31 August 2007
A REMEMBRANCE
It’s always a shock to learn of the death of an old school mate,
albeit sadly one that fate compels us to endure with ever-greater frequency.
Mike Dillon is gone!!! Noooooo!!!! Although I haven’t seen him since shortly
after high school, I presumed in a more-or-less semi-conscious manner that we’d
run into each other eventually.
Although Mike, as Jan notes, was a year behind us, many of us
played sports and partied with him. And Bobby Thomas, Mike and I undertook a
big study-avoidance project together. Somehow we got stung by a boating bug,
especially the fast boating one. We decided to build hydroplanes. We secured
blueprints and began constructing one each in our respective basements. It was
a tremendous amount of work, but we were impassioned with the challenge and the
promise of speeding over the local waterways. When one of us would run into a
snag, we’d all join together to work it out.
We eventually completed the construction, bought big motors, and
hit the water. We’d race about at Seneca, in front of the Monument, and on the
Severn River. Especially great fun was following big boats and jumping their
wakes. In one such adventure on the Severn, Charley Bradford was crammed into
Bobby’s boat and they hit a wake so big that they wound up holding up a steering
wheel jarred off the dash. In another, we were crossing Key Bridge when Mike’s
inadequately-attached craft flew off his car roof, barely missing a car behind.
We had great crazy times together.
But then there was college and life-busyness, and although I had
the privilege of seeing Bobby several times, usually at class re-unions, Mike,
not being a part of our class, was not within my organized encounter space. The
last time I saw Bobby at one of Linda Buhl’s great picnics, we talked about
getting together with Mike, but.... Oh damn!!!!
Jon D. Wisman