On Friendship and the Loss of a Friend

On Friendship and the Loss of a Friend

Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” That’s what you need to know before reading this piece. The events I’m writing are more of an artistic impressionist brushstroke rather than pure documented fact. Very simply, with the passage of time and its degenerative effects on my fragile mind, I can’t guarantee that everything I write here is 100% or even 50% accurate. I can guarantee you that the feelings and emotions are genuine at this moment, and I suppose that’s what’s really important anyway.

It was one year ago on October 1, 2005 that my friend, Joel Robert Bek, passed away. Joel’s death has changed me subtly both for better and worse. I’m too sad about his passing to share how this made me better and too withdrawn to truly share how his passing has made me worse. Tonight, thinking of Joel makes me nostalgic.

I first remember Joel from band class in eighth grade. He had just moved to Roanoke with his mother, Joan, after she had divorced his father, Ted. Joel was the first person I ever knew who called his mother by her first name. I found that concept very strange; perhaps that’s what all Iowans did. Even in the eighth grade, Joel was an adult, a very juvenile one, but an adult nonetheless. He seemed to have a world-wise air about him, like he had experienced far more than my rather sheltered soul could fathom. Joel’s older brother, Jeff-no not The Jeff Beck, but Jeff Bek- and my next oldest brother became friends at about the same time as Joel and I became friends. I would like to tell you that Joel and I were absolute best friends in late middle school, but that would not be the truth. That honor belonged to Billy Taylor. Joel and Billy both played French horn in the band, and more importantly, they both had quirky senses of humor. Despite the fact that I sat at least a row behind them in band class with my tuba, we would somehow manage to do goofy things like intentionally mess with poor Mr. Spiers innocent mind by playing different tempos…wait a minute, it just occurred to me that Joel probably wasn’t trying to mess up on purpose.

As the three of us and our classmates moved on to high school, Joel, Billy, and I became better and better friends. Our band began to develop a real family sense. Pretty soon, we were all sharing the same friends and the same interests. By the end of our first year, we had all developed an interest in drama. I suppose I was the most involved at that time since I had taken over the mantle (pun intended) of head lighting technician. Joel would sometimes help me run the board and aim the lights. The board was a relic of some Frankenstein movie. It consisted of old fashioned plugs that were dangled on long cords. The plugs had to be inserted into a pegboard-like structure much in the same way that old operators used to connect calls. Then when all the plugs were added to the board, you could raise the mighty light levers and create stage magic. My favorite lighting stunt was sunrise effect where I would start with a blue night time stage and gradually cook an orange glow in from the back of the stage to the front until finally the whole stage was bathed in brilliant light. Joel used to love to mess with those levers and plugs, too. To him they were like toys or some strange mathematical puzzle.

That light room was a wonderful place. It could be accessed only two ways, from a small locked door in the auditorium lobby and by a small locked door in the main hall of the school. I had a key. This meant that as I grew older and wiser in my ways, I could steal away from life and find solitude for my dark thoughts in this dark room above the school. Sometimes Joel would join me along with Billy and our drama friend, Faith. We could hang out up there in relative anonymity on a most uncomfortable used school couch that had been liberated from the school lobby some time years before. The second coolest place in the light room was the ceiling above the auditorium. You could access the ceiling through a trap door high up the wall in the light room. Once through the door, you could wedge yourself out along a dangerous catwalk and eventually make your way to a spot where you could poke your head out just above the stage where the ceiling spotlights lived. Joel used to like to monkey around up there. The absolute coolest place was the roof. Unknown to almost everyone in the school, there was a locked door to the roof that could be accessed only from the light room, and I had the key. Joel would sometimes like to go out there to smoke his Camel Light cigarettes. Even then he was smoking. I didn’t smoke then, but I used to love to go out and sit on the roof in a student chair that we had liberated from an unsuspecting classroom.

Faith and Joel were always great friends. I think they met as neighbors when Joel first moved to town. Faith dated Kenny, one of the greatest Thespians our school ever produced and together they worked on plays. Faith usually worked behind the scenes like me while Kenny took the main stage. Joel and Billy frequently worked on sets during this stretch, while I ran the lights. One thing you could count on was an amazing cast party at Kenny’s house after our last show of the run. Since this is a family board, I will spare you detail, suffice to say that Joel usually became the focal point of the party. He was energetic and bright, engaging and hilarious. He would always have some off-beat cornball Iowa story to tell, and in conversation, he knew everything you were talking about already- even if he didn’t really. I’ve never met a person more gifted at inventing pure BS than Joel Robert Bek. In fact, I think he passed that skill on to me to a large degree.

It was our senior year that Faith, Billy, Joel, and I really bound together as life friends. That was the year we all had serious parts in the play, The Night Was Dark. I believe Faith ran make-up. Getting make-up from Faith was like visiting heaven. Secretly, even though I knew she was always spoken for, I got chills when I lay down and Faith leaned over me to apply my make-up. I suspect Joel and Billy felt the same way. Faith was and is magnetic that way. Joel played Chester (a role he later reprised as “Chester the Child Molester”) in a Thespian initiation. I played a Russian butler with a Roanoke twang southern accent (Ding-dong… “I will git it.”… “It’s GET Ryder..GET…not GIT!!!”). Billy stole the murder mystery by playing an old man named Mr. Garth. Billy was the best old man I’ve ever seen to this day. Of course the fact that Billy was shaving his moustache in sixth grade kind of gave him a head start on playing old guys. I remember one scene in that play, perhaps it was dress rehearsal or perhaps it was even the actual performance when Joel went diving onto Mr. Garth’s couch while Billy was sitting there and I guess he applied a bit too much force to the couch on that slick stage floor, and it went tumbling over backwards spilling Billy and Joel to the floor. You’d never know that wasn’t part of the script. Those two guys covered it like pros.

Our last play together was the extravaganza, “Winnie-the-Pooh.” In this play, Joel and I took starring roles while Billy and Faith worked behind the scenes. I say that we took starring roles, but in a real sense, this was Joel’s play. Thanks to my boyish looks (barely hit puberty at age 18), I was chosen to play Christopher Robin. My role was more of a stage manager part, and thankfully a small one at that. I would go in front of the curtain before each act and tell some stories to my stuffed bear (which was almost larger than me) as young Christopher. Joel, however, got the title role, Winnie-the-Pooh. Never to this day have I ever heard a better Pooh than Joel Robert Bek. He was made for the role. He padded his middle just a smidgen and waddled around the stage just like a silly, dopey bear.

After we all graduated in 1978, we prepared to move off in our separate directions. Faith was heading to Radford College, Billy was accepted at the 7-11 across from Roanoke College to play pinball all night and sometimes attend classes at the college next door by day. Joel and I were both headed to Virginia Tech where he would major in eating hot dogs from the dorm lobby and Engineering, and I would major in goofing off and Education. I don’t think we knew at the time that we would share many more adventures together. Perhaps another time in the lonely, dim reflective light of my laptop, I can share some of those memories.

One final thought I’ll leave you with…In one scene from The Night Was Dark, I had to stand within close proximity of Billy’s face and explain to him in my bizarre Russian accent just how much I loved him, “I love you Mr. Garth, like a brother I love you.” You know, even when mature guys like Billy and me get ridiculous lines like that, we’d bust our laughing every time. The funny thing is that today I don’t think I’d laugh anymore if I had a chance to say that line to Faith, Billy or especially Joel. Those souls are my brothers and, sadly, one has been away for a year now. He’s a fine bear, you know.