Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 3, 1991 TAG: 9104030046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Someday, I fib to myself, I will get around to them. I will try to know them better and - without ever saying as much - will invite them to know me better.
But for now they are in the folds, acquaintances incubating.
Some shared but undeveloped bond keeps them there. They are people with whom I can feel myself meshing, but never fully engaging.
I will, I vow, engage them someday. I will pursue this. This person, here in the folds, is a potential friend.
Holding them there in the folds is a gamble, and I have been burned before. Unwilling or unable to muster the time or the energy to nudge them toward the threshold of friendship, I have lost out on a lot of pals.
People move away. They quit meshing. They change and slip from the folds.
Some fade, the unspoken end to an unspoken potential.
Others tumble abruptly from the folds.
Vern Steed neither faded nor tumbled. He was stolen.
Vern died Saturday.
I know of his death only what I read in the newspaper. Vern was visiting his family in Knoxville, Tenn., for Easter. He was playing basketball when a heart attack killed him. He was 35.
But I know a few other things about his life. Vern was married. When did he and Courtney wed? A year ago? A little more? A bit less? They bought a home in North Roanoke County. Their baby is due late this year.
Vern was the ticket manager at the Roanoke Civic Center.
And he was in my folds.
Our introduction I chronicled here, when I was new to Roanoke and eager to impress the weeknight jocks on the softball diamond.
I wrote, on May 10, 1989:
It is Monday . . . and we are playing at Fallon Park. It is the third inning and I am playing first base. I field a grounder hit to me and dash to the base. I collide with the base runner - we sort of explode together - and end up on my belly. Blood bubbles from the palm of my hand and trickles from my knee. My wrist is sore. The ump says the runner is out. It is a terrible call. He was safe.
The runner was Vern.
It was a strange, violent way to make an acquaintance and it wasn't until weeks later - long after my wrist felt better - that I learned his name.
We joked about it, though, and as is the way of men, jousted with a black humor, threatening each other with a second clash.
I called Vern from time to time at his job. I got a kick out of his candor. He harassed me for every word I wrote. If I may speak for Vern, we both enjoyed the dueling.
The calls were a way of patting the folds, of making sure that he was still there, still a possible friend in the making.
He never left. We were looking forward to the coming softball season. I would coach at first base, he would play the position, and we would banter away an inning, a game, probably another summer.
Maybe I deserve to be reminded how I let Vern wallow in my folds.
It would be much less painful, though, to admit Vern beyond the fold now and to call him a friend.
by CNB