Toad, Bodd, Orge, Russell and Whitey.  We made quite a fivesome our senior year in college.  We’d been friends since the first week of freshman year.

We had come together from different places and different backgrounds and somehow found a bond of instant friendship and camaraderie that lasted all through those first three years, and now, in our final year we were back where we started, in the freshman dormitory, but this time as Resident Assistants, keeping tabs on the 18 year-olds coming in as new freshman to find their own friendships.

It was a sobering year---we not only had the responsibilities of our jobs in the dormitory, but we were about to head out into the world to make our way.  Two of us were engaged to be married.  The Viet Nam war was raging and we all were facing the draft board. Orge and Bodd were working hard to get accepted to medical school.

It was a heavy, heavy time. So, as we gathered that first evening to begin training for our new jobs in the dorm, before the freshmen arrived, we did what any serious-minded 22-year old in that situation would do.  We went to a nudie bar and had a few root beers.

Apparently, it was the right decision, because things have worked out for us.  We’ve all gone on to happy and productive lives, leaving a trail of professional accomplishments and children in our wakes and having at our sides a complement of wonderful wives.

All that aside, the very best part is that now, two-score years after we first met, we are still friends.

Just two summers ago, Russell tried to kill Toad and me by hiking us over the top of an extinct volcano at 11,000 feet above sea level, through a blistered lava bed and through volcanic ash up to our ankles in 90+ temperatures for 13 miles, knowing full well that we are old and fat. If that isn’t friendship, I don’t know what is, and especially since Russell had already had major bypass surgery and is 6’4” tall and he knows full well how hard it would be for Toad and me to carry him down a mountain if HE conked out. 

And, there’s the wonderful story about Orge and Bodd each going off for the incredible rigors of medical school which doesn’t allow one the luxury of keeping track of old friends for the 8 years of schooling and residency, so the two former roommates lost touch.  But, one day as they were finally settled into their respective fields of pulmonology and cardiovascular surgery in fine hospitals in fine cities and all married and having babies and wondering what had happened to one another they bumped into each other in the hallway of said fine hospital in said fine city which happened to the be same fine hospital in the same fine city, and the friendship was renewed.

Or the day we all gathered a few years ago to sit together again in the scarred and creaky wooden booths of the old burger joint where we hung out in college.  The only hitch was that the old place had been torn down in 1974.  No problem.  With lots of help from other folks, we found those old booths and restored them and had them reinstalled in the snack bar at our alma mater, where they remain as the favorite tables in the place, even though they are 100 years old.

Six days from the time I’m writing this, we’ll gather again, this time to honor Bodd who is being honored for his many incredible kindnesses to the students of Albion College. (Russell can’t make it, but he’ll darned sure check in by telephone from Oregon.) I’m excited.

I know exactly how every sentence we speak will start.

“Remember the time we….”  

You bet.  We all do.
                                  Jim Whitehouse

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