Loss ... and Memory

This week, I got the shocking news that a friend from Hiram schoolboy days--Andy Krauss--had passed away unexpectedly. I say "unexpectedly," but he'd had a stroke a while back, was partially paralyzed, and living in a care facility in Sandusky. I knew that. But in my head, always, Andy was the friend from Hiram, the teammate--baseball, basketball. Forever young and roaming centerfield, where, by the way, he was a superior defender. (I wrote here, oh a year or so ago, about a great catch he made in a high school game: We were playing at the Hiram College diamond; I was pitching; the Crestwood batter hit one of my "fast"balls to dead center, over Andy's head; he ran back gracefully and caught it near the fence; I walked off the mound grateful, amazed.)

Here's a picture of us in Hiram's Hot Stove League baseball team--oh, maybe 1958? '59? Andy's in the back row, second from the left (the first guy with a hat!); I'm right next to him on his left. The sun is blazing in our faces. We're squinting, closing our eyes, wearing our hats low, thinking, no doubt, that the future is limitless ...

He was an absolutely selfless teammate (unlike, say, me). Crashed the boards in basketball (there was much need for that when I was shooting); advanced runners; threw to the right base.

And he was just fun to be around. A gentle guy. Together.

I just checked my Acropolitan (our yearbook) for my senior year and saw Andy had written something characteristically kind--and amusing. "I hope you make it all your life," he wrote ... then something is scratched out, and he added: "Sorry about this. The tears were too much."  He had several PS's, and the final one is this: "I thought I was through, but I left out some things."  Oh ...

In the yearbook he's also next to me in the picture of our (formidable!) baseball team. (And, yes, I seem to have a pocket-protector!)

But my favorite picture of Andy in the Acropolitan is a candid one that does not even reveal his face. If you weren't there to see it, you wouldn't know who it is. The picture is dark; I did the best I could.

Andy is in the foreground, back to the camera. We are all in the Fellowship Hall of the Hiram Christian Church. Some kind of dance ... social.

Chubby Checker's "The Twist" had been released in June 1960; this is about a year and a half later. (Things arrived in Hiram a little ... later ... than elsewhere.)*

Mostly it was the Hiram girls who did The Twist. But then ... this night ... when the music started, Andy said, "Let's go do it."  And out he went and started ... Twisting. Others followed. And I had totally forgotten until I lightened up this picture, that the clumsy guy Twisting on Andy's right is ... Yours Truly. (For you HHS grads: Pat Neill is my "partner," and I'm pretty sure that's Troy Bouts "Twisting" with Andy.)

Anyway, that was Andy Krauss--in every aspect of his life. Hear the music. Get up and go dance!


*It just occurred to me that it could have been "Let's Twist Again," Checker's follow-up, released on June 19, 1961--also a huge hit.

**Link to Andy's obituary.