I've always been pretty good at staying in touch with friends, as it's very important to me. But there's one case in which I let a friendship lapse by simply losing contact, and I really regret it.
I met my friend George when I worked in Rocky Mountain Park during the summer of 1975. He was a very outgoing guy who made friends easily, and he became the boyfriend of one of my good friends there, Teresa. Our little group of friends would always plan to have the same days off in order to hike and camp together. We did lots of partying during those crazy Grand Lake days, and George was always the life of every party. Everyone liked him.
When the summer was drawing to a close, George was returning to school at the Univ. of Colorado in Boulder and I was at loose ends, having already graduated from college the previous spring. I had checked into the Univ. of Colorado and thought I might move to Boulder and attend graduate school there. George, another co-worker named Janet and I decided that we would get an apartment together in Boulder. We lived there together from the fall of 1975 through the spring of 1976... for the entire school year. I was working in a pizza parlor and studying for the GRE. We had a lot of fun times together in that apartment on University Avenue in Boulder. During that time, George began calling me "Shrun," a nickname that still sticks today. I met his parents and all three of his siblings when they came to Boulder at various times for visits, and I supported George during a very difficult time when his parents were going through a rough patch in their marriage and had temporarily separated.
My plans for graduate school never materialized, and after leaving Boulder I eventually wound up in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA with my friend Sue and her parents. Coincidentally, that's where George's parents lived as well, and the condo where I lived with the Burkes was literally next door to the neighborhood his parents lived in at Abalone Cove. George was still in school that year so he wasn't home often, but I remember getting together with him over Christmas break. Teresa came out to see him and we all went sailing together on his dad's sailboat.
After his graduation, George moved to San Francisco with our friend Jan, and I visited them a couple of times up there with Steve, my boyfriend at the time. The last time I saw George, he dropped in on Steve and I in Fox Hills with his sister Page. He and I had a good ol' time reminiscing about our escapades in Rocky Mountain Park and Boulder together that day. That was sometime in the early 1980s.
I lost track of George after that. He and Teresa finally broke up for good after having an on-again, off-again relationship for a number of years. I moved around a lot and so did he. We both were married and had children. I had no idea where he was living anymore and vice versa. In fact, I temporarily lost track of everyone from our Rocky Mountain Park group of friends during that time--including Jan, Jane and Teresa.
It wasn't until October of 2006 that Jan reconnected with me again through email. I was stunned and sad beyond belief when he told me that George had suffered from ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, over the past few years, and had recently passed away. George had become a well-known person in the telecommunications business, his obit appeared in the Washington Post, and he left his wife and four daughters well-fixed in a nice home in Maryland. Before he died, George wrote goodbye letters to many of his friends over the years; Jane and Jan have both shared their letters with me. I so regret having lost contact with him. I would have cherished that last chance to tell him how much his friendship meant to me.
In 2009 the James family sold the Grand Lake Lodge, where we all lived together while we worked in Rocky Mountain Park. There was a big reunion held for the employees who had worked there over the years. I didn't find out about it until after the fact, and from what I hear, our particular summers of employment (1974 & 1975) were not well represented at all. I know it would have been very different if George had lived. He would have made absolutely sure that we all gathered together in Grand Lake for one last party.
RIP George, I love you.
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