Remembering Fred

25 April 2020 – Ten years today that I lost my friend, my best man at my wedding, buddy since 1964, so may memories, so many days together, but not enough. We should have had these last ten years to do whatever. Here’s Fred clowning on the fairway of the fourth hole at ACL, probably waiting for me to find where the hell I hit the ball. I miss you Fred.

25 April 2018 – Thinking about Fred, remembering my friend and missing him very much. Fred was gone much too soon. So many good times together, left undone. Just have to be happy for the time we did have. Conversation yesterday: “I can’t believe he’s been gone eight years.” It does not seem possible.

15 April 2012 – I was trying to remember the date we lost Fred. I knew it was in April, around this time, but I couldn’t remember the exact date. I went back and looked at some of the information I had about his funeral and found that he died April 25th, 2010. At that point I was simply too grief-stricken to be able to think directly about him being gone to be able to get myself together enough to write something down about Fred. Plus, “just” making a web page didn’t seem quite right, or enough. I feel differently now. I’d like there to be something a little more permanent around that helps me remember him. I thought others might like something like this, too.

So, for a while, I’m going to be adding things here, words, pictures, maybe music. If anyone else would like to add something, please send it my way and I will make sure it gets posted here.

I’ll start with a picture of Fred  and Elaine and me that is one of the strongest ways I remember Fred. He used to love coming up to the lake. We explored all over the property and miles around the surrounding area. He helped us do projects around the lake house to help out my parents. Fred and I spent a lot of time on the golf course. The only time I ever saw a pheasant at the lake was with Fred; just as we were turning onto the property this large ring-necked male with a long tail, unmistakable for what it was though he and I had never seen one in the wild, ran from the edge of the road into the edge of the dried-up and cut down from last season corn field stalks. By the time we both realized what we had seen and I had the thought to stop the car to get a better look, the bird was gone. But not this memory.

Sitting outside in the back yard last night [early morning 11 August 2013] of course reminded us of all the times we sat out at ACL with Freddie watching the Perseids, trying to identify stars and planets and constellations, and spotting satellites. We took a lot of sky shots over the years, some of which turned out with blank or smeared images. But this one was a classic that Fred took, using black & white film with the camera set up on a tripod pointed directly at the North Star, with a several minute exposure — at least — if not 30 minutes or more.

 

Here is Fred with Elaine and me, in a shot we set up on a tripod in the quarry with a time delay shutter so that we could all get into the picture. I think he was using his dad’s camera. This might be the only one that worked, or that we saved. Most of the time we were laughing so hard as whoever it was was trying to run and get back into the picture that the shots were completely blurred or caught us in ridiculous poses.