Let me note unashamedly and unapologetically at the very beginning of these reflections that I will draw from time to time some content from earlier comments on the subject, one of which is this statement, posted just over four years ago: The older I have become, the older my true friendships have become and the less there are of them.  It’s for that reason that I want to celebrate not only those long and strong friendships that gratefully remain in my life, but the value of some other relationships that belong in the wider realm of “friends” as opposed to mere acquaintances—a difference that most people can recognize, but is more difficult to define. So, I’ll leave it at that and proceed to two more “hiatuses.”

First, as these reflections have begun to come to life, I have decided to avoid the use of names, since their appearance exposes my friends to a public document and gaining permission to use them would not only put my friends “on the spot,” but be too complicated and time-consuming to consider.  

And, second, the background and the number of friends included, joined to my apparently incurable tendency to be long-winded (whatever the written version of that is!), means that what was intended to be a single blog post will require at least three posts, maybe four. I expect that only the most faithful, patient, and attracted-to-the-subject of my readers will be able to persevere!

That said, here we go.

In high school I had “friends”—at least I would have called them that based on my age and my capacity for judging the difference between friends and acquaintances.  Most of them were part of my “church crowd,” held together by our common commitment to the fundamentalist assumption that all, or most, of us had experienced a “call” to ministry and were committed to participation in the many revivals sponsored by our church.  While in terms of my time commitments, I ventured little beyond that group, I did have some Ft. Smith High School “friends,” at least fellow classmates, that I was sufficiently engaged with to make possible my election as VP of the Senior class—which was  confirmed, by the way, by a photo in the 1954 yearbook,  showing me with the President of the class, fiddling with my new class ring, which made my middle finger “stick out,” as though I was “giving the finger” to someone—perhaps the whole student body!All of that said, I now can scarcely remember the names of anyone in either group, church or high school, and remained “connected” to almost none of them after I left home, and the church of my “upbringing,” for college.

When I started to college, only 150 miles or so from my home town,  I nevertheless moved away from the confining limits of family and the “one” church, and developed relationships that I can now comfortably identify as friendships. Three of them were my roommates—one in my freshman dorm, another for one year in a small bedroom apartment near the campus, and the third one for two years back in a campus dormitory. He was the only one I could, but won’t, name, since he was more than just a roommate. We established a relationship which resulted in becoming a two-person “revival team.” He was the preacher and I was the song leader/choir director/soloist and for two years, including two “solid” summers, we conducted revivals in churches large and small, across Oklahoma, and occasionally in Arkansas and Texas. Other college friendships developed through speech and theatre classes/productions (which was my major), a few “dating” relationships—a couple of which became pretty serious—and in two churches I served. One of them was in Cyril, OK, an oil refinery town, where I was Youth Director and “general flunky.”  The other was Putnam City Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, where I was also Youth Director and a “learner” from a wise and talented pastor. While I am embarrassed that I can recall so few names, these were, at the time—and as I said in an earlier post—true friendships in which trust, confidentiality, dependability, shared interests, and comfort were real and valued.  When I graduated from college in 1958 and all of us went our separate ways, most of those friendships, as noted before, “softened, stretched, thinned, and found their way into the wind” that blew past the years spent in grad school and the beginning of my career.

Borrowing, again, from the post of four years ago, Grad school was different, since it was there in my second year that I formed what has become the oldest friendship of my life, now 64 years long and counting—perhaps saying something about my own maturing then as well as the extraordinary quality of the friendship. The lasting strength of that friendship, post-grad school, and the details of our unique relationship, I will address when I turn to the final set of friends, the ones that I have known for the longest time and who are currently closest to me. Suffice it to say that it never did rely on how often we saw each other or communicated, and continues to engender wonder every time we get together. Other friendships developed through the closeness of fellow classmates, the graduate seminars we shared, and the common preparation for the doctoral exams that had to be taken and passed in order to proceed to the task of choosing a topic and writing a dissertation. Despite the intense effort and huge importance of these experiences and undertakings we shared, no other friendship lasted more than a few years beyond the grad school experience!

But now I must turn to my entrance into a 45-year career in two institutions—one of 35 years and an entirely surprising post-retirement career of 10 years in another.  I have written about and referenced in numerous posts over the past four years the positions, the responsibilities, the learning experiences, the accomplishments, and the “rough-and-tumbles” that were a part of these planned and unplanned professional careers. What I have not addressed in a focused way is that this extensive career provided the opportunity for many relationships.  Some of them had the qualities of true friendships but which were either too brief or too task-oriented to have a chance to develop. But some of those relationships became profound friendships, a few of which have lasted from 40 to 55 years, and some others whose briefer duration of 10 to 15 years in no way diminished their depth and strength.

• I will begin with a man whose friendship I have cherished for the briefest time of any and yet that brevity has in no way diminished its profound value to my life! I had met him and known of him for many years as pastor of the church where I had once been a member, although it became a joke between us that I had been “the worst member” they ever had since I was mostly in absentia due to my following my wife around to the several churches where she was organist and, in one of them, also choir director. But due to some physical difficulties in his life, which he describes as “an ongoing struggle with an incurable, but presently manageable, illness,” he was unable to keep up with the demands of pastoral duties, resigned as pastor, and began teaching religion courses as an adjunct at the university where I had spent my 35 year career and at the divinity school of the other institution where I served for 10 years. I also discovered, began, and now continue to read and learn much from his blog, entitled From the Intersection, as he explains, “of faith and life.” Not only have I found encouragement, helpful insights, admiration and empathy for his willingness to share his own struggles, but also deep admiration and—I confess—respectful envy of his talent for writing relatively brief blog posts that are also solid, thoughtful, and insightful. To put it plainly, he has the gift of brevity which I don’t have!  From his blog he also offers to his readers—both individuals and groups—guidance as a speaker, coach, and consultant on a variety of issues. He has also spent considerable time with pastors who are in need of help in managing their duties and personal issues. In his new roles, we met anew, talked, “hit it off,” and have become close friends, readers and commenters on each other’s blog posts, and supportive of one another as we have each dealt with our physical challenges, his more demanding and threatening than mine. I have learned much from him, treasure the capacity for insights he has shared, and cherish the strong relationship we have developed.
• The second person I gratefully claim as my friend entered my life at the end of my first few years at the institution that became the site of my wholly unexpected post-retirement career. Near the end of my third year there, I sent a letter to the President—who had announced his retirement—stating my own decision to retire, took some amassed vacation time and left on a trip to the west coast. When I returned, I learned that the Provost had been named the new President, and I was asked to stay as Provost and Executive VP until a new one could be found. I agreed if I could Chair the Search Committee to be assured a new Provost would be found and I could proceed to retirement. That did, indeed, happen and the gentleman hired—who was on the faculty of a Divinity School in North Dakota—became my friend. We stayed in touch, conversed often, and visited with each other from time to time over the next four years. During that time I heard from my former colleagues nothing but good words about his oversight, management, and advocacy for the academic program, as well as his gracious, informative, and patient conversations with faculty. It was at the end of that period I learned that the person who had been hired as Associate Provost for the College of Arts and Sciences—a position I had previously held—had been terminated and I was asked to consider returning to the position.  I had been perfectly content in retirement, playing tennis, occasional days on a golf course, and enjoying several trips abroad. But because both my previous pleasant and productive time there and my close and steady friendship with the Provost predicted the likelihood of a good and strong working relationship, I accepted responsibility for the academic program so important to the Liberal Arts. That third period of my post-retirement career continued for six years, during which my friendship with the man to whom I reported, remained strong and mutually supportive, as it has continued past my final retirement there to this very day, encompassing 18 years and counting!

And so ends this first post on my friendships. The second post will follow soon and I hope you will have the interest, and the endurance, to follow along!