Farewell to a best friend and comrade.

Although it is your family members who are, and who should always be the closest people to you, there are those, without whose friendship, life would certainly be more of a burden. These people go by the moniker of “best friend”. Sad indeed, is the individual who doesn’t have someone in whom to confide his hopes, secrets, fears, and dreams. In fact, it is the best friend who will hear more from most individuals that any of their family members. And once you are designated a “best friend”, it is a job that you will keep for the rest of your life, even if your paths diverge so that you no longer get to keep in touch on a daily basis as you might once have done. Once a best friend, always a best friend.

When I first began my formal education, I was, for the first two years, a refugee from the construction that would create the Fishtrap Dam. I started school at Millard, but, as luck would have it, my family and I were forced to move, and in the middle of the second grade, we relocated, and I resumed my education at Shelby. This was the school year of 1962-63, and as anyone can tell you, 1963 was a flood year for the area. No drought then, just lots of snow that winter, and one big mama of a gully washer in March that washed us out of our new residence. It also took up so much school time that we actually did the unthinkable and went to school on Saturdays to get in the required classroom time.

My dad, having been washed out of house and home twice in a six year span, decided to move back to his old stomping grounds, on Feds Creek, and took a house high on the hill to prevent a recurrence of his recent misfortunes. So, in the fall of 1963, I enrolled at the original Feds Creek Elementary School. You would have to have seen to school as it was then. There were still a lot of students whose families had not been relocated yet from the mouth of the creek or the area along old U. S. Route 460, and they were still attending school at Feds Creek then. The school bottom, that is the area in front of the school that is so grassy now, hadn’t, I don’t think, one blade of grass then. This was due to school boys playing marbles on practically every square inch of it.

On my way to school one morning, I stopped to watch a game of marbles, and I noticed one player in particular. I can’t say what it was that made me watch him, but being new at the school, I was anxious to make someone’s acquaintance, so I struck up a conversation with him. It was in these humble circumstances that I met the fellow who would become my best friend at Feds Creek, Frank Howard. Well, we had to be best friends; we had, after all, a great deal in common. We both went by our middle names, not the first, as is common. Okay, I am sure that there is more than that, but it isn’t what you have in common that makes for a great friendship, is it, because, after all, opposites do attract, so they say.

Whatever its basis, my friendship with Frank never waned. We were friends right on through high school, and for all those years afterwards, and we never lost contact, even after Frank, at the age of thirty, decided to join the Army, and resolved from the very first, to stay until he retired. We managed to survive some wild times together, including some close encounters of the third kind with teachers who were very proficient with the “board” of education, and even a one year stint on the “all-bench” basketball team while freshmen.

Frank was beyond ordinary. He fit in every where he ever went. I don’t think I can recall him having any enemies. And he had a perseverance about him that helped him succeed, no matter what he did. He had a quality about him that made him what very few might have ever suspected he would ever become, and that is, a hero. And while hero has many different meanings, all dependent on the user and circumstances, Frank, many times, proved he deserved that title.

First of all, there are the circumstances that he felt compelled him to enter military service at an age when most people would have long since forgotten about such an idea. Frank, newly married, in 1985, was a coal miner, a job that he never really cared for. I recall visiting him and his wife, Pam, when they were renting a small house at the mouth of Little Card Creek. Frank had just come back from work, and as he prepared to bathe before supper, he told me then that he wasn’t going to work all his life in the mines, that he was going to join the Army, for his family, if for no other reason. And he did just what he said he would do. Sacrifice for those he loved was nothing new to Frank. He was a dutiful son, and grandson, and he continued to work diligently for those he loved after he and Pam got married. And I am sure that his two children kept him in uniform as well, and Josh and Jenna can tell you, their father provided well for them.

Military service for Frank included a tour in the then war-torn country of Yugoslavia, where he served with distinction. Going into an area where your life is at risk, and following orders faithfully are all signs of a hero. His last tour of duty, if I am not mistaken, took Frank to South Korea, where he stayed without his family for at least two years, but once back, and with time enough for retirement, Frank had what he had worked for, for twenty years, a secure future for his loved ones.

Alas, Frank will not get to live out the dream of an early retirement. He was unexpectedly called from this life this past Friday. His loss leaves a grieving family, and a host of saddened friends, but he true to his nature, he fulfilled his duty first. In my mind, I see, on the other side, a beaming new soldier, this time in God’s Army, who stands guard there, and patiently awaits the day when he and his beloved family will be re-united. And so, I must now bid farewell to my best friend and comrade, a soldier, brave and true, to the last.