It’s May, I’m in sixth grade, I’m on the sidewalk in front of my house on Amherst Street back when we still lived on the busy street. The bridal veil bushes are covered in clusters of white blooms and my parents are sitting on the front porch, drinking coffee in the evening after dinner. I’m throwing a tennis ball against the wooden porch stairs and it bounces back to me. I catch the grounder in my glove and throw and catch it again, but I’m not a baseball player, I’m bored. My tennis ball thumps. It thumps. It thumps.
I’m oblivious to my parents hoping for a peaceful few moments to themselves.
My mother or father suggests I do something, go over to a friend’s. I said that Eddie—my friend those days—has moved away.
Go find another friend, my father said.
Oh, yeah, just like that, Dad? I’ll go make a new friend. Do you realize how hard that is for me? Every summer we pack up and head to our cottage in Canda, which is awesome, but the price is that I miss out on the bonds that boys form in the summer in the city, playing touch football in the street, goofing off in Delaware Park, joining little league baseball. My friendships in the city were tentative, tenuous, and right now I didn’t have many.
My parents wanted me to get lost for a while, and I sauntered off, down the block, turned at Woodward, walked past the church, kicked a can in the road, turned left on Russell, the quiet streets of the neighborhood, cars parked both sides, houses packed together, a person here watering their lawn, a person there painting a window.
I stop at the end of a driveway where some guys in the backyard shoot baskets against a rim and backboard bolted to the garage.
It’s Don DePerro’s house, I think, who’s in my class this year, and when there’s a pause in the game, Don looks down the driveway and sees me and says “Is that Dave Klein? Come on back.”
And with that invitation, those opening of arms to welcome me, I found a new group and Don became one of my best friends through high school.
And now he’s dead. I just found out via text from my brother. This one hits hard. A flood of memories comes back to me. We had sleepovers at each other’s houses. We each had paper routes delivering the Buffalo Evening News. We played on the same hockey team, neither of us very well. We double-dated at my girlfriend’s senior prom because one of her friends had a crush on Don and invited him to be her date.
Seventh grade? We’re in his house watching TV in the living room. Don lived in a typical Buffalo double—two flats, one lying on top of the other, front porches, three bedrooms and a bathroom in the rear, kitchen in the middle, dining and living room forward. We’re with other guys, because as a friend Don didn’t come alone, he came with a group of guys. His dad, a truck driver for Roadway, is in the room too, reading the newspaper. We’re wise guys, on the verge of puberty’s mystery. We tease each other saying things like “Beat off, Gary,” to each other. “Beat off, Don,” I said, in front of his father. His Dad didn’t react, but Don was shocked and said in a low voice to me, “Do you even know what that means?” I guess I didn’t yet. I thought it was just a goofy insult.
Don had a big personality, a generous heart, a ton of soul. He played air flute for songs like Chicago’s “Color My World” and he air-microphoned “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues without a hint of irony in his performance. He had his tastes, he had his style.
One autumn day Don invited me to go with him and his parents for a drive out in the countryside and to a dinner at some church. We goofed around the whole time in the expansive back seat of his father’s Chrysler New Yorker, but I think his parents didn’t mind because we were such good friends.
In high school we spent a few nights one summer at our cottage and he invented a sandwich which my family named after him and still remembers to this day. “The Donald” was friend bologna and onions with melted cheese on Italian bread. It’s one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.
Our gang hung out next door to Don’s in Russell Zornick’s attic where we listened to music and learned to drink. We played 45-speed records. One evening Don showed up and we were playing some Jim Croce song for the millionth time and he stopped the record player, pulled off the record, smashed it, and threw the pieces out the attic window, yelling how he was so sick of Croce and never wanted to hear him again and wished Jim Croce were dead. This was September 20, 1973—I looked up the date—because later that same night, in the strangest coincidence, Jim Croce actually did die in a plane crash.
Charismatic, extroverted, high-energy—that was Don. Exactly the opposite of me, an introverted, private person. Yet we were close friends. I never wondered why he wanted to be my friend or what I brought to the friendship that he liked in me. I was just glad we were friends. And now he’s dead.
I didn’t see Don a lot after high school. I went away to college and he stayed in Buffalo. He invited me to his wedding, and I attended and had fun, because there always was fun when Don was involved. I don’t know if I’ve seen Don since his wedding, but we connected on social media a few times.
After college, he started as a newspaper reporter and had a successful career as a publisher of business newspapers. Only a few months ago he retired as president of the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, Ohio. Wife of many years, three grown kids, grandchildren—Don had the whole package.
Last night I sat and watched a business interview with him that took place less than a year ago. I was trying to see my old friend or recognize his voice, but I couldn’t attach this face and voice to the memories that were stirring within me from fifty years ago. Fifty years—we’re all going to change over that timespan.
But he was a smooth and natural speaker, always had been. In the interview, he said he liked to develop talent. “I have a talent for identifying talent,” he said. Maybe he saw the friendship talent in me all those years ago?
Also in the interview, he said he had regrets that he didn’t keep a diary, he didn’t write as much as he wanted to, because he could have written three books he’s experienced so much, and in fact he thought he might get started writing a book. That didn’t happen.
Rest in peace, Don. You welcomed me as a friend at a time when I needed a friend.