NOBLE — I miss my friend, especially during the holidays.

I was proud to call Errol my friend. He was all I wasn't. The most obvious was he was much quieter. He was a great athlete, which I always envied. It seemed to come so easy to him. I’ve seen guys hit him in the stomach and send him flying across the room. He always got up like nothing had happened. Hard as a rock, that one.

He loved to walk. Everywhere we went, he wanted to walk. We once walked five miles out on U.S. Highway 69 to where my family lived. I was begging for death and he wanted more. It’s a law of nature that if you walk that far,  it’s pretty much the same distance back. We made it, but I cursed him the last two miles.

In the military service, he loved boot camp. What normal human beings saw as pure torture he excelled in, and loved it! I think he would have gone through it again if they would have let him. If he had been a member of Easy Company during WWII, he would have sprinted up Curahee on one foot just to make it a challenge. He spent most of his six years with the U.S. Air Force guarding airplanes in Greenland. He liked to brag that the entire time he was there, no planes were stolen, but I had my suspicions. Every time I would press the issue, he would quickly change the subject. I still have all the letters he mailed me. I remember ending all mine with the words “May the force be without you.”

The man could swim like a fish; a big muscle-bound hairy fish. Each summer you would find us at Crowder Point on Eufaula Lake jumping off what we were convinced were massive cliffs for hours at a time. Eventually I would sit it out and watch Errol, Joe Zellmer and Bob Snowder appear and disappear under the murky Eufaula Lake waters.

I bought a rubber raft off a guy who had won it at the Okla Theater when we gave it away as a promotion for the movie “Deliverance.” Somehow camping took an eerie turn after seeing that film. We would almost be asleep when someone in the darkness would say, “Sure wish I hadn’t seen that movie.” We'd be awake for the rest of the night praying for daybreak; even then we were jumpy. Errol and I paddled that raft all over the lake until I discovered Rachel Wilson enjoyed rafting, so I ditched Errol and invited her. She didn't paddle as well as he did, but for obvious reasons I didn't mind pulling her weight.

Errol and I remained friends throughout the years. As often happens, we began drifting apart in our mid-30s. We still talked, but now I was a family man while he stayed a confirmed bachelor. We just didn't have that much in common anymore. When we got together we could still finish each other’s sentences and remember every detail of every stunt we ever pulled, not to mention execute a dead-on rendition of Monty Python’s “There’s a penguin on the television” sketch. Afterward, we would go our separate ways, always intending to get together more often, but we seldom did. The times we did spend together left a mark on me. I still find myself using mannerisms I can trace back to Errol. To this day I still call my daughter Jen-Jen, a nickname he gave her.

One July night in 2001 I was holed up in the back room trying to get away from a chick flick my ladies were watching when the phone rang. It was Bob Snowder, and I was thrilled to hear from him. He was now living in Washington D.C., also a bachelor and living the good life. I excitedly ask how he was and his reply was “Not good, Errol’s dead.” I wasn’t sure I had heard him right, but I didn’t dare ask him to repeat it. I cried for the rest of the night and for days after until I just couldn’t weep anymore. How could my hero have died in his sleep from a heart attack?

At times I still get that feeling I experienced when I watched him running up and down the football field, dodging would-be tacklers and getting that often-elusive first down. After the game, he would come out of the locker room with his hair still dripping from the shower and smelling like Right Guard deodorant. Even when his team lost, he was still excited about the next game. I don’t remember him ever giving me grief about not being athletic. However, I was always willing to remind him his singing voice would run a moose off a cliff.

He and I still get together on occasion. He is buried at the small cemetery in Hanna, right across from the pre-fab building where his funeral was held. I recall Joe Zellmer asking me as we stood in front of his casket if we could have ever imagined we would be saying good-bye to our dear friend. During the service his mother played the song “If'” by David Gates and Bread on a CD player that they had a difficult time finding the song on. As it played, I could still hear Errol trying to sing along, with me asking him to leave the singing to me and do what he did best, which was pretty much anything but singing.

When we visit, I always take him his favorite drink, Dr. Pepper. We called it the “wine of the ancient pepper plant.” We’d drink it along with what we referred to as “horse leg pretzels” when we would go to the 270 drive-in to watch Kung Fu marathons. I open his can of the precious liquid and set it on his headstone as we go over old times.

When I go home, I always tease that he wasn’t very talkative, as usual. He may not have said anything, but at least he

didn’t try to sing.

Errol, the best friend I ever had

August 1956-July 2001