Hof
October 19th, 2008, 07:21 PM
Amazingly,in the span of 3 months I've lost 3 very good friends and the only direct links to my Rochester/New York City connection.I moved to the City from Upstate because of two of these guys,and now they are lost to me.
I grew up in Rochester.I lived in the same house in the City from infancy through college.It was a nice neighborhood,with magnificant stands of Oaks and Elms towering over large homes on brick streets.It was stable middle-class to upper-class ,everyone's Dad had a good job and the place was great to grow up in.
The area had an identity.If you weren't Italian you had to be German,or maybe Irish.We all went to a Catholic school and met each others' parents at Sunday Mass.
One of the first kids I became friends with at school was a little runt of an Italian kid,Tommy DeVitt.He lived three blocks over.He has a great sense of humor and could run really fast.We started being friends in First Grade,dreaming up kid's adventures,making each other laugh,collecting Coke bottles for the deposits.
As we left childhood for studenthood,we learned the same things in the same classrooms from the same nuns.We got bikes and roamed all over the city,got into fights,hitchhiked to Niagara Falls,laughed our ass off.We had a strong,unbreakable friendship.
Other friends enlarged it to a circle.There was Bill Frank,a kid from a single-parent home,a rarity in those days;there was Ron Kline,a baseball whiz,who's Dad worked Midnights at Kodak and might have ALSO been a single-parent kid,except his Dad came home to sleep.There was Jim,who's father was my Dentist.
There were The Johns,who were unrelated but both were Irish, their fathers were lawyers and they lived across the street from each other,and Dunn,an all-around sportsman.There was Kathy L --who later married Jim--and Kathy M, Mike,Sully (who killed a guy ),Damon and Tom and me,( his father was a union leader,mine a doctor) and we all hung out with each other,always.
When bike wheels turned to car wheels through the town our cabal was broken up and we all went to different High Schools.Some went to Public school,most to one of the 5 Catholic High schools in town.Tommy and Bill were at West High,me,Ron,The Johns and a couple others went to schools that all had "Saint" in their names.
Tommy had the first car in the crowd.It was a 1954 Chevy,a hand-me-down from his Mother,and we could cram the whole crew inside for a night of running around.
Boy,did we ever.Drinking age was 18 then,so if you were a semi-mature looking 16-year-old and had decent phony ID,you could get into bars--so that's what we did.
We'd prowl the midnight streets of Rochester in various permutations of the crew,Tom always driving,and we'd barhop until we began falling down.
We'd pick up women,fight over gas money,buy a round if it was Friday,play pool or cards until dawn.
Tom and I had some hilarious incidences,one about how I met Elaine (my Mrs. Robinson) at the ski slopes and Tom met a bunch of ski bunnies that same night--THAT would make a good movie.Another-- involving feces, the 13th cup at Brooklea Country Club,an angry circuit court judge and a wierd restitution-- would make a good cartoon.
DeVitt was a very funny guy and could make a roomfull of people laugh.
But our best times from that period came from our mutual appreciation of music.Tom's Dad was president of Local 66,a very powerful musician's union.Any act that played a venue in Rochester,from barroom combos to rock concerts to the Philharmonic gave free tickets to Mr DeVitt and he passed them on to Tom.
Tom played the piano,well,and was always trying to learn guitar,and often he would get lessons from some of the musicians in his Dad's Union,right up on the stages where they performed.I met a lot of music's greats during those times.
We saw every musical performance we wanted to see,for free and often in really good seats.
Around then,Tommy,Bill ,Sully and I partied with some of the musicians backstage and discovered pot.
Tom was the first guy ever in our crew to come up with a "lid" a few days later.
Boy,did life change after that...
We had both developed a strong affinity for jazz,and one night after a Dizzy Gilespie concert,we learned that all the black musicians were jamming at an after-hours joint,a place called Pythodd Hall.It was in the heart of the black area,risky business really,but we went there,met Dizzy and experienced some of the best live music we would ever see.We became regulars at Pythodd,and were often the only white faces in the place.For a couple years we were familiars there,then came the Rochester Riots of 1964.
Tom and I had gotten arrested during the Riots--another story that would make a good movie--and the weekend after the smoke had drifted away we were back at the Hall,enjoying the organ music of Jimmy Smith,bragging about our rap sheets.We were welcomed but looked upon with some amazement by the neighborhood regulars for having the courage to continue coming around after so much racial hate had been spewed upon Rochester's streets.
Bill Frank was the first to leave Rochester for New York City.By our Senior Year,we all had cars and we would go to New York--a 4-hour drive--as much as we could.We probably drove down to The City 10-15 times before Bill made the decision to move right after graduation,and after that we had a place to stay in Manhattan,so we all went to NY a LOT!! We fancied ourselves hippies,mostly to justify our cannibas useage,and we went to all the jazz and folk bars in The Village and slept on Billy's floor.
It was mostly Tom and me making the trip,sometimes with Elaine,sometimes Mike or John II,often with Sully--we'd pack Bill's apartment and do weekends in The City as often as we could.You never knew who would be staying there,so it was always a reunion.We talked earnestly about all of us moving to the City,setting up shop like the old days.
College fragmented our crew deeply.
I applied to NYU,intending to move to NY as well,but I got turned down for admission and wound up finishing college in Rochester;Tom went to the Eastman School of Music,Sully to John Carroll,John II to Georgetown,Ron to Community College and an early marriage,Damon to Boston College,others went elsewhere.The crew was now in five states,getting educated.
After college,I moved to Dallas to pursue a career,and I lost touch with everyone except Tom.After Dallas,I moved to Manhattan,where I stayed for six years (at Thompson and Spring Streets).
I had moved in temporarily with Bill Frank,who was getting married and was moving to the South Shore.Tom was staying with him,looking for his own place.
When Bill left,I subletted from him and Tommy found a basement apt in the East Village.About a month after I became a New Yorker,I was walking down Spring and ran into Sully,who was married to an Earth Mother and living right around the corner,on MacDougal.We called Bill and had an instant party that lasted a month,with everybody,even wives and kids,crashing at various places around The Village.
A year later,Tom lost his place and stayed on my sofa for 3 months.I was working 2 jobs,so I saw little of him.We did find a lot of opportunities to party around the area.Tom never worked but he always had money.I never asked,but noticed that we had an endless supply of smoke.
He stayed in The City for another year with his cousin on Staten Island,and strangely,I saw LESS of him than when he drove down from Rochester.
Bill remained my landlord for six years.
So now,most of the crew could semi-assemble in Manhattan,which happened often,and the friendships continued,the bonds growing stronger.Bill bought a boat,and for awhile we'd go to Fire Island or Robert Moses to party.We were semi-regulars at the now-gone Oak Beach Inn,a landmark South Shore institution that survived 30 years of harrassment from both the weather and the politicians.
Later,I moved to Florida,Tom went to San Francisco,Sully to Chicago and Ron took his family to Denver.Damonstayed in NY,became a doctor and kept a Park Ave practice until he moved to Phoenix.John II died in a wreck.Jim went to Miami ( he was responsible for my moving to Flosida) ,Mike stayed in Rochester and sold houses.
The crew never really broke up until most of us were in our late 20s.
By 2007,Bill was a successful contractor on Long Island.He built or rehabbed dozens of places from the Hamptons to Fire Island.He lived well,drove a Porsche and was twice-divorced.Sully was a fire captain in Chicago,ready to retire.Tom was teaching music in Frisco,Ron was divorced and living in Boise.Jim lived in Florida,but I never saw him much.
We had all cross-visited through the years and stayed in touch monthly,via email or phone,mostly discussing what had happened to the rest of the crew.
Tom called from San Francisco a lot.For years,since cellphones anyway,we'd call each other frequently.He usually called at the end of the month,burning off excess minutes on his cellphone.We talked about the old days with old friends,he'd tell me about living in San Francisco (he lived downtown,in a condo off Jones St).We talked in late August--Tommy had just bought a car--his first one in almost five years.He always said he didn't need a car,since Frisco had such good public transportation,but I talked him into it.
A Maxima,which I had strongly recommended.
A week later,he called again. He had heard from John I--now retired and living in Westchester-- that Bill Frank had died,from lung cancer.I tried to call Sully,but I never got through,so I called Ron.
In September,Ron called from Boise.He had read the Rochester "Democrat and Chronicle" obituaries online--and there was Tommy's entry.He had died in his bed in San Francisco of congestive heart failure.
I decided to call Jim and give him the sad news.His brother answered,immediately recognized my voice and told me Jim had a sudden heart attack the week before and was gone.
I called Ron back...
Bright lights that forever illuminated the stage where I act out my life have been dimmed and will never come back on.A huge chunk of personal history was suddenly taken from me,and the loss of three of the best people I will ever know leave me as half-a-man empty as I've ever been.
I miss these guys,deeply.
I tried to call Sully,but there's still no answer.
As my past is being wiped clean,I'm beginning to seriously confront my humanity.
I grew up in Rochester.I lived in the same house in the City from infancy through college.It was a nice neighborhood,with magnificant stands of Oaks and Elms towering over large homes on brick streets.It was stable middle-class to upper-class ,everyone's Dad had a good job and the place was great to grow up in.
The area had an identity.If you weren't Italian you had to be German,or maybe Irish.We all went to a Catholic school and met each others' parents at Sunday Mass.
One of the first kids I became friends with at school was a little runt of an Italian kid,Tommy DeVitt.He lived three blocks over.He has a great sense of humor and could run really fast.We started being friends in First Grade,dreaming up kid's adventures,making each other laugh,collecting Coke bottles for the deposits.
As we left childhood for studenthood,we learned the same things in the same classrooms from the same nuns.We got bikes and roamed all over the city,got into fights,hitchhiked to Niagara Falls,laughed our ass off.We had a strong,unbreakable friendship.
Other friends enlarged it to a circle.There was Bill Frank,a kid from a single-parent home,a rarity in those days;there was Ron Kline,a baseball whiz,who's Dad worked Midnights at Kodak and might have ALSO been a single-parent kid,except his Dad came home to sleep.There was Jim,who's father was my Dentist.
There were The Johns,who were unrelated but both were Irish, their fathers were lawyers and they lived across the street from each other,and Dunn,an all-around sportsman.There was Kathy L --who later married Jim--and Kathy M, Mike,Sully (who killed a guy ),Damon and Tom and me,( his father was a union leader,mine a doctor) and we all hung out with each other,always.
When bike wheels turned to car wheels through the town our cabal was broken up and we all went to different High Schools.Some went to Public school,most to one of the 5 Catholic High schools in town.Tommy and Bill were at West High,me,Ron,The Johns and a couple others went to schools that all had "Saint" in their names.
Tommy had the first car in the crowd.It was a 1954 Chevy,a hand-me-down from his Mother,and we could cram the whole crew inside for a night of running around.
Boy,did we ever.Drinking age was 18 then,so if you were a semi-mature looking 16-year-old and had decent phony ID,you could get into bars--so that's what we did.
We'd prowl the midnight streets of Rochester in various permutations of the crew,Tom always driving,and we'd barhop until we began falling down.
We'd pick up women,fight over gas money,buy a round if it was Friday,play pool or cards until dawn.
Tom and I had some hilarious incidences,one about how I met Elaine (my Mrs. Robinson) at the ski slopes and Tom met a bunch of ski bunnies that same night--THAT would make a good movie.Another-- involving feces, the 13th cup at Brooklea Country Club,an angry circuit court judge and a wierd restitution-- would make a good cartoon.
DeVitt was a very funny guy and could make a roomfull of people laugh.
But our best times from that period came from our mutual appreciation of music.Tom's Dad was president of Local 66,a very powerful musician's union.Any act that played a venue in Rochester,from barroom combos to rock concerts to the Philharmonic gave free tickets to Mr DeVitt and he passed them on to Tom.
Tom played the piano,well,and was always trying to learn guitar,and often he would get lessons from some of the musicians in his Dad's Union,right up on the stages where they performed.I met a lot of music's greats during those times.
We saw every musical performance we wanted to see,for free and often in really good seats.
Around then,Tommy,Bill ,Sully and I partied with some of the musicians backstage and discovered pot.
Tom was the first guy ever in our crew to come up with a "lid" a few days later.
Boy,did life change after that...
We had both developed a strong affinity for jazz,and one night after a Dizzy Gilespie concert,we learned that all the black musicians were jamming at an after-hours joint,a place called Pythodd Hall.It was in the heart of the black area,risky business really,but we went there,met Dizzy and experienced some of the best live music we would ever see.We became regulars at Pythodd,and were often the only white faces in the place.For a couple years we were familiars there,then came the Rochester Riots of 1964.
Tom and I had gotten arrested during the Riots--another story that would make a good movie--and the weekend after the smoke had drifted away we were back at the Hall,enjoying the organ music of Jimmy Smith,bragging about our rap sheets.We were welcomed but looked upon with some amazement by the neighborhood regulars for having the courage to continue coming around after so much racial hate had been spewed upon Rochester's streets.
Bill Frank was the first to leave Rochester for New York City.By our Senior Year,we all had cars and we would go to New York--a 4-hour drive--as much as we could.We probably drove down to The City 10-15 times before Bill made the decision to move right after graduation,and after that we had a place to stay in Manhattan,so we all went to NY a LOT!! We fancied ourselves hippies,mostly to justify our cannibas useage,and we went to all the jazz and folk bars in The Village and slept on Billy's floor.
It was mostly Tom and me making the trip,sometimes with Elaine,sometimes Mike or John II,often with Sully--we'd pack Bill's apartment and do weekends in The City as often as we could.You never knew who would be staying there,so it was always a reunion.We talked earnestly about all of us moving to the City,setting up shop like the old days.
College fragmented our crew deeply.
I applied to NYU,intending to move to NY as well,but I got turned down for admission and wound up finishing college in Rochester;Tom went to the Eastman School of Music,Sully to John Carroll,John II to Georgetown,Ron to Community College and an early marriage,Damon to Boston College,others went elsewhere.The crew was now in five states,getting educated.
After college,I moved to Dallas to pursue a career,and I lost touch with everyone except Tom.After Dallas,I moved to Manhattan,where I stayed for six years (at Thompson and Spring Streets).
I had moved in temporarily with Bill Frank,who was getting married and was moving to the South Shore.Tom was staying with him,looking for his own place.
When Bill left,I subletted from him and Tommy found a basement apt in the East Village.About a month after I became a New Yorker,I was walking down Spring and ran into Sully,who was married to an Earth Mother and living right around the corner,on MacDougal.We called Bill and had an instant party that lasted a month,with everybody,even wives and kids,crashing at various places around The Village.
A year later,Tom lost his place and stayed on my sofa for 3 months.I was working 2 jobs,so I saw little of him.We did find a lot of opportunities to party around the area.Tom never worked but he always had money.I never asked,but noticed that we had an endless supply of smoke.
He stayed in The City for another year with his cousin on Staten Island,and strangely,I saw LESS of him than when he drove down from Rochester.
Bill remained my landlord for six years.
So now,most of the crew could semi-assemble in Manhattan,which happened often,and the friendships continued,the bonds growing stronger.Bill bought a boat,and for awhile we'd go to Fire Island or Robert Moses to party.We were semi-regulars at the now-gone Oak Beach Inn,a landmark South Shore institution that survived 30 years of harrassment from both the weather and the politicians.
Later,I moved to Florida,Tom went to San Francisco,Sully to Chicago and Ron took his family to Denver.Damonstayed in NY,became a doctor and kept a Park Ave practice until he moved to Phoenix.John II died in a wreck.Jim went to Miami ( he was responsible for my moving to Flosida) ,Mike stayed in Rochester and sold houses.
The crew never really broke up until most of us were in our late 20s.
By 2007,Bill was a successful contractor on Long Island.He built or rehabbed dozens of places from the Hamptons to Fire Island.He lived well,drove a Porsche and was twice-divorced.Sully was a fire captain in Chicago,ready to retire.Tom was teaching music in Frisco,Ron was divorced and living in Boise.Jim lived in Florida,but I never saw him much.
We had all cross-visited through the years and stayed in touch monthly,via email or phone,mostly discussing what had happened to the rest of the crew.
Tom called from San Francisco a lot.For years,since cellphones anyway,we'd call each other frequently.He usually called at the end of the month,burning off excess minutes on his cellphone.We talked about the old days with old friends,he'd tell me about living in San Francisco (he lived downtown,in a condo off Jones St).We talked in late August--Tommy had just bought a car--his first one in almost five years.He always said he didn't need a car,since Frisco had such good public transportation,but I talked him into it.
A Maxima,which I had strongly recommended.
A week later,he called again. He had heard from John I--now retired and living in Westchester-- that Bill Frank had died,from lung cancer.I tried to call Sully,but I never got through,so I called Ron.
In September,Ron called from Boise.He had read the Rochester "Democrat and Chronicle" obituaries online--and there was Tommy's entry.He had died in his bed in San Francisco of congestive heart failure.
I decided to call Jim and give him the sad news.His brother answered,immediately recognized my voice and told me Jim had a sudden heart attack the week before and was gone.
I called Ron back...
Bright lights that forever illuminated the stage where I act out my life have been dimmed and will never come back on.A huge chunk of personal history was suddenly taken from me,and the loss of three of the best people I will ever know leave me as half-a-man empty as I've ever been.
I miss these guys,deeply.
I tried to call Sully,but there's still no answer.
As my past is being wiped clean,I'm beginning to seriously confront my humanity.