Memories – Losing a Friend

During my high school years, I met a lot of kids from different parts of Houston while going to the dances held in various places. Woodland Park was one of those places where a lot of teenagers from many areas came for the weekend dances. It was a great setting, the gymnasium had good floors for dancing and the room was large enough for a lot of kids to stand in groups. Meeting new kids was as easy as just walking to different areas. Out on the grounds, there were trees with the Little White Oak Bayou down the hill below. The building had doors on both sides to allow the night air to cool the room down somewhat, there was no air conditioning back then. The D.J. would play the songs that were on the most played list for the week on the radio and he would take some special requests. I remember that the last song that was played each dance night was “Last Date” by Floyd Cramer.

When I first started going there, I went with my older sister and her boyfriend. When I got older and I could drive, I would usually take a friend with me or ride with other friends to get there. There were two guys that were there often, and I got to be really good friends. They went to Reagan High School. They both were a year older than me, but we liked a lot of the same things. When I was a child, I lived in the Heights not too far from where these two guys lived. They knew some of the kids I had gone to the 1^st and 2^nd grades with. They became my closest friends that did not attend Sam Houston. After they graduated from Reagan, I did not see either of them for a while.

I knew that one of them had gone off to college and the other one had got a job working in movie production. A while later I got a phone call from him telling me that he was working in Brackettville Texas with the production company on a film. He was excited that the main actor was John Wayne. They had built a replica of the Alamo and were filming “The Alamo” there in Brackettville. He was very excited about being involved and told me that three of his friends from Houston were also on the crew. About two months later, I got a call from the other friend to tell me our friend was killed in a head-on car wreck on Highway 90 and all four in the car he was in were killed. In 1960, there was no I-10 and Highway 90 was the only highway to get to West Texas and it was only two lanes for most of the way across Texas. There were long stretches of highway without anything built in that part of the state. Someone may have fallen asleep.

I had never had a friend die before and I did not know how to accept that someone just 19, with so many friends and so much life ahead could just be dead. I remember at his funeral, the room was packed and people standing outside. As young adults, we think we will live forever and that just old people die. I think it was right before our graduation in 1961, that a Sam Houston senior got killed in a car accident just a short distance from the school. Again, I did not understand how that could happen. As you get busy with your daily life, you tend to put the loss aside and move on with your life and it becomes a faint memory.

Recently, one of our granddaughter’s good friends from middle and high school was killed in a motorcycle accident. As I saw my granddaughter going through the emotions, memories came back of my emotions years ago. Truth is, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. When we are young, we do not understand that. The pain is not any easier when you lose your lifelong friend either, even if it was not a surprise.