Saturday, June 9, 2018
My brother sent me this news. It has been many, many years since I saw my childhood friend “Timmy”...Ironically, I was just on a fishing trip with my brother Tom and cousin Tony Talarico and I told a couple stories about Tim when we lived in Pinecrest, too long to repeat here. We were friends from about 1961 until we moved away in the Fall of 1967. I have very fond memories of those days, especially the summers filled with marathon baseball games in his back yard while his huge dog watched us and the old man next door waited for a ball to cross his yard so he could take it from us...I fondly remember his lovely mother, Connie, and his little sisters, and of course his older brother John. But what I remember most is that Tim was a true friend - loyal and true - a friendship right out of the movie Stand By Me. The last words uttered in that movie were something like “I never had any friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?” No we really don’t. We clearly lived very different lives since then but I can say those lines never rang more true than when I heard this news from my brother. Timmy was a great friend during perhaps the most challenging years of a young boy’s life, and I thank him for that friendship. We had so much fun and got into not a little bit of trouble from time to time. May this one small tribute to a true friend offer some comfort to his surviving family members who I remember like it was yesterday. My best to all of you. We had some really good times, right out of a movie. The best childhood memories of a best friend. You really don’t have better friends than true friends when you are 12...
