#7 Reconnect with an old friend.

Here's an old friend I wish I could reconnect with. His name was Stan Clark, and when he was in college he saved my life.

He was a long way from his home in Connecticut when he attended a church college in central Kansas. We met there in the band program. I played saxophone; he played percussion. He paired up with a couple of brass players in the band, one of whom dated my roommate. The five of us did a lot of hanging out together. 

He was never going to be my boyfriend. He made that very clear -- someone was waiting for him back home -- but he did take me to my very first concert, Three Dog Night in Wichita, and, in the Student Union where we hung out, he tried his best to help me improve my ping pong game.

I don't know if I ever told him that back home in Iowa my high school band instructor, almost forty years my senior, was waiting for me to finish college. I wasn't announcing it to anyone else -- in fact, I kept it a shameful secret for thirty years -- so I very likely didn't tell him. But Stan's attention let me believe that I was a person worth talking to, that I could perhaps attract the eye of a boy my own age. 

In a memorable dramatic episode involving the dorm incinerator at the end of the hall, I burned the letters and the piano compositions from the teacher. 

I transferred back to an Iowa university after two years and lost touch with Stan. From alumni information, I learned that Stan operated a pizza business in Oklahoma, but I made no attempt to contact him.

This summer my husband and I were returning from our trip to Alaska. We were playing a Jethro Tull CD, and I remarked that I'd forgotten how much I had enjoyed the band when I was young. I started reminiscing about my first concert, the Three Dog Night event I attended with Stan. I decided to do a Google search for him.

And here's the poignant part of the story. Stan passed away on September 4 in 2018, in Nixa, Missouri, just 30 miles away from my home. Nixa, the town where my grandson lives. Nixa, the town I traveled to once or twice a week when his momma, my daughter, passed away.

His obituary says, "He was a friend to all and never knew a stranger." I know that to be true. Thanks, Stan, for being my friend all those years ago.