Looking back at the first place I called home after moving so many times between my birth in 1947 to my times at the Roanoke Times in the late 1960s, made me realize that nearly everyone I knew since living in Alton, Illinois, for 12 years — with the thankful exception of wife Amy — have died.
Two former ladies that I had relationships before meeting Amy are gone. So are most of those I knew at The Telegraph, the paper I where I was a reporter, editor, columnist and photographer for all of the 1970s and a month or two more.
At least once a week, I see an obituary in a newspaper for someone I knew, interviewed or met in a career that spans six decades. The latest was pop artist Peter Max. Amy and I met when he opened a show in a gallery in Fairfax, Virginia, when we lived in the National Capital Region. John Kyl, a former Senator from Arizona. I knew him during my time working in Congress. He died the same day at Peter Max.
My younger half-sister, Vicki Bolt, died last year of of stroke. Friends from high school days — Gary Shockey, best man at the wedding to my first wife; Kay Simpson, a lady who said she remembered 60+ years ago that I was “the only boy she knew who wore English Leather cologne; Marty Hall, who remained a longtime friend after school days; and several others.
At 78, I will hit 79 in December and then, perhaps, 80 next year. The cardiologists who examined me last week as part of my recovery from a heart blockage and installation of a pacemaker into the lower heart cavity, said the battery checked in with more than 10 years of power remaining.
“OK,” I said. “Will I be around when the battery dies?”
“We ‘re working to make that happen,” she said.
Amy, who is 73, has survived rhuhmatic fever, scoliosis and other life-threatening ailments but has managed a career that included a professional actress and a buyer for a department store chain. She chastises me when I complain about getting old.
I do the same with a 49-year-old daughter who will turn 50 next month.
“Remember,” I tell her. “I was 30 when you were born.”
“Don’t complain about getting old,” Will Rogers once said. “The alternative is deadly.”
Yes it is.