
By Larry Carlin
As hard as it may seem to believe, in a Kafkaesque nightmare I have been permanently banned from Facebook. Me, of all people! Who never posts political or controversial stuff on my page. Who used the platform to post music stories and promote gigs of my own. Who, more often than not, posted goofy photos of me in order to bring a little levity to a site that is filled with rants, conspiracy theories, hate-mongering, and Wordle scores.
The FB Police sent me two notices on August 1st, accusing me of posting “adult sexual exploitation” three year ago today, on September 16, 2019. Yet they wouldn’t show me what it was, nor would they allow me to plead my case. They warned me that I had 30 days to take action, but they prevented me from taking any action. Every time I tried, I got a reply saying that a review had been requested. But then, on September 3rd, they sent me a final note saying that my account had been disabled. I am beyond pissed and bewildered by their decision.
As anyone that has ever had issues with them can attest, there is no way to contact someone directly. Sure, they have all kinds of rules and standards listed on their site, but zero customer service. It seems like it’s okay to post lies about stolen elections, or horse medicine cures for Covid. But oh, when someone posts a cartoon or some self-deprecating photos, that’s going too far.
What can I do about by being cast adrift in FB’s version of Siberia? Nothing that I know of. I have consulted with many, and so far, I’ve gotten no good advice. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.
Fortunately, life goes on. I survived for about 56 years without having access to something like FB, and something tells me I’ll be okay without it. I will miss seeing most of your postings (save for your food pics or Wordle scores), and I will no longer be able to promote my music there. I had over 2,000 “friends,” most of whom I could identify. Saddest of all, I will miss reading news of friends that have passed away, as FB seems to be the easiest way for people to get the word out about such.
I had a good run there for the past 12 years, but it is time to do other more creative and useful things. Heck, I’ve read three books in the past six weeks, which doubled my total for the year. I’ve been practicing a lot more guitar. And I’ve been logging a few thousand steps almost daily by getting outside and walking. If you need to reach me, send me an email or text, or give me a call. I ain’t going anywhere, especially while Covid is still around.
And, oh yeah. Eff you, FB!
For those that are interested, here is the timeline of my correspondence with the FB goons:
On August 1, at 4:02 a.m., I received an email from FB saying, “Larry, you have 30 days to take action. Your account has been suspended. This is because some of your posts or comments don’t follow our Community Standards. If you think we suspended your account by mistake, you have 30 days to disagree with our decision. If you miss this deadline your account will be permanently disabled.” Below this was a button that said, “Disagree with decision.” I clicked on this and got no response.
Then, at 8:47 a.m., I got this email from them: “Your post goes against our community standards on adult sexual exploitation. No one else can see your post. We have these standards to provide a safe environment. If your content goes against our Community Standards again, your account may be restricted or disabled. You can disagree with this decision if you think we got it wrong.” Below this it said, “Larry Carlin added a new photo. September 16, 2019, at 5:53 p.m.” Yet in the space below this, where it should show the alleged posting, the space is blank.
Numerous times over the month of August, I tried to plead my case. But every time I tried to do so, I got a notice saying “Review requested. If we find that your posts or comments didn’t follow our Community Standards again, your account will remain disabled. We’re always looking out for the security of people on Facebook, so while your posts and comments are being reviewed you can’t use Facebook.”
On September 1st, while trying to find out the status of my appeal, I came across this message from FB: “This account will be disabled in 1 day. Are you sure you want to log out? You have only 1 day left to request a review. After that your account will be permanently disabled.” I tried to request a review but doing such only took me back to the posting in the paragraph above.
And then, on September 3rd, I got this cryptic message: “Your account has been disabled. You can’t use Facebook or Messenger because your account, or activity on it, didn’t follow our Community Standards. We can’t review this decision because too much time has passed since your account was disabled. To learn more about the reasons we disable accounts visit our Community Standards.”
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November 1, 2021
By Larry Carlin
There are a few people in your life that you can look back on, smile about, and say, “If I had never met him, I don’t know who or where I’d be right now.” Such is the case with my late friend, Pete Sheridan, who passed at age 84 on September 15th.
As anyone that ever knew him knows, Pete – also known as “Juke” or “The Jukester” – was an old-school blues harmonica player. I, as a fledgling musician at the ripe young age of 20, had the good fortune of meeting him when I moved to State College, PA, in March of 1974 to continue my education at Penn State University. My late drummer friend Daryl Katz and I had relocated to the town in time to start the spring semester. Not knowing any other musicians there, I soon placed a note on the message board at Discount Records on Allen Street, saying that a bass player and drummer were looking for pickers with whom to play some tunes.
Before long I got a call from Jim “Pigman” Mortimer, who was a rhythm guitar player in Pete’s blues band, and he told me that he and some friends often get together to play some country and blues, so he invited Daryl and I out to his place in the Laurel Glen apartment complex. When we drove out there a few days later in Daryl’s 1966 VW van, as we pulled into a parking spot this other VW van arrived with two guys inside that at first appeared to be twins, and on the back window there was a sign that said “Juke Jelly Blues Band.” That was when I met Juke and his youngest brother, Kevin. That first jam was a lot of fun, as Jim’s wife Anna and his good friend Dave “Bad” Devecka were also there, and before long beers were offered while some longtime friendships began. We ended up getting together to jam occasionally, and if my memory serves me well, we also played a gig or two as either The Jug Hollow Boys or Muskrat Springs.
Within a year Daryl joined another band and left town to go “make it” in music in Philly, so my car rides and trips out to Laurel Glen came to an end. I eventually started playing with some other pickers in town, but my friendships with all the guys mentioned above continued for years to come. Pete and I would still get together from time to time, and I had him join me on some occasional coffeehouse gigs at the Kern Graduate Center on campus. And occasionally I’d stop in at the Tavern Restaurant to have a beer on the nights when he was working as a bartender.
In December of 1977, my housemates and I were planning a Christmas party at our house at 244 S. Atherton, and realizing that I had not seen Pete in a while, I phoned and invited him over. Little did I know at that time that it was a call that would change the direction of my life forever, and for the better.
The party took place a couple of days before Christmas, and the house was packed with a few dozen holiday revelers. About halfway through the night I saw the bony, bespectacled, and bearded Juke coming in the back door, and I immediately greeted him. We had not seen each other in a few months, and I asked him, “What’s new, what have you been up to?” He replied that he’d been busy with his school teaching, bar tending, and a variety of music projects, and that he was going to be taking a drive out to Los Angeles just after Christmas to check out the area, as all his brothers lived out there and he was thinking about relocating to the City of Angels as well. Knowing that it was a long journey, especially in the dead of winter, I then asked, “Who’s going with you?”
When his answer was, “No one, I’m going on my own,” the proverbial wheels started turning in my mind, and I then asked the question that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would turn out to be one of the most important ones that I have ever queried.
“Would you like some company?
By now you know what his answer was. Two days after Christmas he picked me up in that same VW van at my house, and we were headed west for the Promised Land of sunny California.
It ended up being the journey of a lifetime for me. We took the Southern route out and got there in three days, with Pete doing all the driving! Here I was, an experienced bus driver as his navigator, yet the iron man logged all the miles behind the wheel. When we got to LA, he dropped me off at my cousin’s house, and for the next week or so both of us did stuff on our own. As luck would have it, a relative of my cousin’s wife was going to be making a drive up to San Francisco, and I knew a former band mate from the college town who had recently moved out there, so I got a ride up and stayed with the friend for two days. He lived north of the city, but he took me on a sightseeing tour all around the area. In the dead of winter, it was sunny and 65 degrees and I fell instantly in love with the Bay Area. I then flew back down to LA to reconnect with Pete, but on the plane I started wondering how I could move out there to live, even though I owned no car and only had a few hundred dollars in the bank.
The two of us then began our trek back East, staying with friends and in cheap motels along the way, talking about music, listening to the radio, and discussing the possibility of starting a new band. (Yeah, this made a lot of sense – starting a band while also trying to leave town!)(But at age 23, this seemed “normal” to me.) We tossed around some ideas and decided that when we got back to State College that we’d jam with some friends to see how it went. We also wanted to come up with a name. There were dozens of suggestions, none of which were feeling good. And then, somewhere on the desolate plains of Kansas, we heard the Jim Croce song, “Bad Bad Leroy Brown,” on the radio, and both of us were taken by a line in the chorus. We looked at each other and said, “What about calling ourselves the Junkyard Dogs?” Two months later we had a five-piece band and we started playing our mix of country and blues at various venues in the State College area.
The original lineup of the group was Pete on harmonica, me on electric bass, John “Bubba” Beschler on drums, Gary Brubaker on rhythm guitar and piano, and Donn Overly on lead and pedal steel guitars. A few months later Donn left the band and we then invited Cy Anderson to join us. We played at the Phyrst and Brewery in State College, at an outdoor festival on campus, on Allen Street for the Arts Festival, and at some other locations in the surrounding region. I did my first road trip gig with the Dogs, traveling to Alfred University in southern New York, and in November of that year we played a memorable job at the nearby Rockview Prison.
One song in particular that Pete sang so well that I will always remember was Little Walter’s classic “Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights.” We’d often close our show with this one, and it never failed to get the juke joints jumpin’.
That road trip to California really opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities. By the end of 1978 I gave my notice to the band, and then by February of 1979 I was once again driving out to the Golden State, in a car loaded with my guitars and clothes, heading on a new adventure, one that continues to this day. Now, some 42 years later, I have been living in the San Francisco/Bay Area ever since.
But Pete and I stayed friends across the miles and decades. I did see him a bit in Los Angeles, where he moved in 1980 with his kids Shawn and Heather after their mother, Bobbie, died from cancer at the all-too-young age of 40. Pete lived in Culver City for eight years, and while the kids ended up staying there, he wasn’t enamored of the scene, so he moved back to the State College area in 1988, formed a couple of new bands, met and married Sharon, and before long they had two sons, Liam and Brian, before moving to Mechanicsburg, where he lived for the rest of his life.
I’d occasionally see Pete in State College when I went back to visit during the Arts Festivals in July. For many years one of his bands had gigs at Zeno’s during the fest. On other occasions, on my way from Philly to State College, I stopped by a couple of times to see him in Mechanicsburg, and there were Christmas cards, the occasional phone calls, and emails. The last time we spoke was a few months back, when he was in a rehab facility while dealing with a mysterious illness called White Matter Disease. He sounded pretty weak at the time, and I was concerned about his well being.
He had been ailing and was immunocompromised for the past two years, so when I saw his brother Kevin’s name appear on my iPhone screen at 8:37 a.m. on September 16th, I already had a sense of dread, which was confirmed when I first heard the sound of Kevin’s voice. Even though I knew that this call could be coming at any time, it still was a tough one to answer. Within minutes my fears were confirmed, as the sad news arrived that Juke had gone on to that big blues jam in the sky.
Pete was one of my longest and influential friends, and I know that he had a positive effect on countless other musicians in Central PA and well beyond. After the Dogs I know of at least four other bands that he was part of: Sailin’ Shoes, The Jumpin’ Mudcats, the Triple Blues Band, and Juke and the Tone Patrol. He not only had a website that was all about the blues, on it he sold Juke’s Harmonica Supplies, and he also wrote three books: The Quest for Tone in Amplified Blues Harp, Affordable Axes and Cool Amps for the Slide Guitarist/Harp Player, and Wayne Raney: That Hillbilly Boogie Boy, Country Crooner, and Born Again Gospel Guy with The Talking Harmonica.
Now, I can’t claim to know a lot about playing the blues, but what I do know, I learned at the master’s knee. I will always cherish the years that Pete and I played music together, as well as the camaraderie over the decades. And I will forever be thankful that he came to that Christmas party at my house in 1977. I can only imagine how less fulfilled my musical career would have been, or how my life would have turned out, if The Jukester had not turned up on that frosty winter night.
And I have no doubt that right now, somewhere over the rainbow, Pete is leading an eternal and smokin’ blues jam with Little Walter, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, and countless others, bringing smiles to all their faces…
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October 23, 2021
I was saddened to hear today about the passing of my longtime friend John Bisbing, at age 73, in Sharon, CT. We met in 1977 while driving transit buses in the town of State College, PA, after both of us graduated from Penn State. Over the decades and miles we stayed in touch. He would occasionally come out to CA to visit his sister who lives nearby, and I saw him this past July while traveling back east. He and his wife Andrea both contracted COVID last year, before there was a vaccine, and he ended up in the hospital for some time. When I saw him just three months ago he seemed well. But recently he became seriously ill with a rare blood phenomenon that doctors have seen in COVID patients, he went into septic shock, and sadly, never recovered.
John is not the first person that I knew to pass after getting the deadly virus. Nor will he be the last. If you haven't done so already, please get vaccinated so that more lives will not be lost.
JB, you will be forever missed, my friend...
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August 18, 2021
August 18, 1921. It was a hot and humid Thursday in the coal mining town of Girardville, PA, 100 years ago on this date, when this guy, James T. Carlin Sr., was born to Timothy and Ellen Carlin, the 7th child out of eight siblings, and the only male. A couple of years later the family moved to West Philadelphia, and this is where he was raised. Short of a stint overseas in the military, he never again lived more than 25 miles away from the city.
After graduating from West Catholic High in 1939 the red-headed rascal went to Drexel College for a bit before joining the US Army when WWII broke out. When he got back from Europe he married my mother, Peg Cooney, in June of 1946. He spent his adulthood as a sales rep for a chemical company while raising four boys and a girl in the Philly suburb of Wayne, PA.
After the four boys grew up and moved out of the house, he, Mom and my sister, Donna Carlin Bullock, relocated to the nearby town of Paoli, where he lived until his untimely passing in 1988 at the all-too-young age of 66, four days shy of his 67th birthday.
With seven sisters, the Carlin family name almost died out. But since he and my mother had four boys, there are eight grandchildren that started out with the last name of Carlin. And now there are 11 great-grandchildren, including a James IV. The ginger-haired gene has also been passed down through the generations.
As of today I am now six months and four days older than he was when he passed. He’s been gone now for 33 years and four days. I can only hope that I will be around for another 33 years, which would put me at 100 in the year 2054.
While he may not have approved of my lifestyle choices (playing music, driving, moving to CA, etc.), I think he would have been happy with the way things turned out for me. He had no idea that my picking him up during my teens from the train station in the afternoons would be great experience for my job of 27 years! He certainly would have loved Claudia, who he sadly never got to meet.
He was a wonderful and caring parent, and well loved by all. Even though he has been gone a long time, he has never been forgotten, and he will always be in our hearts.
Happy 100th, Dad!
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August 6, 2021
I first met Cynthia in the late eighties. Back then I was driving tour buses to supplement my fledgling music career, and a few days before accepting a trip up to Camp Mather outside of Yosemite for the first time, I got a call from the owner of the bus company saying, “I’ve got the perfect trip for you and your buddy – an all-expenses-paid four-days-of-fun in the mountains.” At the time I was sharing a house in Marin with a good friend of mine who also drove buses part-time. Since we only worked occasionally, we were skeptical about being offered a trip like this, because full-time drivers would have all had to pass on it for it to get way down to us. As it turned out, the client was the San Francisco Park and Rec Department, and the job was driving seniors up to the camp for a twice-annual stay in the woods. Savvy bus drivers looked at this and decided that there would be little tip money involved, and that they would be stuck in the mountains with little to do and worse, possibly no TV access. Hence, the reason why the trip was offered to us.
At the time, I was just 33-years-old and open to adventure. While the description of the trip sounded too good to be true, my friend and I decided to take a chance on it. And soon, as a result, a 33-year friendship began.
On June 13, 1988, the two of us guys went to the bus yard, got our vehicles, and then drove out to the Sunset District to pick up about 75 campers with sleeping bags, backpacks and hiking gear, which we loaded onto the buses. The Rec rep on my bus was a senior named Rita, and she said that we would be stopping for lunch at a park in the town of Oakdale, about halfway to camp. We when arrived at the park two hours later, the leader of the entire trip – this beautiful, dark-haired, energetic Latina woman with long pigtails and bangs bounded up onto the bus to greet the passengers while announcing that she was looking forward to seeing everyone up at camp, and she then turned to me with those big brown eyes and smile and said, “Hi! My name is Cynthia.”
She had a daunting task ahead of her. While she had been on the trip before as an assistant, over the previous winter Al Levy, the lovable longtime leader of the expedition, had passed away, and now this young 30-something woman was taking over. The old folks were skeptical at first, but if anyone was up to the task, it was Cynthia, who, with the sweetest disposition and endless energy, won over the doubting dotards by the second day.The trip turned out to be just fabulous. Camp Mather is spectacular, we got to drive out to the Hetch Hetchy Dam one day, and into Yosemite on another. And the highlight of the week was the Al Levy Talent Show on the last night, which was hosted by Cynthia and featured skits and performances by the seniors, as well as songs sung and played by bus drivers. From that day forward – in homage to the great Jimmy Rodgers, The Singing Brakeman – I became known as “Larry the Singing Bus Driver.”
In late August the trip took place again, and this time there were more people and buses. Some full-time drivers were involved, and they soon saw how great the trip was. As luck would have it, the following year some of the regular drivers wanted to go up to camp in place of us, but Cynthia specifically requested me and my housemate, so we got to go back in June of 1989. For the trip in August of that year, however, the owner of the company decided that he didn’t need us anymore, so he did not offer us the trip. We were really disappointed, but there was nothing that we could do.
However…One day after that August trip was over with, I got a call from an incensed Cynthia, as she was not a happy camper with the drivers that had been sent in our place. She then asked me, “What other bus companies do you work for? I will see about taking the contract elsewhere.”
Anyone in this room today probably already knows where this is headed. The following spring, Cynthia called me to say that Marin Airporter would henceforth be handling the senior trips, and that one of the stipulations for them getting the contract was that “Larry must be one of the drivers for the seniors.”
I was ecstatic to return to the camp in June of 1990 with this other company, and I had a marvelous time up there then and in August. I took perverse pleasure in sending a postcard of Camp Mather to the previous bus company owner, simply writing these eight words: Having a fine time, wish you were here!
While a year or two later Cynthia left Park and Rec to start producing shows on her own, I continued driving the seniors to camp twice each summer until 2006, when Marin Airporter lost the contract. But I had a great run, having gone up there for 18 years. Ironically, I am now old enough to ride on that bus!
But the story doesn’t end here. Cynthia and I stayed in touch, and over the years I performed a series of shows at her events with various bands. I remember doing a USO show somewhere in Oakland and more than a few other performances in downtown Petaluma for River Festivals. I always knew that when I got a call from her to play a show that it would be first-rate and a lot of fun, and she never let me down.
Over the more recent years we stayed in touch via Facebook and by exchanging old-fashioned Christmas cards over the holidays. While we hadn’t seen each other in many years, it was good to know that the longtime friendship had endured. But this past Christmas season I did not receive a card from her. At the time I did not think much of it, as sometimes mail gets lost, or folks get too busy to send cards. But then on July 8th, while I was traveling back east, I was shocked and saddened to my inner core to receive an email from Robert with the subject “Cynthia Maria Every Passing.” I had no idea that she had been battling brain cancer for the past year. Not only this, but glioblastoma, something that not only took away Senator John McCain and President Biden’s son Beau, but also one of my older brothers six years ago. So, I have an idea what she had experienced the past year, and my heart still aches just thinking about what she had to go through.
While her life was cut way too short – she was only a year older than me – it was a life well-lived, and, judging by the amount of people here today, she touched many and was loved by all. She had a profound effect on me from our first meeting in 1988, and my life has been fuller from our shared friendship. She will be forever missed, and always in our hearts.
And, I have no doubt, that she is already arranging shows and festivals with the angels up there in Heaven…
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January 27, 2021
I first met Maureen at her father’s big house on the Main Line in the fall of 1972. While we were the same age, we went to different high schools. I attended Upper Merion, and she went to Lower Merion. For those that are not from the Philly area, it sounds like the schools were right next to one another, but they are 12 miles apart. Cousin Tim Boyle had taken me to the house in Merion Station one night while there was a small gathering of musicians playing music together in the living room. As a fledgling player myself, it was my first experience at a party where pickers sat around and jammed with one another. Prior to this I had been in a band for a short while, but the band members had just gotten together to rehearse, not to just play with other friends. At the house I remember seeing and hearing this blue-eyed, long-dark-haired beauty sing. I asked Tim who she was, and he said, “That’s Karen’s younger sister, Mo.” While Karen inherited the red hair of her father, Mo got the brown hair from her mother Kit. And while I had already heard Karen sing before this night, it was plain to see that her younger sister had similar vocal chops. But being only 18 years old and not yet very worldly, I just watched from a distance and thought to myself, “I’ve got to get better on the guitar so that I can join in with folks like these someday.”
Fast forward to a few months later, to February of 1973, when I attended Karen and Tim’s wedding. I wasn’t sure that I was even going to be able to attend, so at the last minute I had to borrow a blue velvet sport coat to wear from my friend Daryl Katz, since I did not own a nice jacket at the time. The ceremony took place in a big church, and the reception was held at Karen’s father’s house, which was a mansion in a tony area just outside the city limits. It was the most amazing wedding party that I have ever been to, and one that changed the direction of my life in more ways than one, all for the better.
The downstairs of the house was packed with guests, and there were people upstairs as well. At one point I started climbing the stairs to see what was going on up there, and halfway up the flight I encountered a pretty woman in a granny dress with dark curly hair, and as our eyes met, we both realized that we had met somewhere before. I blurted out, “Hey, I think I know you!” Turns out that she was one of the players that was at the party months before, and she remembered me from the church as the guy in blue velvet coat with the long red hair. Her name was Jo Ann Pacinelli. We had seen each other at the music party, but we did not speak. We got off the stairs and found some chairs to sit in and began to chat. I asked her how she knew Mo, and she said that they had been high school classmates. I asked her if Mo was seeing anyone, and she pointed out a tall, long-haired guy with wire-rimmed glasses and said, “See that man over there? That is Stephen Johansson. He is an art student, and he is Mo’s boyfriend.” Hearing this told me that Mo was unavailable and realizing that this girl across from me was extremely attractive as well, we talked at length, had a couple of beers together, and then later even played some music in one of the rooms upstairs. I don’t think I got home to the family house in Wayne that night until about 2 a.m., but I could barely fall asleep with the excitement of the wedding party and having met someone that I really liked, and the fact that I got her phone number!
For the next six months, while commuting as an undergraduate during the week to the Penn State Delaware County Campus, many of my weekends were spent in the Lower Merion area hanging with Jo, Mo, and Stephen. The four of us palled around quite a bit, going to art museums, concerts, hikes in parks, and restaurants (we were all only 19-years-old at this time, so bars were not an option) (though from time to time we did score some beer whenever I got the nerve to go into some shady dive and ask for two six-packs to go). We took a train to New York City one weekend and stayed with a friend of theirs that was attending Sarah Lawrence College, and we had a memorable dinner one night at the renowned Mamma Leone’s (it’s been gone since 1994) on West 44th Street in Manhattan. On another occasion we drove down to Cape May and stayed with relatives of Mo’s while having a great time there, especially since, at that time, the drinking age in NJ was 18. My new friends took me to numerous shows at the Academy of Music on Broad Street in Philly, the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, as well as to my first classical music concert with the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, which took place outdoors in the summer in Fairmount Park in the city. I was transfixed and transformed by my initial experience ever with classical music. And there were countless other gatherings where we just got together with some of their other friends and played music together. It was one magical summer full of music, art, laughter, and good times, and one that we hoped would never end.
But good times always seem to come to an end sooner than expected. As luck would have it, in September Jo Ann headed off to the University of Pittsburgh, and Stephen went to the Rhode Island School of Design. I believe it was around this time that Mo moved out to CA to attend the University of California at Berkeley, so everyone was gone except for me. Six months later I moved to State College, PA, to attend the Penn State main campus, and I never lived in the Philly area again, as I moved from there out to CA five years later. While I stayed in touch with Jo and we saw each other a few times during college breaks, I never saw Stephen again, and while Mo and I corresponded via the US Mail (this was two decades before email, texts, cell phones, etc,), I did not see her again until five years later.
In the winter of 1977, over the Christmas holidays, I rode out to CA for a visit with a friend of mine from State College who had siblings living in Los Angeles. By this time Tim and Karen had moved from San Francisco to LA, so I stayed with them while my friend visited his brothers. While there Karen’s cousin Betty stopped by one day and said that she was driving up to the Bay Area. Knowing that Maureen was living in Berkeley and that I had a former band mate not too far away, I asked if I could ride along. She said yes, but that I would have to fly back, since she would not be returning to LA. I had never flown before at this point, and I was excited at the prospect. So, I made a short, unplanned trip to the Bay Area, and my life changed forever as a result.
I arrived in San Francisco a couple of days after New Year’s, and it was sunny and 65-70 degrees for the three days I was in the area. In early January! After first spending two days with my PA musician friend, being shown the sights of the city, the bay, the ocean, the bridges, and the rolling hills, I spent the last day/night at Mo’s in Berkeley. And I knew that this is where I wanted to live, so I started thinking and planning on my flight back to LA and then on the long drive back to PA. When I arrived back in State College it was about 10 degrees, and I knew then and there that this would be my last frigid winter on the East Coast.
I took me a little more than a year to save up enough money and buy a car to drive out to CA, and I finally was able to do this in early February of 1979. I arrived in the San Francisco area on my 25th birthday, and I have been here ever since. While things worked out well for me over the decades, it wasn’t easy getting settled in at first, and if not for Maureen, I may not have lasted but a few months out here.
The original plan was for me to stay with my musician friend in Marin County, just north of the city. He was renting a house on the coast in the small hippie town of Bolinas. I talked with him often before leaving PA, and I drove the Southern route out to CA to escape ugly winter weather in the Midwest. It took me two and half weeks to get here, and by the time I did my flakey friend had gotten kicked out of the place he’d be renting, and he was staying in a hovel. I stayed with him for two uncomfortable nights before heading to San Francisco. I had called Mo for help, and she said that her former boyfriend Stephen’s brother Peter was living in the city, and that he said that I could stay with him until I found a place of my own. I had met Peter a couple of times in that fateful summer of 1973, and he was quite gracious in letting me stay with him for a few weeks. At this time Mo was still living in Berkeley even though she was done with college, and she was commuting everyday to downtown San Francisco to work in the financial district. I was having a hard time finding a place that I could afford to rent on my own, and Mo was tired of the daily commute on the train, so she suggested that we get a place together, which is what we ended up doing. We found a nice Victorian flat to share in the Noe Valley section of the city, I found a job with a local tour bus company, and for the next nine months as housemates we did a lot of fun things, like singing songs together, going to movies and art museums, hosting parties, etc., like we did as that foursome in the summer of 1973 in Philly. She showed me around the city and introduced me to many of her friends. It was a great way to get situated, and I was so grateful for her friendship.
As luck and fate would have it, however, nine months later, in December, out of the blue I was offered a once-in-a-lifetime job to go over and live in Germany to work for a big tour bus company for at least a year, so my time in San Francisco came to end less than a year after I arrived. I got a former college housemate of Mo’s to move into the flat in my place, and I relocated to Heidenheim, Germany, in January of 1980 (that’s a whole separate story that I won’t go into here), where I stayed until October of that year before moving back to San Francisco. By the time I got back Mo and the housemate had gone separate ways, so she found a place of her own while I also did the same. We’d get together occasionally, but over time we saw less and less of one another.
Some years later, after the Loma Prieta (Giants/A’s World Series) Earthquake in 1989, Mo was literally shaken and rattled, and the area she was living in sustained serious damage. Not happy with her job downtown and freaked out by the quake, she moved back to Philly from SF in 1990 to stay with her mother in Bala Cynwyd. Though her mother passed many years ago, this is the same house where Mo lived until her final day in December of 2000. I never saw her again after she left San Francisco. There were occasional phone calls and Christmas cards for a while, and as far as I know, she never had a computer or cell phone, so there were no emails or texts. Eventually all contact ceased about 15 years ago, though I would hear about her from time to time from Karen. While we all have our demons to deal with, Mo had more than most people do, and she ended up being defeated by hers at too young an age.
As you might imagine, I was deeply saddened by the news of her passing just before the holidays. And I have much empathy for Karen and the two nieces, Lyndsay and Brijet, as well as other family members that knew Maureen. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine who or where I’d be now if I had never met her. I’ll never forget seeing and hearing that 18-year-old raven-haired beauty singing folk songs in the living room of that Main Line mansion in the autumn of 1972. And while she stopped doing playing music after leaving SF, I have no doubt that she’s singing with the angels now...
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By Larry Carlin
April 8, 2020
There’s more than a bit of sadness in the air, thanks to COVID-19, and I’ve got nothing but John Prine on my mind and in my heart right now…
The first time I saw him play was in 1973 at the venerable Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA, just outside of Philly. My musical life has not been the same ever since. I was a 19-year-old fledgling musician (as opposed to a 66-year-old flailing one now), and I’d heard some of his songs on WMMR, the hip FM radio station at that time. So, I took a chance and went to his show.
I was mesmerized. It was just him and his guitar. No backup band, no harmonies, no fancy instrumental breaks. Every song told a descriptive story in about three minutes or less. Just verses and choruses, no Nashville-style bridges were needed to break from the form. He had me at "While digesting Reader's Digest, in the back of a dirty book store, a plastic flag, with gum on the back, fell out on the floor."
He didn’t have the greatest voice, but it didn’t matter. “Illegal Smile, “Angel From Montgomery,” “Paradise,” “Sam Stone,” “Souvenirs,” “Grandpa Was a Carpenter,” and countless more were sung that night. Having been primarily a bass player and more of a rock and roller at that time, I walked out of the club transfixed and transformed. In the following days I bought a new Yamaha FG-160 acoustic guitar at Troubadour Music and began learning how to play the six-string. I wanted to be able to sing story songs for people, something that is not easily done on the bass. I also went to Korvette’s and bought Prine’s newest album, called “Sweet Revenge,” and I began learning some of the songs on there. I was so inspired that I also tried to write songs of my own.
A few years later, when playing my first solo shows at the Kern Coffeehouse on the Penn State Campus, my sets always had some of John’s songs in them. “Dear Abby,” “Please Don’t Bury Me,” “Hello In There,” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” were staples. The latter song I sang for 15 years while co-hosting the Breakfast Club at the Strawberry Music Festival near Yosemite. If a performer failed to show up and I had to fill in, it was the first song that I always started with. And I still sing it today. The lyrics are timeless, as is just about any Prine song.
While I still have the Yamaha guitar and that “Sweet Revenge” vinyl album, I never came close to being the songwriter that John was. I never became much of a solo performer either, as I’ve always preferred playing with others. I’ve penned or co-written about 30 some songs that are playable, and just about every one – including my most notable tune, a satirical anti-violence number called “Ode to a Chainsaw” (written in 1974) – I am proud to say is very Prine-like in tone and structure.
While I never met John or had a selfie or any kind of photo taken with him, I did see him perform many times over the decades, and I never tired of hearing any of his songs. Despite his battle with cancer some years back and other challenges, he was a true American folk hero, a trouper, the Woody Guthrie of our time. We lost a great one last night, but his songs and legacy will live forever.
Here’s a quote from the late, great Johnny Cash, which I can’t argue with at all: "I don't listen to music much at the farm, unless I'm going into songwriting mode and looking for inspiration. Then I'll put on something by the writers I've admired and used for years – Rodney Crowell, John Prine, Guy Clark, and the late Steve Goodman are my Big Four."
John has “Broken the Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” and cashed in on a one-way ticket to “Paradise” with an “Angel From Montgomery” as his guide. “When I Get to Heaven” I’ll look forward to seeing his “Illegal Smile” when, “In Spite of Ourselves,” he says, “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian.”
I think it’s time to dry away the tears, pick up my guitar, maybe open a beer, and sing me some John Prine songs for the next few hours. Because "That's the Way the World Goes 'Round..."
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February 16, 2020
Good morning, family, friends and fans of a fascinating fellow, the late, and much beloved, Tim Boyle. This morning you will be hearing stories and songs to celebrate his life. There will be some tears of sadness, a little bit of laughter, and a lot of love shared. I have no doubt that when you leave here, you will have a more complete picture of a man who lived life to the fullest, and whose character and personality touched countless people. While he is physically gone from this world, his spirit and presence will be with us eternally. And if he were here today, he’d probably be back there at the soundboard messing with the dials, making sure that everyone on stage sounded the best that they could.
Back in the late 50’s, before there was a J-Lo, Keb’ Mo’, and a Tim Tebow, there was “Timbo” Boyle. I don’t know how the nickname got started, but it was a good one, and it was with him all his life. His email address, as most of you know, was even “iotimbo.” Other than his two sisters – Ellen Kay Boyle MacLeod and Nan Boyle Urban – who are with us today, along with their three cousins, I knew Tim longer than anyone else here. He was a first cousin of mine, and while I had 11 in total, he was always #1 in my book. His Dad, John Boyle Sr., was the local Chief of Police, and he died of a heart attack when young Timmy was only 13 years old. Tim was named after our grandfather, Timothy Vincent Carlin. His mother, Ann, was my father Jim’s sister, and those two were very close, both as siblings and geographically, as the Boyles lived about three miles away from us in the suburbs of Philadelphia. While I had three brothers and a sister, Tim was like a fourth brother to me, and in many ways he had more of an effect on my life than my siblings did. Six years my senior, he was a rebel of sorts when he was young, and to me he was an idol and inspiration. He was the first hippie that I ever knew. Even though, in 1967, his hair was only about as long as mine is now, he was pulled out of line by the principal at his high school graduation rehearsal and was told that, “You aren’t graduating unless you get your hair cut!” One of his favorite teachers, a Mrs. Cummings, gave the charismatic 18-year-old some money and the keys to her car so that he could go get a haircut and graduate. How many teachers do you know that would lend their car and some money to a teenager?
He got his guitar – a mid-50’s Gibson – back then, and it was the first acoustic guitar that I ever held in my hands. I can still remember the feeling I had, at 13-years-old, barely able to wrap my arms around it, thinking about how cool it would be to be able to play one someday. Shortly thereafter I got a guitar from my parents as a Christmas present, and I have been playing music ever since.
After a brief stint in the Navy, Tim started growing his hair long, he grew a beard and he rode a Honda motorcycle. When I graduated in 1972, I did the hair and beard thing, but I drew a line at the bike. He had a black light and some concert posters in his bedroom, and before long, so did I. He worked at a record store for a while, and I used to go visit him there. On one occasion, when I asked him if he could recommend something to me, he pulled out the Crosby, Stills & Nash debut album, and soon after my thoughts of playing raunchy rock and roll were forgotten. As a teen, Tim took me to my first concert, a Snaker Dave Ray show at the legendary Main Point in Bryn Mawr. I rode along with him for a midnight showing of “Don’t Look Back,” the Bob Dylan documentary, that was playing at the Theatre of the Living Arts in South Philly. In 1972 he took me to my first picking party, where 8-10 players were sitting around in a circle in his girlfriend Karen’s living room. In February of 1973, I met and played some songs with some folks at Tim and Karen’s wedding that I am still friends with today. He also told me about the Philadelphia Folk Festival – which is where he and Karen first met – and in 1974, it was the first music fest that I even went to. I’ve been to about 100 since, and picking parties and music festivals have been mainstays of my life because of him.
Sometime in the early 70’s, Tim and Karen moved to San Francisco. For you younger folks here today, this is way before the Internet and cell phones. Tim and I exchanged old-fashioned letters via the US Mail, and occasionally I’d see him at family gatherings when he’d come back east to visit. California sounded like a paradise to me, and since Tim was having such a great time out there, I had to go check it out for myself. In December on 1977 I rode out west with a friend, and by that time Tim and Karen, with baby Lyndsay on board, had moved to LA. I wasn’t there but a day or two when he took me to a fundraiser for some politico, and who should I get to meet there but Jethro Bodine! How Californian was that? From LA I made a short trip up to San Francisco, was enthralled, and a year later I moved to the Bay Area, and I’ve never left.
Since I was lot then a lot closer to Timbo, I got to see him more often than when I was 3,000 miles away. When I’d go to LA to play some shows, he and Karen would often come to see the band perform. On my visits down here over the years, among the many memories, he took me to see the Kinks at Forum, I got to see how a spoiled rock band (The Knack) got to act wild and crazy at a restaurant, he pointed out Glenn Frey sitting alone at the bar at Dan Tana’s, I was in the control room at Paramount while he was recording the John Williams Orchestra laying down a sound track for a movie, and he gave me a cassette tape of the infamous expletive-filled rant by Dodgers manager Tommy LaSorda on the pitcher’s mound of Game Four of the 1977 World Series, which I still have. If you’ve never heard this, just Google it when you get home. It is priceless.
Over the last decade or so I would see Tim often in the Bay Area, when he’d go up to visit his daughter Briget. Sometimes I’d get a call from him saying, “Hey, man, I’m up here. I’m coming over to visit you in Mill Valley.” And this was the case last June, when he dropped by in his Honda CRZ, limping along with his new knee. He was supposed to rest and take things easy for a while, but you couldn’t keep him down for very long. He was constantly on the go. We had coffee in town, and we talked about family, music, the Phillies and Dodgers, his record label and artists, and countless other subjects. With a new knee and indomitable spirit, the future was looking good. I had someone take some photos of us, recreating some shots from decades before. Little did I know at that time that I would never see him again…
Losing someone that you were close to is hard at any time of the year. Losing someone on short notice and three days before Christmas really put a damper on this past holiday season. I got a call from Briget on Tuesday the 17th of December, and she told me of his recent diagnosis. There was talk of him ‘maybe having two months.’ I called Karen on that Wednesday, and as luck would have it, she was standing by his hospital bed, and she said, “Do you want to talk with Tim?” This was totally unexpected, as I had no idea that she would be where she was, but Tim and I had a good chat. We talked about his situation, the Philly Eagles and their playoff chances, and how he was going to make it for one more Super Bowl. He said that he would call me in a couple of days, when things “settled down,” and I told him that my partner Claudia and I would drive down from San Francisco on the weekend to see him. He closed by saying, “I love you, man.” I replied, “I love you too, and I look forward to seeing you.”
I felt so fortunate to have had that chance to talk with him. Because just four days later, he was gone. He didn’t make it to Christmas. He never made it to one more Super Bowl. I want to call him and talk about the Dodgers landing Mookie Betts and David Price. To make snarky remarks about the Oscars. To hear him tell me about the latest singer that he signed to his and Brigit’s Waxsimile record label. To chat about spring training…It wasn’t until his passing that, looking back, I realized what a significant and profound effect Tim had on my life. Without him out there blazing the trail for music and California ahead of me, there’s no telling where, or who, I’d be today. There’s now a huge void in the world, and a hole in my heart, but one thing I know for certain is that I owe Timbo a debt of gratitude because my life has been much fuller for having had him in it.
His passing was so sad, so fast, and so shocking. He was a friend to all, as you can tell by the hundreds of tributes on his Facebook page, and by the amount of people that are here today. He was an amazing father, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, engineer, and all around wonderful human being. His legacy lives on in his work, in his two loving daughters, Lyndsay Cavanagh and Briget Boyle, and grandsons Mika and Valentin Cavanagh. You will be forever missed, cousin Timbo. And, forever in our hearts.
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October 17, 2019
Over the 40+ years that I have lived San Francisco/Bay Area – and since the two local baseball teams have played in many post-season games – I have often been asked, “Have you ever been to a World Series game?” The answer to this query is something of a riddle, because I have been to one, but I have never seen a game played.
In early October of 1989, I was playing music gigs whenever I could, and supplementing my meager income by driving tour buses part-time. I had gotten a bus driver’s license in 1976 while in college, and the job was a good way to make some money during the day while playing music at night. But a few days before October 17th I was contacted by Marin Airporter, a bus company in Larkspur, CA that I occasionally drove for. They wanted to know if I had any interest in driving a charter bus to the World Series game in San Francisco on the 17th. The trip entailed going to the Oakland Coliseum to pick up the A’s management and families, and driving them to Candlestick Park in SF to face the Giants in Game Three of the “Bay Bridge Series.” I was also told that there would be a ticket involved to watch the game. I had to think about this for about three seconds before saying “Yes!” I’d be going to my first World Series Game, and be paid to do so. This was a possible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I could not let pass me by.
On the afternoon of the big day, I drove to the bus yard by 1 p.m. and found out that there would be three other buses on this move, which was just fine by me. Since I was just a part-timer, it would be good to follow a full-time employee, as the other guys were older veterans. All I had to do was be the fourth bus in line.
It was a beautiful, sunny and warm day as we drove over the Richmond Bridge to the A’s stadium. We pulled into the big, mostly empty parking lot, and picked up about 150 boisterous people (the A’s already were leading the Series 2-0) wearing green and gold, the colors of the team. The four buses then made their way over the Cypress Freeway and SF/Oakland Bay Bridge to Candlestick Park, which used to be located at the southern edge of the city. It was a long, slow crawl getting through SF, as it seemed that the entire city of 720,000 was trying to get to the ballpark that only had enough seats for 69,732 people.
The buses finally pulled into the parking lot out by center field at around 4:40 p.m. After everyone got off the buses and into the stadium, I lagged behind a bit as I did not want to go into the game with the other bus drivers who I did not know very well. Once the coast was clear, I locked up my bus and headed for the gate. I was walking through the turnstile at 5:04 p.m. when suddenly – for the next 15 seconds – the earth started rumbling while the cyclone fencing and the light towers started swaying like palm trees in a wind storm. I, along with most of the fans at the game, had experienced earthquakes before. While this one was the strongest that I had ever felt, once the rumbling stopped the crowd let out a massive cheer, as if this was a sign from the gods that the Giants were about to turn things around in the Series. The power had gone out, so I walked up the long escalator to the stands. Most everyone thought that the power outage was just temporary, so people still cued up in long lines waiting to buy their beers and hot dogs. No one went tearing for the exits.
Now, this was before the cellphone era, so no calls or news arrived within seconds on mobile devices. With the power being off, the p.a. announcer could not immediately issue demands over the sound system. The only access to the outside world in those minutes after the quake came from transistor radios that some diehard fans carried so that they could listen to the game while also watching it in real time. When the power did not come on for at least 10 minutes, people started to get restless. The game was going to start soon, and no one wanted to miss the first pitch.
Slowly, however, the news started filtering in via the radios that this was a major quake. There were reports that “the Bay Bridge has collapsed,” and that “San Francisco was on fire.” Eventually the p.a. system began working again via a backup generator, and before long announcements were made the game had been canceled, and that everyone should depart in a slow and orderly fashion. Which, to the relief of thousands, is what happened.
I was one of the first ones back to the buses, since I had not gotten very far into the stadium. It took a while for all of the people to get back on board, and then a pow-wow was held by all the bus monitors. A decision was made to get everyone back to Oakland without going over any of the five bridges that cross the bay. This meant that we would have to drive south 40+ miles on 101 almost to San Jose, cut across the southern part of the bay, and then head north another 40 miles on 880 to Oakland. As the crow flies, from Candlestick to the Oakland Coliseum is about five miles. But there were no crows offering to carry passengers across the bay.
As luck would have it, I had the person in charge of the group on my bus, so suddenly I became the #1 driver that would lead everyone on our journey. Which was actually a good thing, because the other three drivers were from north of the San Francisco, and they knew little about the geography or roads in the South Bay.
We were the last vehicles to leave the parking lot, and since power was still out, that meant that traffic lights were not operating, and that there were close to 70,000 people that got a head start to the freeway. It took over an hour to go maybe one mile to 101 South, with the thinking that as soon as we get to the freeway, we’ll be moving at more decent pace. Which, to everyone’s surprise, was not the case?
Once we got onto the freeway, the pace picked up maybe 2-3 miles per hour. But there was nothing we could do about such, as this was the main route to San Jose. It was a long slow crawl, since the highway was jam packed. All the while, via those transistor radios, more and more reports of fires and carnage were being broadcast. The double-decker Cypress Freeway, which we had only driven across a few hours earlier, collapsed, and dozens were crushed to death. A section of the Bay Bridge had fallen – not the bridge itself – so it had been closed. It was all very frightening to hear these things. But my job was to get the passengers on the bus back to Oakland safe and sound, one way or the other.
It took about 1.5 hours to go about 20 miles down 101, and the freeway was jammed with slow moving traffic. But right around San Carlos, I got an idea. I knew that there was a parallel local road called Middlefield that stretched quite a distance down the peninsula. And with electrical power still not fully restored, I got on the bus radio and I told the other three drivers to follow me as I got off at Woodside Road. “I sure hope you know where you’re going, Carlin!” came an anxious reply from one the buses.
We headed west about two miles, and then turned left on Middlefield. There was very little traffic on the road, and most of the signal lights were not working. The four bus caravan made its way all the way down to Mountain View in about 15 minutes, stopping only at four-way intersections. When we reached Highway 237, we turned left and took this route at the base of the bay, where we connected with Highway 880, and from there we made our way up to Oakland with very little traffic heading north.
After dropping off the people at the stadium, one final task lay before me. I had to get the bus back to the bus yard in San Rafael, and by this point it was 11:30 p.m. The most direct way to get there was to drive via Berkeley and Richmond and go over the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, which was only about a 20 mile ride. One way or another, some bridge had to be crossed, so this is the route that I took. There were almost no cars on the highway at this point, and I metaphorically held my as I made my way across the bridge. I got to the yard without a hitch, parked the bus, and then began my 10-minute drive home to Sausalito.
By the time I arrived home at 1 a.m., I was greeted by my anxious and concerned girl friend, as she had not heard from me since leaving the house some 12 hours before. It was calm and peaceful, almost surreal. A few books had fallen off the shelf, and a plant or two was knocked over on the porch. Otherwise, all seemed normal. Meanwhile, just about six miles away in San Francisco fires were raging, buildings were in ruin, and people were dying. The Loma Prieta earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.9, was now international news. In total, the quake caused an estimated $10 billion in damage. 63 people lost their lives. And life was never the same for thousands of people.
October 17, 1989, one was of the longest and most memorable nights of my life. And, as it turns out, it was probably my only chance to ever get paid to see a World Series Game in person. When the Series started up again ten days later, I was out of town. And, my bus driving days are long over.
Oh, for those keeping score at home? The A’s swept the Giants in four.
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August 20, 2019
I didn’t want another cat. In late July of 2002, it had been five months since my six-toed orange boy Woofie had to be put down at age 15 years after suffering from tongue cancer. He had lived his entire life at my house in Sausalito, and at that time I wasn’t spending many days there, as I was over at Claudia’s a lot. But one day my co-worker Tim Van Raam walked into my office and said, “I just got you in trouble.”
“What did you do?” I asked in a mild panic.
He said, “I was just talking with Nancy Hair on the 22nd floor, and she does animal rescue. She told me that she had an 8-week-old orange female kitten that needed a home, and I told her about you.”
“No!” I replied immediately. “I am not ready for another cat, and I am hardly home anymore. Plus, Claudia already has one cat, Snowy, at her house. So, thanks, but no thanks.”
Then, a day or two later, I stopped by Nancy’s office to tell her that Tim had mentioned the orange kitty, but that I was not in the market for another cat.
She said, “I understand. But look, here’s an idea. I am coming to your show at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley on Friday the 2nd of August. How about you and Claudia come by for dinner beforehand, just to have a look. No pressure here.”
“Okay. But I’m telling you, I am not ready, I am seldom home, and Claudia already has a cat.”
Friday the 2nd came around, and, as planned, Claudia and I drove over to Nancy’s house before the show. While walking up the sidewalk, I reminded Claudia that “Nancy is coming to the show, and we are going to her house to enjoy a nice meal and be social, since she is coming to our gig. We’ll visit with the kitty, but now is not the time to bring a new cat into our world.”
When we arrived at her place, there were numerous dogs and cats – and maybe even a rabbit – running around the first floor. We were introduced to all the critters – including the orange kitty temporarily named “Foyle” – and then we made our way to the dinner table. No sooner had we sat down in our seats when little Foyle made the most strategic move of her life: she jumped up onto Claudia’s lap and settled in. Claudia looked at me, I looked at Nancy, then back to Claudia, and the die had been cast. We were going to be taking Foyle home with us. But not that night. We had a gig to play, and then the next day we had a party planned at the house for our visiting friend Mike Fleming, so it was too busy a weekend to be bringing a new kitten into our home.
On Monday, August 5th, after dropping off my boss at his home in Lafayette, I stopped by Nancy’s and picked up little Foyle, put her in the cat carrier, and drove her to Claudia’s in Mill Valley, where – save for about four days some years back when C’s house was being tented and treated for termites – she was to spend the next 17 years of her life. And soon her name was changed to Milly.
Like most pet owners, we had our nicknames for her. The most common was just Mill. Sometimes she was Miller. Often I called her Millsie, Milly Vanilli, or Milly Munster. Claudia’s favorites were Miss Meow and Millicent. And the one that I used the most was Monkey. She answered to them all. That is – being a cat – when she felt like it.
She was the sweetest and cutest little thing, and as you might imagine, Snowy at first was none too happy about having this little monster running around the house, being terrorized at every turn. Snowy at that point was eight-years-old, and she was the queen of the roost. She taught Milly the rules of the house, and eventually, as Milly matured, they became friends. Claudia helped them get along in a major way. She took a small paint brush, and gently swabbed the cheeks on one and then applied the pheromones to the cheeks of the other. This way, each kitty got used to the other’s smell. Sometimes they would even sleep side by side. They were a great pair, even with their distinct colorings and personalities. Snowy did most of the talking – asking for food, treats, etc. – while Milly tagged along quietly.
Snowy lived 18 years, but she passed in May of 2012. After Snowy was gone, Milly then came into her own, since she was now the only cat in the house. She started to become more vocal, asking for things like wet food, treats, and the drip from the faucet.
Ever since she arrived at 251 East Blithedale, she was my little girl. Snowy was Claudia’s, and Milly took to me. She developed some great routines along the way. In the mornings, after I showered and finished with the hair dryer, the bathroom door would immediately be pushed open, and she would jump up onto the toilet and from there, onto the counter, where she would sit patiently, watching me shave and brush my teeth. After I was done with my toothbrush, it was time for her to drink dripping water from the tap. Even though she always had ample water available in bowls, she loved using the drip, and it was always a pleasure to watch that long pink tongue lap away at the faucet. After I got dressed, the next step was to march out to the refrigerator where she would get wet food from a can, and I would lead her into the bedroom where, purring away at a frantic rate, she would wolf down her breakfast. After that, before leaving the house, it was a back to the bathroom for her post-meal drip, followed by some more serious morning napping time.
When I would return at day’s end, hearing the bells ringing on the gate, she would run to the window beside the front door and start announcing, “Daddy’s home!” As soon as I’d get inside, I would pick her up and give her a big hug before she would then lead me to the kitchen where I’d ask the stupid question, “Are you hungry for some dinner?” At this point the meows would begin in earnest, and she would follow me into the bedroom to eat her third meal of the day (she trained Claudia as well to feed her midday). After dining, it was off to the bathroom sink for some drip. And when that was done, she would head back to the bedroom. For my day job, I wear a dress shirt to work, and underneath that, a basic white undershirt. When I changed into casual clothes, I’d lay the undershirt on the bed, and Milly would then begin to roll around on it for many minutes, taking in my smell. This was just so damn adorable! I was honored by this daily ritual.
On weekends, when I did not have to get up at the crack of dawn to go to work, I would sleep in as late as possible. While doing this, Milly would often jump up on the bed, and I would lift the sheet a bit so that she could crawl “into her cave,” where she would lie right next to me, purring away, and I would cover her with the sheet. I loved it when she did this, as there is nothing like the sound and feel of a happy cat lying so close to you.
One bad habit she mastered was asking for drip in the middle of the night. Old man that I am, I sometimes must get up at 3 a.m. or so to relieve myself, and usually there would be this orange creature sitting on the toilet seat or counter, waiting for me to arrive and turn on the faucet. Of course, I would then have to wait until she was finished drinking before going back to bed. But worse than this were the occasional times when I didn’t have to get up to use the loo, so sometimes she would jump up on the bed to remind me or just stand on the carpet and say, “Hey, it’s time for you know what!” Sucker that I was, I always accommodated her demands while stumbling to the bathroom.
These are but a few of the fond memories I will always cherish and carry with me, because on Monday, August 19, 2019, my little girl went to sleep forever.
A few months back, while having her annual check-up at the vet, we were told that she showed the early signs of kidney disease. That news was a shock, as she had been in perfect health for all her 17 years. Sometime later we noticed that she wasn’t eating as much as before, nor drinking enough water. Another trip to the vet showed that she had lost a few pounds, something that we did not notice as much since we saw her every day. In early July she began sleeping more and more, and the greetings at the front door were not as frequent. She was eating less of the dry food that was always available to her, and her water bowl was barely touched. After trips to the vet for some subcutaneous fluid injections, we learned to do the process at home, which saved a bit of money, but was never a pleasant task, as Milly was not fond of this daily routine. Three weeks back an ultrasound was done, and it was determined that she either had irritable bowel syndrome or, worse, lymphoma, in her bowels. After she was given a shot of prednisolone by the vet, we were hoping for the former prognosis instead of the latter, while Claudia administered pills and liquid drops daily. Claudia also bought countless gourmet wet foods to try and whet Milly’s appetite, and some would work for a day or two, but then she would turn away from them. This past Sunday, the 18th, resigned to the fact that the end might be coming sooner rather than later and having no commitments, we both hung around the house for almost the entire day, to be with our ailing little girl.
And it was a good thing that we did. Later that night, after eating a lot more food than she had in a while, she vomited numerous times. Worse, she lost the use of one of her hind legs, so she was dragging herself around the house. Many had told us that “You will know when it’s time.” On Monday morning, we knew it was time for that final trip to the vet. By 9:15 a.m., Milly was finally out of pain for good, and the tears began to flow. As anyone that has ever had a pet knows, saying goodbye to a loving creature is one of the hardest things to do in life. Even though we had been through this situation a few times together with other kitties over the past 24 years, it never gets any easier…
Today – the day after Milly went on to that big kitty sandbox in the sky – things are decidedly different. This morning there was no opening of the bathroom door after the hair dryer stopped. No one asked for the drip after brushing my teeth. And there was no hungry creature leading me to the refrigerator for an early breakfast. I drove to work in silence, not bothering to turn on the car radio to find out what was going on in the world, because it simply did not matter. My little girl was gone, and it was time to try to get back to the daily routine of everyday life. After getting through the work day in a slightly catatonic state, I returned to the house at day’s end, and there was no meowing orange feline to greet me at the door. There was no need to make a bee line to the refrigerator. And the undershirt was just tossed forlornly into the hamper.
Claudia set up a little shrine to Milly in the living room. There are framed photos of her, two candles, her nametag and collar, and a few tufts of her orange fur. There are holes in our hearts, and a profound emptiness in our souls. She brought us so much joy and love over the past 17 years, it’s hard to believe she won’t come walking around the corner from the bedroom at any minute. That she won’t be demanding drip every time we walk into the bathroom. Or that she won’t be sleeping at the foot of the bed tonight.
For the first time in 22 years, there is no physical cat presence here in Claudia’s house. While Milly will always be with us in spirit, she is now free to frolic with her step-sister Snowy and all the other kitties that have made the journey to the world beyond.
As stated at the top, I didn’t want another cat. But boy, did I ever have a special one for the past 17 years. It’s hard to believe that she is gone, but sadly, our furry friends are only with us for too short a time.
Will there be more four-legged felines in the future? I have no doubt. But not for a while. I just need some time to take comfort in the fact that my little orange angel has landed peacefully somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge…
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March 31, 2018
Welcome everyone. Thanks for being here, and special thanks to Emily and her husband Dave for hosting this celebration of the life of our dearly departed friend, father, and ex-husband, Daryl Jennings Williams Katz.
It is with great sadness, yet at the same time with much honor, that I stand here before you today to talk a bit about one amazing person who touched all of our lives in one way or another – whether it be personally as family, as a neighbor at the house on DeKalb Pike, through playing music, being a classmate, or from one of the endless careers he had. There is so much to say about this charismatic, comical, caring and charming individual, that it is hard to know where to start. So, I will start at the beginning.
Daryl was born on June 7, 1953, and his parents were Eileen and Jennings “Bill” Williams. At that time Eileen was almost 28-years-old, and she had been a dancer. Bill, at age 53, was 25 years older than Eileen, and he was, according to neighbor Frank Tyson, “a hard worker who worked during the week and built the house at 330 W. DeKalb on weekends while they lived in a mobile home on the site.” Two years later, Daryl’s sister Michelle was born, and the two kids grew up in the small family house with the huge front yard. Frank – whose sister Toni is here today – remembers Bill Williams as “a great carpenter, and he built a dance studio next to the house for Eileen to use to teach students.” Frank recalls the Williams family “in the little house on the hill was a strong and memorable family unit.” But tragedy struck a few years later when Bill Williams died in 1956 of a heart attack, shortly before his 56th birthday.
Somehow, Eileen and her two children forged on, and she supported her family by teaching hundreds of kids how to dance at Michelle’s Dance Studio. Some years later she remarried to a man named Seymour Katz, who became Daryl and Michelle’s step-father, and this is where they got the last name of Katz. Daryl and Michelle went to nearby Candlebrook Elementary School, and then on to Upper Merion High School.
My first memory of Daryl was seeing him driving his 1963 Chevy Impala around the high school parking lot at Upper Merion in 1971. Only cool guys – and I was not part of that crowd – had nice cars back then. Daryl was a year ahead of me in school, and I knew that the car had belonged to Billy Walker. Billy’s brother Jimmy was in my class. I thought it was odd that someone else was now driving Billy’s car, but someone told me that this “Daryl Katz guy bought it from Billy.” As it turns out, earlier Billy had purchased the car from Daryl’s next-door neighbor, Michael Capaldo, whose brother Johnny is here today.
Fast forward to one year later, in January of 1972. My brother Terry was working at the Acme at the King of Prussia Plaza, and he introduced me to two of his co-workers – Daryl Katz and Victor Verdi. Daryl played drums, Victor played lead guitar, and they were putting a band together with a singer named Lee Makowski. And they needed a bass player. So, I went over to Daryl’s house one night, and we all met in his mother’s dance studio. Terry and his friend Jack Griffith were there, and they played maracas and tambourine. We played a few songs, and suddenly The Flying Garbanzo Bean Express was formed. While stocking shelves at the Acme, Daryl had come across some garbanzo beans in cans, and he thought the name “garbanzo” was funny. At that time, there was a professional band called The Flying Burrito Brothers, so he borrowed part of their name and added “garbanzo.” There was a talent show coming up at Mother of Divine Providence church, and someone got us a slot on the show. We learned four songs to play. Naïve kids that we were, one of the songs was “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, which, in hindsight, was a very odd choice to play at a catholic event! We also played “Midnight Rambler” by the Stones, “Beginnings” by Chicago, and my world debut as a singer and band member was “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash, a song I still sing today. Even though the band only stayed together for a few months, it was the start of my musical career. More importantly, it was the beginning of a 46-year year friendship with Daryl, who encouraged me to sing and be the best player that I could be. I can only wonder where my musical path would have taken me if I had never gone over to his house that first night…
Even though some of the other band members moved on, Daryl and I soon became good friends, and we hung out while jamming quite a bit with other players during that time, including the late Bill Peacock, who was in Daryl’s first band in high school, which was called The Magic Bubble. On occasion we also would make late-night trips down to Somers Point at the shore, where the drinking age was 18. We’d start at the Anchorage, where you could get seven glasses of beer for a dollar, and after they closed at 2 a.m., we’d go over to the Dunes, a club that didn’t open until after midnight but was able to stay open all until dawn. After watching the band play, we’d then drive back home, arriving as the sun was coming up. Other times we’d stay local and go to Johnny Kamuca’s Valley Forge Tavern in the King. Daryl somehow knew Johnny – whose son Juan is here today and who we all got to know years later – and we’d drink beer while eating Miami cheese steaks, even though neither of us was 21 yet. Or we’d go for drives around the area in his 1970 red Fiat 124 convertible.
In the fall of 1972 we were both taking classes in college, he at Montgomery County Community College, and me at a local Penn State branch campus. After I finished my two-year stint there and he at Montco, I talked him into going up to Penn State, and we both left home for the first time on March 1, 1974, moving up to State College (with his dog Earl in tow) in his blue and white 1966 Volkswagen bus, where we became roommates while living outside of town in an apartment called “Sunglow.” The guy we rented from was named Dr. Sun, and the apartment was adjacent to Sun’s business office, which was called Sunglow. Dr. Sun, a professor at the university, was from China, but he was also a notorious slumlord in town. Before long, to make some money on the side, Daryl – talented guy that he was with his hands – started doing some handyman repair work for Sun. When the doctor would call on the phone for Daryl, in his Chinese accent he would ask, “Can I speak with Mistah Keetz?” And this is how Daryl earned the nickname “Geetz.” Which, years later, morphed into another nickname, “Mr. Getez.”
Speaking of nicknames, I credit Daryl with establishing mine back in the day, and which I still use today. He called me by my initials, “L.C.,” but he’d pronounce it fast, and it would come out sounding like “Elsie,” as in Elsie the Cow, who was a mascot for Borden’s Dairy.
We had some good times up the college, partying and jamming with some newfound musicians, some of which I am still friends with today. Since there was no Dunes nightclub to go to up there, another crazy late-night tradition was created by Daryl: we’d get some takeout beer, pile a bunch of guys in his VW bus – which was hardly a four-wheel-drive, off-road vehicle – and go riding on the fire roads in the mountains. These became known as “smoke rides,” and it’s a wonder that we never broke down or got pulled over by forestry service! A little less than a year a later, Joe Lawler came up to join us for a short while in State College, so we moved to a bigger place that we aptly named “Moonglow.” We formed a band, and along with a female singer named Nancy Stetler, we played a few gigs as The DiNucchi Brothers, a name that Joe came up with. At Daryl’s urging, on Wednesday nights at the house we’d invite some friends over for “Hump Night” parties, where we would drink beer and shoot darts. As the saying goes, “Those were the days.”
Around this time, I saw an ad in a record store that a good band in town called Sunday Drive was looking for a drummer, and I told Daryl about this. He got in touch, and he soon became their drummer. They were writing and playing original songs, and they were quite good. They wanted to try to do something with their music, so in late spring of 1975 they moved together to Philly, and that was the end of Daryl’s time in State College. I stayed up there to finish school, and so with the distance, we no longer saw each other on a regular basis. But every time that I would come back to the King of Prussia area to visit my parents, Daryl and I would hang out.
A few years later, in 1979, I moved west to San Francisco, where I have been ever since, so I would see Daryl even less, as I would go back to visit once or twice a year. But we stayed in touch, and the friendship was never in doubt. He wasn’t much of a letter writer, and this was long before email and texting. But whenever I did come back, we’d just pick up where we left off from the last time I was there.
While I love living out on the West Coast, one of the drawbacks of being so far away was that I missed out on all his weddings (to Annalie, Emily and Jenny), the passing of his sister Michelle from breast cancer in her ‘30s, as well as knowing his sons Jaz and Caio.
Daryl was quite the Renaissance Man, as he went through an endless series of jobs and careers. Besides being an excellent drummer, I remember him also as a Good Humor Ice Cream truck driver, a construction worker, a chimney sweep, a honey-dipper, a chef, a sandwich shop owner, and an organic vegetable farmer. I am sure that I am forgetting some other jobs that he did, and perhaps others here today will fill in the gaps.
The last time I saw him was in July of 2013, on one of my visits back in the area. A few months later he moved down to Florida to help take care of his ageing mother and step-father, who had moved down there many years before. Seymour died at age 93 in the spring 2016, and Eileen soon followed in September of that year at age 91.
Although I had not heard much from him while he was in Florida, after his parents were gone there were rumors that he might be coming back to his house in Glenmoore. He finally did return a few days before Christmas in 2017. I sent him a text on December 21st asking where he was. He wrote back, “Just got home to Glenmoore early Wednesday a.m. Unloading, ugh! Too old for dis shit.” I then asked if he had the dart board up yet, and he replied, “First thing on the list!”
A few days later, during a frigid cold snap back here, I sent him a photo of the weather forecast where I live – it was 60 degrees and sunny on December 30th – and his reply was, “F U. It’s f’in freezing here…after being in FL for 4 years…too old I guess.” Then on New Year’s Eve I sent him a funny photo of him and Juan Kamuca from many years ago, where they both look like aliens, and with a caption that says, “Greetings from Pennsylvania.” On New Year’s Day I got a reply from him that said “LOL…happy happy.” And that was my last contact with him, as he was gone nine days later.
I was glad to know that Daryl was back in PA, and I was looking forward to seeing him for the first time in five years on my annual July visit back to the area. Well, I am now back here sooner than expected, and while Daryl is indeed here today (in ashes and) in spirit, I still expect him to come walking through the door any minute in typical Daryl Katz fashion – late for his own memorial!
Daryl – as is obvious by the amount of people here today and the stories that you will hear – touched the lives of many over the course of his all-too-short lifetime. He was a big part of my life in my formative years, I considered him one of my closest friends, and I always enjoyed seeing him on my visits east. It is still hard to believe that he is now gone.
But one thing is for certain: my life has been forever enriched for having had Daryl as a lifelong friend.
Rest in peace, Daryl Jennings Williams Katz…
So goodbye my friend
I know I'll never see you again
But the time together through all the years
Will take away these tears
It's okay now, goodbye my friend
You can go now, goodbye my friend
From “Goodbye My Friend,” by Karla Bonoff
Daryl Katz (June 7, 1953 – January 10, 2018)
Eileen Katz (August 27, 1925 – October 19, 2016)
Jennings Williams (1900-1956)
Seymour Katz (February 14, 1923 – March 6, 2016)
Michelle Katz (1955 – mid 1980s)
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November 4, 2017
We are here to tell stories, to laugh, cry and celebrate the life of an extraordinary man - writer, musician, filmmaker, actor, Red Sox fan, road manager, photographer, friend to many, and son of a famous father.
I first met John in 1996, at a Thanksgiving dinner at Judy and Peter Mollica’s, which was late, compared to everyone else here. I had heard a lot about him: a bit quirky, sometimes demanding and difficult, and very honest. But liked him from the start, and we ended up bonding over the years. There would be calls or texts about baseball games, “Game of Thrones,” music, or just to see how things were going. In the later years, he would stay at Claudia’s. We’d go for daily walks around Mill Valley, and more than once we hiked up the Dipsea Steps.
I met so many people through him; many of you here today I know because of John.
He educated me on all things Janis Joplin. I was never a fan of hers, but after hearing the stories and reading John’s book, how could I not be now? And to think that John’s life was turned upside down when he found her dead at age 27 on the day before his 30th b-day…
Claudia and I took road trips twice to Jackson, WY, in 2011 and 2012. The first one was to visit various friends along the way, and the second was to attend a wedding about an hour away from Jackson. John had us play a featured set at the Dornan’s Monday Night Hoot, and we also sang with him there.
Whenever John was around, there were many dinners out in local restaurants, often followed by pie and ice cream back at the house. He loved to eat, yet amazingly so, he remained rail thin.
The last time I spoke with him was on Friday, August 18, a few days before the eclipse. I had not heard from him in a while, so I gave him a call. He was very excited about the eclipse, but I also asked about his health. He told me that the recent scan was not good news, but it was just another speed bump on the road to recovery, and that he would deal with it after the eclipse.
Another week went by with no more news, so I told Claudia to call him, since I was concerned about the scan news. She spoke with him on Tuesday the 29th, and he told her that he was going in for treatment soon. While we were both very concerned, John remained optimistic.
But then the call came on Sunday morning, September 3rd, with the sad news that he was gone…
He would have loved to have been here today, to eat, drink and play music, and be with friends. He is certainly here in spirit.
There will always be a little bit of John Byrne Cooke in all of us…
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November 21, 2015
Dear family, friends, and neighbors: We're gathered here today to say goodbye to a gentle and caring man, my brother, Terry Carlin. He has left us much too young, at the age of 64, and it’s with great sadness that we realize that he is now gone from us forever.
He led a rather simple life, as he never strayed too far or lived more than 20 miles away from where he was born, in August of 1951, just outside of Philadelphia. He was the second oldest of the five Carlin siblings and just two-and-a-half years older than me – and we were close to the same size – so I inherited many clothes from him over years. As I speak I am wearing one of his belts and a tie as a tribute to the things we shared over the years.
Somewhere along the way during our youth he ended up with the nickname of “Hobbs.” According to family lore, this name came from one of his neighborhood friends, and many of you here today knew him by this title. While he never introduced himself or signed anything as “Hobbs,” he never seemed to mind being called this.
When he was a teen, he started working at the A&P and then moved on to the Acme in King of Prussia, where he worked for about 10 years. In 1974 he graduated from Villanova University and spent his career as an accountant. He was always good with numbers, and he worked for a few different companies over the decades while also becoming the president of his local AA chapter and of the homeowners association where he lived in Paoli. But most importantly, he did my taxes for me for about 20 years. And, he always refused my payment for his services. One year, however, he did let me purchase for him, online, the Brenda Lee Anthology CD set.
Speaking of music, while Terry never played any instruments, he was a big music fan, and he amassed quite a collection of albums, cassettes and CDs. I don’t think I ever told him such, but he inadvertently affected my musical career in a profound way. In 1973 he purchased his one – and for all I know only – bluegrass album, and it was a three-disc set called Will the Circle Be Unbroken. At that time I was playing rock and roll, but for reasons unknown, I fell in love with that recording, and my musical direction changed as a result of hearing it. Heaven only knows how different my life would have been if Terry had never bought the Circle records. For this, I am forever grateful.
He loved the game of baseball. When Marty and I were in our teens, Terry organized softball games that took place on the three summer holidays at the ball field in Bob White Farms, and these games became affectionately known as the “Hobbs’ Annuals.” We had some great times playing those games, and they continued until we were in our 30s. There was even some talk of trying to pull together a Hobbs Memorial Game for this coming Thanksgiving Day, but the weather, and our ages, may not be very agreeable for doing such.
A trait that our father passed on to Terry was that he was a huge fan of the Phillies. He watched, or at least listened to, most of their games over the past decades. When the team won the World Series in 2008, the first call I made – within seconds of the final out – was to him. It was a great moment to share together. In later years he enjoyed going to watch his nephews and nieces playing on their various sports teams, and he was a big fan of the Villanova basketball team.
As for the Carlin family, while he never had children of his own, he was godfather to nieces Rachael Bullock and Meghan Carlin. He never forgot their birthdays, nor did he forget Christmas for these girls. He was everyone’s favorite uncle, and he adored all of the kids.
He also loved going down to the shore. For the last 20+ years, he never missed going down there for at least one day. This past July, when I was back visiting from California, even though he seldom left Paoli and was not feeling that well due to the cancer treatments, we took a one-day road trip down to Ocean City, Maryland, to visit nieces Katelynn, who was working for the police department for the season. Her mother Donna and her sister Rachael were also there visiting. I am not much of a shore person, and I had not been down to the beach since 1987. But when the invitation came to make a trip for the day, I did not hesitate. It was a long, 280 mile roundtrip, but I will forever cherish being able to spend such quality time with him which, in hindsight, turned out to be our last outing together.
As for his favorite snacks, anyone that was close to him knows how much he loved Wawa coffee, donuts, Stewarts root beer, and Milk Duds.
But the thing that my siblings and I are most grateful for was how he took care of our late mother for so many years. He moved back in with her in the early ‘90s, and without him being there, Mom would have had to move into an assisted living facility years before she passed. He drove her to church, shopping, doctor appointments, and everywhere else. After she had a stroke in December of 2010, Terry went to visit her every single day until she died in March of 2012. He was truly devoted to our mother, as well as to her dog Mitzi, who also became the canine love of his life. Mitzi, eerily so, sadly went on to Doggie Heaven about a year ago after coming down with a cancerous tumor.
But on July 3rd of 2014, without any warning, Terry suffered a seizure, and a week later he had the first of three surgeries to remove cancerous tumors from his brain. He also went through a round of radiation as well as multiple rounds of chemo. He fought the long, hard fight, until his body could not take it anymore.
Brother Jim reminded me this morning that our Dad’s favorite charity back in the day was Boys Town, Nebraska. Their logo featured two young boys, with one being carried on the back of the other. And the slogan for Boys Town – which was similar to the title of a hit song by The Hollies – was “He ain’t heavy, Father…he’s m’brother.” No truer words have ever been said…
On behalf of my siblings and his many nieces and nephews, I want to thank everyone for their outpouring of love and support for my brother Terry. While his loss is very painful to all of us right now, his memory, spirit, and the good times we all had together, will be with us forever.
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March 27, 2015
Like just about everyone else, it wasn't until 8:44 p.m. PST on Wednesday the 18th that I knew anything at all about Dave’s condition. My partner Claudia and I were relaxing after dinner, watching a DVD, when Mask's email arrived. As soon as I saw the subject "Dave Shipp" I knew something serious had happened. When I began to read the text, I let out a loud gasp and Claudia said, "What's wrong?" I couldn't speak. I just handed her my iPhone. I felt like I had been sucker punched in the stomach and that my head had gotten rung like a bell, similar to what happens to cartoon characters. And while both of those sensations have now ebbed quite a bit, here I am, little more than a week later, still trying to process all that has transpired…
What I knew on that Wednesday night was that, at some point, I would be heading east. I just did not know when. The first email said that David "has weeks or a month or so to live," so I began to think about when I could go. Then an email arrived on the 21st saying "come very soon and visit with him," and that "next weekend is probably not good." So I immediately got on my computer and bought a plane ticket that would have me taking a red-eye to Richmond on the evening of Sunday the 22nd.
As luck would have it, on Sunday afternoon I had plans to attend a memorial celebration in San Francisco for Sam Andrew, a guitarist in Janis Joplin's band Big Brother and the Holding Company. Sam died about a month ago, and this was a huge event with bands playing and my good friend John Cooke doing a reading from his new book, "On the Road With Janis Joplin" (John was her road manager for many years before Janis died). John also showed a short film that included marvelous footage of the band during its heyday. This was a very enjoyable affair, celebrating the life of a much-admired and loved musician. Yet after this event, I knew that I was headed towards a much sadder situation...
I arrived in Richmond at 9 a.m. on Monday morning, and I was greeted by another friend that lives in the city who does not know Dave. He took me to his home, and from there I called over to Dave’s house. Rob offered to come and get me, so I went over to the house by 11:30, where I was greeted by Rose, Dave's longtime friend Tom McNichol (who is from State College), and other local friends of Dave's. Rob and Rose had arrived from Georgia, I believe, on Friday the 20th, to take over care duties from Tom, who had been there for a week. Dave's neighbor friend Charlotte came over later, and she, too, had been very involved in taking care of Dave.
Before long I was invited to go up the stairs to visit with Dave, who was sitting on his bed with a table in front of him where he could lay his head down to rest. He was in such pain that he could not lie down at all. When I first walked into the room, Rose told him, "Larry's here, from San Francisco!" Dave, looking very frail and gaunt after having lost quite a bit of weight (it's not like he had any to lose to begin with), stood up briefly and said, "I don't know anyone named Larry!" For a second or two, I truly felt that he did not know who I was. But even during his darkest hours, the Shipp sense of humor that we knew all too well was still there, despite the condition he was in. I sat and talked with him for about 20 minutes, hugging and rubbing his boney back. His head would go up and down from the pillow at times, and he would doze for a bit, because he was on medication to relieve the pain. Knowing that I would be around for a while, I then left the room so that others could visit with him. Yet it was with a great sense of relief that I had come as soon as I did, as I feared that by the time that I arrived that he might be too far gone. I knew that he was very happy to see me, and words cannot aptly describe my feelings towards him...
I went back downstairs and met some of Dave’s local friends – Julie, Ken and Newton – and before long I felt like I was talking with kindred spirits. If these were friends of Dave's, I was thinking, they were also soon to become friends of mine. Knowing that I had recently arrived on the red-eye and that I was carless, they insisted that I join them for lunch at a nearby pub called O'Toole's, and it was a really good time. We all got to share stories about Dave, and in some ways I felt like I was talking with people that I had known for many years.
I went back to Dave’s house around 3 p.m., where others had arrived. Dave’s brother Joe and his wife Judy drove up from Raleigh and it was the first time that I – and probably most others – had ever met a sibling of Dave’s. There is a slight resemblance in some of the facial features, as well as with some body movements. It was really good to meet Dave’s closest relative. He has two much older sisters that could not make the journey to see him, so at least there was one family member there to say goodbye to the youngest of the four Shipp siblings.
There were also more coworkers from VCU, all of whom were quite shocked and saddened by the news of Dave’s deteriorating health. I got a ride back to the place I was staying with a very nice work mate named Carol, whose family is from Columbia. While I was physically and emotionally spent from having taken the red-eye and being with our dear friend Dave, I went to bed on Monday night thoroughly exhausted, yet at the same time extremely glad, that I had come to Richmond as fast as I could.
On Tuesday morning I went back over to the house by 10:30 and was pleased to see that Steve Cohen had arrived already. He made the trip down from State College. Steve, Dave and I all met while driving buses for Centre Line in the college town. I was hired two weeks before Steve, and David came on board a few months later. We have all been good friends since 1977. When I go back to State College in the summer for Arts Fest I stay with Steve and his lovely wife Leslie, while Dave would usually drive up and stay with Rob and Rose, who he first met and befriended in, I believe, 1973.
Also, Dave’s friend Keith Wilson was there, and he is someone that Dave had become friends with many years ago in State College, but who has been living in Guatemala for the past 12 years. Keith flew in as soon as he could, and he planned on being there at the house until the end, along with Rob and Rose.
A little later in the morning Richard Lotstein arrived from Chapel Hill, NC, and he is another good friend from the same era in State College. It was great to see him again, albeit under very sad circumstances. When Richard went up to see Dave, he was greeted at first with more Shipp humor, as Dave said, "Oh, not Rich Lotstein!” Steve, Richard and I each took turns going up to visit with Dave as well as helping out in whatever small way we could. Both Richard and Steve stayed for a few hours before saying goodbye to their friend and getting back on the road for what, I am sure, were long drives in more ways than one…
I stayed around the house all afternoon, as there were other friends of Dave’s that came by to say their goodbyes. At one point Rose and I opened up some cards that had arrived in the mail, and Dave knew who everyone was and he seemed touched that so many people cared about him. But then in the early evening, around 7 p.m., it was my turn to make the last slow climb up the stairs to say my farewell. This was one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do. I have had parents die, as well as cousins and other elderly relatives, but Dave was the first of my personal friends to be making his way to whatever lies beyond. I went in and sat with him. Rob was also in the room with us. In just one day Dave seemed to have deteriorated quite a bit, yet he was trying to hold on at least another day until Eunjin arrived from Korea. He could no longer stand up on his own, he was less responsive, and he was not breathing very easily. He also was not eating anything, and it was all that Rob, Rose and Keith could do to get him to take some sips of water. I sat there and put my arm around him while rubbing his left arm. I told him that I had to be going, and thanked him for being such a great friend. I said that I was going to miss him dearly, and that I loved him, and he lifted up his head, wrapped his arm around me, and said, “I love you too, man. Thanks so much for being here.”
And then I made the last descent down his stairs, said goodbye to Rose, and walked out the door in a daze of emotions before meeting my ride on the street.
I hardly remember the 12-minute drive back to where I was staying. Fortunately the Uber driver had a GPS unit to guide us, as I could not have told him which way to go. I was feeling a mix of emotions, deep sadness and a sense of loss, and yet I was also very happy that I had made the trip to Richmond to be able to spend some final hours with, and say goodbye to, our friend Dave.
On Wednesday morning I rode the Amtrak train to Philly in order to visit with one of my ailing brothers, who is having his own issues with cancer. From what I am told, Dave’s sweetie Eunjin arrived late Wednesday afternoon from Korea, and Dave began to relax as soon as he heard her voice. The remaining hours of Dave’s life were spent together with Eunjin, until he passed at 4:01 a.m. on Thursday the 26th. At least he is now at peace and, mercifully, finally out of pain.
All of our lives have been enriched by knowing Dave Shipp, and it was amazing to see, in the short time that I was there, how many loving friends of various nationalities he had from the college days, bicycling, teaching at VCU, and other phases of his life. We should all be so lucky to have so many friends as well as such caring loved ones such as Tom, Rob, Rose, Charlotte and Keith, who were willing to drop everything they were doing in order to go and make sure that Dave had the best care he could ever get in his final days. To be able to go out on own terms, in our own home, with loving and close friends like these around to help us on our way, is something that we should all hope and wish for.
In closing, here are the words of singer/songwriter Karla Bonoff from her song “Goodbye My Friend”:
Goodbye my friend
I know I'll never see you again
But the time together through all the years
Will take away these tears
It's okay now
Goodbye my friend
Goodbye, indeed, my friend David Shipp…
In sadness,
Larry
PS: During the day on Tuesday, a friend of Dave’s had called and Keith answered the phone. Keith told the caller about Dave’s situation, and the friend finished his call by saying, “Tell Dave ‘O Captain! My Captain!’” whose meaning was unclear to Keith, Rose and me. So I looked it up on Google, and it turns out that is a very moving poem by Walt Whitman from 1891.
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March 30, 2012
Welcome family and friends. The last time that I stood on this altar was 24 years ago this August, when my father, James T. Carlin Sr., passed away at the much too young age of 66, just four days shy of his 67th birthday. It is so hard to say goodbye to a parent, and I certainly was not looking forward to the time when I would have to return here. Yet today we are gathered together to say goodbye to one giant and gentle woman, my mother, Margaret M. Carlin.
Of course, everyone knew her as Peg. She was born in West Philadelphia in September of 1923, the only child of Leo and Margaret Cooney, and she was a child of the Great Depression, making her a member of “The Greatest Generation.” Throughout her life she lived in only five houses, never more than 20 miles from where it all began. She may not have strayed very far from home, but this little woman with no brothers or sisters left a legacy in this world that will continue for generations to come.
After graduating from West Catholic High for Girls in 194l her cousin Mary Mahoney invited Peg to a christening where she met the 20-year-old Jim Carlin, and they soon began dating. Jim attended West Catholic High for Boys, was two years older than Peg, and he came from a family of seven sisters. Peg found her first and only salaried job working as a secretary at Penn Mutual, located at 5th and Chestnut Streets. Before long, she and the young, handsome redhead began talking about getting married. But then, World War Two intervened, and Jim joined the US Army. He spent the next three years in Europe while Peg continued to work at Penn Mutual, faithfully waiting for her soldier to return from the war. On June 1st, 1946, her life changed forever when she and Jim were married, and she never worked another salaried job again. She soon had other things to fill up her time…
Nine months later she began the full-time job of mother, which would become her lifelong passion, when her first child, Jim Jr., was born on March 1st, 1947. In January of 1950 her first daughter, Mary Ellen, was born, but sadly, she survived for only a few hours. Mom went on to have three more boys that came along every couple of years. And finally, in 1962, her darling daughter Donna arrived when the oldest son was 15. Boy, did Mom ever have her work cut out for her! Four boys in the span of eight years and a baby girl when she was 39 years old!
I know at least four other people in this church today who will vouch for me when I say, without hesitation, that Peg Carlin was the finest mother that we could have ever asked for. How she did it all, I’ll never know. She prepared breakfast for us every morning before sending us off to school with hand-made lunches, and dinner was served up seven nights a week. She cleaned her own house, shopped for food for seven people, washed and ironed clothes, and was quite handy on the sewing machine too. She always had (and needed) a station wagon, such as the ’55 Mercury Monterey and the ‘62 Ford Galaxie. This was way before there were SUVs and mini-vans, and she drove us everywhere. But she was so tiny that she had to have a seat cushion so she could see over the steering wheel. There were baseball practices and games, Cub and Boy Scout meetings, music lessons, endless dental appointments (four of us needed braces), church choir, and finally, the Philadelphia Bulletin newspapers to deliver. All four of us boys had a paper route that was handed down from brother to brother. With 75-80 subscribers, the last two boys figured out that the fastest and easiest way to get the job done was for us to toss the papers from the tailgate of the station wagon while Mom drove. Of course, we shared none of our hard-earned profits with the person who made our job so easy.
As if tending to a family of seven wasn’t enough of a struggle, Mom also had her parents move into the family house when her mother became blind and her father could no longer care for his wife. Leo Cooney passed away before long, and then when Mom’s mother needed more care she went to live in a nursing home. And Mom went to visit her mother there every single day for quite a few years until she passed away.
And did I mention baseball? Our father, who is in Heaven, was a huge Phillies fan, and besides playing little league ball, all of us kids loved going to the Phillies’ games with Dad at Connie Mack Stadium. He always seemed to have tickets for us when his customers couldn’t go to the games with him. Mom never cared for or understood the game, which was just fine for us, because this meant that we kids got to go more often.
In her later years Mom really got into crafts with her sewing, crocheting and quilting. She had her own sewing room at the Foxwood house, where there are three machines now sitting silent and covered, never to be used again by her. Among her creations were shirts, vests, Donna’s wedding dress, and she is now wearing a suit that she made to wear to granddaughter Meghan’s wedding in 2006. She also assisted her daughter-in-law JoAnn Fitzgerald Carlin in the making of Bishop Fitzgerald’s vestments for the celebration of his first Mass in 1980. She became an accomplished quilter, and she really took to making Baltimore Album quilts. She even won an award one year at the Fort Washington Quilting Expo in the ‘90s. And she crocheted countless projects. My guess is that about half of the people here today either have a prayer shawl or a quilt the she made with her two small hands. I know that I will always cherish the two Afghans that she made and the quilt that I proudly own, along with every stitch of clothing that has the label inside that reads “Hand-made by Peg Carlin.”
Mom also played a little bit of music on her Stella mandolin, which still sits in the closet of her bedroom just across the street from here. Some of you know that I have been playing music for 45 years now, and Mom often liked to say that, “You got your musical talent from me!” And you know what? I never disagreed with her about this. And the talent has been passed down to the next generation, as grandson Sean Carlin is an amazing guitarist as well.
One of my favorite stories about Mom took place in 1985 in the TV section of a department store. Some folks that I had been playing music with made a video of their song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” and as Mom was walking through the store she happened to look up and see me on 30 TV screens at once. She suddenly began yelling, “That’s my Larry, that’s my Larry!” to the puzzlement of the other shoppers that were walking by. There are countless other stories to tell about Peg Carlin, and I have no doubt that many of them will be told later on this afternoon.
For such a tiny woman – at her best she maybe weighed 110 and stood at 5 feet 1 inches – Mom was a kind woman a big heart. She rarely raised her voice and probably never said “no” when asked to baby-sit one of her eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. When the grandkids would act up she would threaten them by saying, “If you don’t behave, I am going to cut you out of my will!” This would usually get them to quiet down. Then, the next time the kids would see her they would meekly ask, “Grandmom, am we back in the will yet?”
Mom was a lifelong church-going, selfless person who never intentionally harmed anyone. All things considered, in the end you could say that she lived a long and fulfilling life, with her only regret being the loss of her husband 24 years ago. Today we are saying goodbye to our loving mother Margaret Mary Carlin, gentle woman, who is now once again reunited with the love of her life up in Heaven. Her memory will live on forever in the hearts and minds of all of us in the extended Carlin family and by everyone else who knew her. We love you, Mom!
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February 19, 2002
It is with great sadness in my heart that I must inform you that I had to put down my cat Woofie yesterday. It goes without saying that I have had happier birthdays...
Exactly one month shy of 15 years, he was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma under his tongue about three weeks back. He had been drooling a bit, so I took him to the vet thinking that he had an abscess or some other treatable ailment. To my shock and horror, I was told that he had this cancer, and that the prognosis was not good. Soon he could not eat dry food, and he also turned up his nose to canned cat food. I started giving him real tuna and canned salmon. Then someone suggested I feed him baby food, and for the first two weeks he went crazy over this. But over the weekend he ate less and less, he was losing weight, and on Monday afternoon he started bleeding in his mouth, so the decision was made to send him off to Kittyland.
Some of you never met him, and those of you who did found that he could be skittish around strangers. But with me he was forever loving and affectionate, and I have 15 years of memories to cherish. He would greet me at the door of the house when I came home, as he knew the sound of both cars (the company car and my van). Before opening the door, I would see his orange-colored six-toed feet under the blinds, and I would hear him meowing "Hello!" He would sleep in my bed with me, he usually came running when I called his name, and I would hear the happy-feet sounds of his extra claws clicking on the floor.
Taking Woof to the vet yesterday was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. He was one special friend, and I miss him dearly. At the same time, he had a good, long life, and he is now out of pain. Still, the empty feeling inside will be tough to overcome.
All of us have gone through this situation at one time or another, some of you quite recently. So, I am not telling you something you don't already know. Since most of us have never had children, our pets sometimes can be our surrogate kids. And there is nothing like the unquestionable love and devotion from our four-legged little pals.
Life goes on, but memories live on forever. There will be other furry feline friends in my life, and in time the wounded heart will heal. I want to thank all of you who knew about this coming end for sending notes of support. And special thanks go out to Claudia, who was of the utmost help through this most trying of times. I don't know how I would have gotten through this without her love and assistance.
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TO POP
August 17, 1988
Family, friends, and neighbors: We're gathered here today to say goodbye to a kind, big-hearted man, my father, Jim Carlin. It is impressive to see how many people he really touched gathered here now for one last time. He would have been moved as much as I am to see all of his friends and family together in one place. He may not be here in person to witness such a gracious outpouring of respect and affection, but believe me when I say that he is here in spirit.
He led a fine – perhaps not perfect, as no one's is – and all too-short life. Saying this may bias me, but he was quite successful in playing the roles of husband, father, grandfather, and only brother to seven sisters. After his family, his job was his life, even after he retired in 1980 after 33 years at Pennwalt. He is now wearing his favorite tie, the one he always wore, and the one he got from the company. I don't know much about sales work, but I'm sure he was a great salesman in his days of doing such. He certainly had the right personality for it, and, unlike Willy Loman (from the play Death of a Salesman), he was well liked. He didn't have to invent "make-believe" friends. You people are testimony to that.
I rarely heard him talk down about someone, and if he had any enemies, that would be news to me. In some ways I think he would have made an excellent politician, being as affable and gregarious as he was. He could give a talk to an audience or participate in church as the lector with little effort. And he surely would have loved to be in my position now, talking to all of you.
Those of you who knew him well know that he was a rabid baseball fan, and that he was faithful to the Phillies. He loved them like a second family, even when they were at their worst, which was quite often. Maybe I should not say this with many of his former co-workers here, but he used to take us kids to the games sometimes when he was supposed to be taking clients instead. We had our differences over the years, but the common ground between us was always baseball.
In a sports column in Tuesday's Inquirer, there was an article about the great Babe Ruth. The author of a biography on Ruth said, "I found in the people who knew him a warm affection. Ask about Ruth, and the first thing they would do, remembering, looking off into the past, would be to smile." The writer of the article, columnist Bill Lyon, asked, "Is there a nicer way to be remembered than that, than to have people asked about you smile fondly even before their first words?"
I think not. And that is how it will be, when you stop and think about my father, Jim Carlin.
Speaking from the bottom of my heart for my mother, my family, and myself, we thank you all so very much.
Bless you all.
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July 9, 2023
By Larry Carlin
At the end of one’s life it is sometimes hard to know where to begin to talk about him or her. It’s also challenging for me to get over the fact that Christie is no longer with us. Even though she was diagnosed with stage-four ovarian cancer in November of 2017 and the longtime prognosis was not good, I still wasn’t ready for her to be gone so soon. Writing and talking about her in the past tense has not been easy, even though she has been gone for over two months now.
In the overall scheme of things, I did not know her as long as many of her friends. While we both attended Upper Merion Junior and Senior High Schools together, there were 450 some people in our graduating class, and our paths never crossed back in the day. I knew who she was, but we had never officially met. It wasn’t until the 40-year class reunion in 2012 that we first spoke. As one of the organizers of the event, I was going around taking photos on my iPhone and trying to personally greet everyone. I don’t recall what was said, but it probably wasn’t much more than, “Nice to see you, thanks for coming.”
A few days after the reunion I started going through the list of attendees to see who was on Facebook, and when I looked at Christie’s page, there were three things that caught my attention right away that made me want to be her friend. On her bio page it said that she was a vegetarian as well as a proud liberal. But the main thing that caught my eye, though, was her profile photo. Was it a pic of her wonderful smile and amazingly curly hair? No. It was photo of her cat, Waldo! I knew instantly that we could become friends, so I sent her a friend request, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
If my memory serves me well, she, her brother Alan, and her parents, Kermit and Margaret, moved to King of Prussia from Michigan around 1964, and they settled into the Gulph Mills area down by the Hanging Rock. I believe she went to the Gulph Elementary School for one year, and then did sixth grade at Roberts, before then going to Upper Merion Junior High. In high school, along with the usual curriculum, she took many drama classes, and then she majored in same at Washington College, a liberal arts school in Chestertown, Maryland. I don’t know much about the years after college from 1976 through 2012, other than she didn’t pursue a career in theatre. She did study for a bit to become a speech pathologist, but then decided that she did not want to do this. And she worked for a brief while for manufacturer of bridal wear. At some point, however, went to work for her father’s Fugazy International Travel in Wayne, where she stayed for a couple of decades before it was sold in 2007 and became known as Main Line Vacations. Her former boss, Craig Martin, kept Christie on as a travel advisor and assistant when he bought the company.
I do know that Christie liked her job and that she got to travel all over the world. She became good friends with some of her clients and while I had met memorial hosts Joe and Donnamarie Caprara four years ago at Christie’s surprise 65th birthday party that I sprung on her, I had not met Craig and his wife Sharon until today. Christie often spoke fondly of all these folks.
When I connected with her at the reunion, she was living in an old farmhouse in a beautiful setting out in Chester Springs. I think that she was there for about 20 years until having to relocate to an apartment in Exton in the summer of 2017 after the farm was sold.
Shortly after we became friends in 2012, we started texting to one another, mostly about politics, the Phillies and Eagles, and cats. Lots and lots of cat cartoons and photos. In later years we corresponded by text almost daily, yet we seldom ever spoke on the phone or wrote emails. I still have a text thread on my phone that goes back about four years. Sadly, there was another thread that dated back to 2012 (that also took up most of my memory on my iPhone), but I accidentally deleted it before starting the newer one.
When I would go back to visit PA during the summers and occasionally in the fall, Christie and I would usually get together for dinner and a beer somewhere, or I would pick up some cheese hoagies at Wawa and go over to her apartment to watch the Phillies game. On some visits – when she came back with me – my wife Claudia would join us. The two of them also became good friends while striking up a texting relationship. And Christie was a huge help with Claudia when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery in November of 2021.
As far as I know, Christie lived alone for most – if not all – of her adult life. And, she could sometimes be a bit stubborn. If there was some project that needed to get done, it often wasn’t completed until the last minute. Her 11th-hour move in 2017 is but one example. She also had a foolish fear of dentists. She hadn’t gone to one in many years. Sometime back, when she was having an issue with a tooth, I arranged for her to see a classmate dentist even though he wasn’t taking on any new patients. However, she never followed through with an appointment.
But boy, did she ever love her animals! While I never met any of her dogs that she’d had over the years, I did see photos and heard some great stories. Along about 20 years ago, when she was dog-less, she came across her black and white kitty Waldo, and she seamlessly segued from canines to felines. Two years ago in May, Claudia and I adopted two kitten sister rescues, and of course I began sending Aunt Christie photos multiple times each week. Sadly, around this time in June or July of 2021, Waldo began having issues and had to be put down. But about a month later – and, I believe, inspired by our situation with our two girls – Christie went to look at some rescues and fell in love with her black darling siblings Bria and Bentley, and by the time they turned eight-weeks-old, they had themselves a new mommy. They brought so much love and joy to her along the way, and they were all so lucky to have a year and a half together.
Christie and I had a special relationship. We connected on many levels, mostly like a brother and sister. She wasn’t close to her own brother Alan, so I think she was glad to have me in her life even though I was 3,000 miles away. If nothing else, I was often sometimes just minutes away by text.
It’s kind of funny how people can change over time. In 1972, the year we graduated, I was more of a loner back then. Short of playing intramural basketball, I wasn’t part of any clubs, I didn’t take any music or drama classes, and I didn’t have anything to brag about in the back of our yearbook. Christie, on the other hand, was outgoing, was involved in plays, she was the president of the class thespian society for two years, she was on the student council in our senior year, and in the back of the yearbook she wrote more than any other classmate. Yet after college she turned a bit inward while I went on to perform music on stages for the next five decades and I also studied acting for a few years while getting some bit parts in industrial films and music videos. I have occasionally thought about what might have happened had we ever connected back in high school. Maybe nothing. Or maybe we might have hooked up, gotten married, raised a family, and recently celebrated 50 years together. When I jokingly suggested this to her once, she replied in her own Christie way, “Yeah, we probably would have been divorced years ago and only be corresponding via attorneys now.”
The last few weeks of her life were tough, not only for her, but for everyone else around her. Me, being so far away, I felt helpless and useless. But there was nothing that anyone could do. She was losing her battle with the dreaded disease. I know that Donnamarie and Christie’s veterinarian friend Debbie Becker were there for her almost daily, even when there would be little response from her in the final weeks. Even though I tried, I knew that texting was futile because Christie was barely alert. I even called and left some voicemails, not really expecting to get a reply. At the least I was hoping that she would pick up once so that I could tell her that she was loved by me, her kitties, and all her friends.
In the slideshow tribute that I made for her after her passing, the line from the song by writer Randy VanWarmer that really rings true is, “Sometimes it makes me sad that we never said goodbye.” But I have to take issue with the next line – which is also the title – that goes, “Well I guess it never hurts to hurt sometimes.” In this case, I would trade the word “never” to “always.”
I arrived back here in PA four days ago for the first time since last July, which was also the last time that I saw her. She came to our 50-year class reunion. Even though I never asked for her help in arranging my travel plans, like a good travel advisor she always wanted me to text her when I arrived in Philly so that she knew I’d done so safely. Soon after landing, I would shoot her a short note. And I wanted to send her a text last Wednesday saying hello and that all was good. Instead, I was coming back to say goodbye to her, forever.
Christie may be physically gone, but her spirit lives on, and will continue to do so. Besides getting to know many of her friends as the result of her passing, I have to relate another connection. Over the years she would occasionally mention a college drama friend of hers named Davo Knepler, who lives about 15 miles away from me in Northern California. She said to me that she would try to let Davo know where I am performing sometime so that we could meet. This, unfortunately, had never happened until after she passed away. I reached out to him via Facebook to let him know that she had made her final curtain call. Of course, he was very saddened by the news. As luck would have it, my trio was scheduled to play at a farmer’s market on May 6th, and Davo and his wife Karen came to see us. Since then we had a wonderful lunch together on June 24th, and then Claudia and I went out to their house on July 4th for a holiday barbecue, which was really nice. I know that Christie would be ecstatic to know that four friends of hers have finally connected because of her.
One final story. Later in the day on May 2nd, after the sad news arrived that Christie had crossed over to rejoin her parents Margaret and Kermit, I was collecting some photos of her that were on my computer so that I could make the slideshow. But one of the pictures froze up my laptop as I was trying to close it down. It was the one with her big smile and curly hair while she is waving to the camera. Since the photo wouldn’t go away, I had to do a hard shutdown so that I could turn off the device. The next day, when I returned to work, when I fired up the computer the first thing that I saw on the screen – and I kid you not – was that same photo of her smiling and waving. I guess she just wanted to say goodbye in her own dramatic Christie way. Or, as Davo said at that time, “She is still in between worlds, wanting you to know she’s okay, that it’s okay”…
In her posting in the back of the high school yearbook, she wrote “to be happy as I want everyone else to be; to be a better person and make my life worthwhile; to be loved by more people; to pursue a career in acting.” Well, three out of four ain’t bad!
In closing, my dear Christie, the first two lines in the chorus of the song mentioned above say it all:
Oh, you’re always in my heart, you’re often on my mind
I will never let it die, just as long as I’m alive