In the summer of 1971 I made a life-changing decision. I chose to drop out of college and attend Radio-TV-Film school in frigid Minneapolis, Minnesota. For the first time, I would be in a place where I knew absolutely no one, far away from family, friends and familiar surroundings.
I will never forget the feeling I had watching my parents drive away, leaving me alone in this big city, after helping me find a room to rent. I didn’t own a car. Didn’t own much of anything except a small portable black and white TV and a few changes of clothing.
I felt incredibly lonely and a bit scared. But shortly after school began I met two classmates named Steve and Dan. Steve was from upstate Minnesota and Dan was from Iowa. It didn’t take long to sense they had the same off beat sense of humor as me, and we began to cut up and joke around together. It was like we hit it off immediately, quickly becoming buddies. Best buddies. Before long we were sharing an apartment together. The school’s program was a one year curriculum, and during that year we were the three musketeers, doing everything together, or at least as much as three broke young guys in a big town could afford to do.
We went to cheap movies, threw the frisbee around at the park, found free outdoor concerts to hang out at, and existed on White Castle hamburgers. Sometimes we would stay up all night playing poker, using Cheerios as currency. But mostly we spent endless hours excitedly listening to local radio deejays and watching TV newscasts, studying and discussing how they wielded their craft. We were so pumped up about doing that sort of thing as a career, sharing our dreams about someday becoming big time broadcasting personalities. Our ambitions bonded us closely together. The world would be our oyster. It was one of the best years of my life.
But time marches on, and upon graduation we vowed to stay in touch forever, as we headed off to different parts of the country to begin our media careers. We found that remaining close was easier said than done. In those days staying in touch required more effort than it does now. There was no internet, no smart phones, no text messaging or email. You either had to pay for a long distance phone call, or take the time to sit down and write a letter. We managed to pull it off for a couple years, but eventually we all got married, started raising kids, moved around to different cities, you know how it goes. Communication dwindled and eventually dried up.
In the blink of an eye, 44 years had gone by since I had seen or talked to them last. Once retired, I was determined to track them down, anxious to catch up, to learn where their lives and careers had taken them. Finding them wouldn’t be a problem I thought, not in this wired up age. I scoured the internet, searching under every name, phrase and location I could think of. But no luck. It was like they had disappeared. There didn’t seem to be any digital footprint of them anywhere. Then, one day, I must have stumbled upon the right search phrase. A link on Dan popped up on my screen.
Ecstatic, I immediately clicked on it. The article that came up on my laptop caused me to go numb all over. It was an obituary. Dan had died in 2003 of cancer. The article said he had been working as the morning show deejay at a country radio station in Madison, South Dakota. That brought a melancholy smile to my face. That was so Dan. He loved country music and I’ll bet that was his dream job. He must have been popular, because the local newspaper had a huge write-up on his passing. He was just 47 years old. We hadn’t spoken in over four decades, yet when I learned of his passing I felt as though a part of my life died with him.
I’ve never located any information on Steve. I pray he is still out there somewhere, and that life has treated him kindly. I hope all his dreams came true, as most of mine did.
Good friends are a special gift from God. If you are blessed to have them, don’t ever let those relationships wither away. There will come a time, all too quickly, when they cannot be retrieved.