Sorting Out the Loss of an Old Friend
Bob Widder died of lung cancer last April at the age of 81. He never smoked but probably incurred lung damage from the residual effects of caustic chemical vapors he inhaled while processing film in a photo shop he owned after he retired as an elementary school teacher in Garden City, N.Y.
Bob and I had been friends since September 1955 when we met as freshman at Holy Trinity High School in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg section. As freshman assembled in a long line to register for classes on our very first day, he stood out. Unlike the rest of us, he was meticulously dressed in well-tailored jacket and tie, and he was with his mother. His mother! I thought that he was strange, some sort of pampered dandy.
Our first person-to-person encounter occurred several weeks later when we both signed up for the track team. After taking an instant dislike to one another, we exchanged words and began brawling in the locker room. After getting the worse of the exchange, the “dandy” issue was quickly resolved, to my chagrin.
Before too long, we found ourselves among the four best runners on the team. He specialized in the two- and four-hundred-meter races. My specialties were the eight- and four-hundred-meter races. We trained together every day, ran relay races together, week after week. And we frequently won, placed, or showed in weekly competitions throughout the city – the 103rd Engineer’s Armory, Iona and Fordham Relays, Madison Square Garden, Randall’s Island, and three times out of state, at the Penn Relays.
Our names were often mentioned together in the Principal’s Monday broadcasts when we succeeded at the previous Saturday’s track meets.
We soon became close friends.
Bob had a quirky, unfiltered sense of humor, which I enjoyed but which often annoyed and baffled others. We made each other laugh -- easily, frequently. Constant companions, we were so often together that classmates sometimes called me “Widder” and him “Shaw.” We were becoming interchangeable. His parents welcomed me into their home, as mine did him. He became like my father’s third son. Before long, his family and my family became close.
Beyond track, we participated in the same school activities – glee club, basketball intramurals, school newspaper. We operated the two cafeteria cash registers every day during the lunch hours.
[The two of us after our freshman year (1956) helping out at my Aunt Gertie’s family bungalow in Connecticut.]
In our second year, the principal invited us to join the Sodality, a religious club dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was a means for the school’s priests to recruit students into their religious order. After a year, Bob and I became officers in this Sodality (I was president; Bob vice-president). As members of the sodality, we were then expected to attend several week-long retreats in an upstate New York monastery. The priests were intent on sanitizing us for an eventual commitment to the priesthood.
The prospect of a priestly vocation held a greater attraction for Bob than for me. He took it seriously, at least for a while. My hormones, however, were firing on all cylinders, twenty-four-seven, pretty much determining my every thought and action — eventually bringing my Sodality presidency to an ignominious end. For, sitting at a school basketball game one night, my date, the voluptuous Maryann DeSernia, and I spent less time watching the game than, uh, canoodling. Seated behind us were Trinity’s principal, Father O’Leary and the Sodality’s mentor, Brother Leroy Eid. The following morning the principal summoned me to his office and unceremoniously stripped me of my presidency. He also assigned me three demerits and Saturday morning detention.
Bob succeeded as the Sodality president, ruling without further incident.
My dear friend was a man of many skills and talents. He was a master teacher. He worked wonders with wood, house repair, general construction, auto repair. He was a gourmet cook and an expert mixologist. He owned and repaired boats. He trained himself to become a skilled photographer, a student of the stock market, a successful salesman. His curiosity was boundless, and he pursued every new endeavor with consummate energy and dedication, as though he had that one trade alone.
His greatest skill and achievement, however, was as a husband, father, and friend.
And as a son. When his beloved father, Gerard, became ill during our senior year in high school with a crippling, terminal illness, Bob quit the track team and took on a part-time job to help with household expenses and help his mother, Ida. He thereby forfeited his chance for a college track scholarship, continuing to work through his four years at St. John’s University as his father’s health deteriorated. When his father died, he took care of his mother who was devastated and diminished by her husband’s slow, agonizing death. Bob never once complained or felt sorry for himself.
When Bob married his perfect mate, Lois Remling, in February 1968, I served as their best man. Lois and he became sweethearts and dance partners for the next fifty-five years. I know of no one who has ever had a more loving and generous partner than Bob. As pillars of the Oceanside community, they were famous for their sumptuous dinner parties and holiday celebrations.
After I moved out of New York for graduate school and my first teaching job, our time together became less frequent. When we were able to visit each other, however, it was like we had never been apart. Catching up was unnecessary. In the deepest sense, we were never separated.
Strangely, Bob and I never argued. We were best buddies to the end. Still our personalities were different. Bob was one of the steadiest, most decent men I have ever known. He once mentioned that I was “moody.” True. He, on the other hand, was unflappable and steady. For example, he won the attendance record upon high school graduation; he never missed a day of classes. Furthermore, he never received a single demerit in his four years at Trinity. I received many. Many.
We had frequent phone calls in the last year of his life. We rehashed much of near seventy-year friendship. We seemed so similar in so many ways throughout our lives, I asked him one day: “How come I got in so much trouble in high school and you never did?” He said: “I was good, and you? You were trouble.” At first, I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. Nor was he being judgmental. He was just stating a fact, and yes, he was a better man than I – way back then. . . and until his last breath.
After Bob’s funeral Mass, I sat with Lois in their home, along with Gerard and Debbie, Bob’s and Lois’ children, Scott, Debbie’s husband, as well as their grandchildren and friends. Perhaps thirty people in all. Since I knew Bob longer than anyone present, I shared my memories of him from our early years and throughout our maturing and enduring friendship.
As I spoke, a family friend in the room interrupted my stories and shouted “Look! Out the window! A cardinal just flew away!” At first, I thought, “What the hell is this woman going on about?” But other people in the room “ooohed and ahhhed,” inspired and delighted by that singular event. I found out later that several people took it as a sign of Bob’s soul bidding farewell and taking flight.
If it was indeed my friend in flight, I hope he enjoyed the journey and has finally nestled into his place of peace.
Knowing Bob, however, he is busy repairing and remodeling his new home.
Thanks for the thought, Tamara. Writing always helps. Many times I don’t fully know what I think or feel till I start to write.
I have tears in my eyes. Bill this is amazing and exactly what I needed to read after the toughest holiday season to get through. Your friendship with my dad was like no other. If he was here with us now I know for a fact he would also have tears. You also need to know that my dad spoke about you like you were his brother. Everything you speak about here, about your friendship is exactly the way my dad spoke to us about you too. Oh and yes he always said you would be the one to get in trouble. My dad was an only child with the responsibility of helping his mom and taking care of his dad and you’re correct. He never complained. What you need to know is that having you in his life as “his brother” is what brought such joy to his live. We love you so much Bill. Xo love Debi