DRUMS.HEARTS.WOMEN
/I first met Danny, as he was known then, in the Fall of 1974. He was 15. I was 23. I had just moved to El Reno, Oklahoma, from Tulsa to be the youth director at the First Baptist Church, Dan’s church.
We connected right away. He was an aspiring drummer. I was a drummer. Drummers can talk for hours about paradiddles and snare tensions. Dan loved nuance and I did too. Every time he would buy a new album (that’s a vinyl record that plays music for those under 20) he would bring it to our house and we would listen. “He’s got to be playing double bass pedals on that!” he would say, or, “I wish I could tune my toms to sound like that.” All of that would serve him well. He became one of the best sound engineers around. Any band loved to have Dan mixing their sound. He would study a room for hours, moving mics just an inch or so, tweaking knobs and sliders, switching a cable trying to isolate a hum; all behind the scenes stuff to make the experience great for the band and the audience.
One of the very first of many memorable experiences with Dan came early in our friendship. His parents we’re going out of town over night. The lived just a few houses up the street from where we lived. His mother asked My Amazing Missus if we would sort of keep an eye out since Dan would be home alone. Early, on the morning after that night, I drove by their house and noticed his dad’s car in the driveway with the rear end up on a couple of wobbly jacks. I stopped by—just curious.
Turns out he and a couple of buddies had taken the car for a drive the night before. He knew Ralph would have taken note of the odometer reading. Their hope was that by running the car in reverse, those miles would come off the odometer. FYI, it doesn’t work.
“Oh man, we shouldn’t have done that!” is a close approximation of what he said, revealing the fact that you can’t turn back time either. Or can you?
Yesterday, Dan’s wife Peggy held a beautiful memorial service for him. These are the hardest, when a beautiful life ends way too soon. Can’t we please just run this thing back a few miles, a few months, a few years? At this memorial service was a number of Dan and Peggy’s friends from those days when I got to be their youth director. I stood at the back and looked at them and remembered. Rewound the tape so to speak and in my mind watched those times again. Times that for me and My Amazing Missus shaped so much of who we are today.
One evening years ago, Dan called and wanted to come by to talk. As I’ve said this wasn’t unusual. I remember it like it was yesterday. We sat on our back porch and he anxiously told me that he had decided to ask Peggy to marry him.
I assumed he was telling me this so I could share in the celebration, but he was really seeking advice, some guidance. At first I assumed that maybe it was because I was his wise spiritual mentor. No. It wasn’t that. Basically he was concerned that he would be asking for the hand of a girl he probably didn’t deserve (as least in his mind). He wanted to marry a girl that he considered out of his league. He was asking me for my adivce because he understood that was exactly what I had done.
He was concerned with messing things up. He was worried about how her parents would react. He was afraid she would say, “Sorry, you’re nice and all, but…” Anyway, not too many months later, I had the privilege of marrying them to each other. I’m proud to say it is one of the many, many marriages I’ve officiated that actually worked out.
I got to do youth ministry for many years. I still have wonderful relationships with some of the “kids” that were in our youth groups. In fact, one of those kids is now my daughter-in-law!!! Dan is one that I’ve stayed connected with all of these years. We used to work in downtown Oklahoma City. We would often meet for lunch at a Chinese restaurant on the mezzanine level of the Sherton Hotel, where he unsuccessfully tried to open my taste buds to the wonders of egg foo yung.
I made a career change to a company that was in the beginning stages of building a new computer network. Dan had become an expert in that area, again a testimony to his relentless pursuit of nuance and perfection. He built our network that is essentially still the core we depend on. Later on our CEO mentioned that the company was needing a new member for the board of directors. I reminded him that Dan had experience in bank auditing, he knew a thing or two about our company by this time and he was a CPA. Dan joined our board and served masterfully until just months ago.
Funny thing about that CPA thing. Maybe you’ve heard the horror stories about people trying and trying to pass those exams. Best I rememember, Dan just sort of decided to sit for the exams, approaching it with the same nonchalance, but not the arrogance, of Donald Trump taking that cognitive test they give the elderly to see if they should still be feeding themselves with a fork. Dan, like Donald, passed with flying colors.
Dan was the kind of guy who would find that funny without offense. He and I could talk about anything: something we heard on NPR, which is better—cover bands or tribute bands; and lately, matters of the heart.
Just a short time ago, Dan told me he had something he wanted to talk about. Maybe he has a new album, or maybe he’s discovered a new trick for how to mic a drum set. He wanted to talk hearts.
He was facing heart surgery and he knew that I had been through that. It was kind of like the talk we had about the marriage proposal. He wanted to talk to someone who had been there. Dan and I learned long ago that we could not BS one another. He could always see through me.
Here’s the thing. He and I both had good hearts. We both love our wives and our kids and grandkids deeply. We both are tolerant of the life choices of others. Today that is called liberal, but for us we just considered it grace-full.
But while we have good hearts, we have flawed hearts—the physical ones. When we talked, I told him he would be fine. I meant it. I mean they sawed me open, borrowed some vein from my legs, wired me shut, sewed me up and a few weeks later I was back to some level of normal. That was my experience. It was not his.
In Dan’s final months, I was a lousy friend. If I were saying this to him I would use the word shitty and he would appreciate the honesty of that.
The fact is my heart was selfish. I couldn’t bear to see him so frail, not Danny. I didn’t have magic words for him or for Peggy. I was inadequate and so I became negligent.
How I wish now I could jack up the back of the car and run the odometer, and time, back. I am so grateful for the few moments yesterday at Dan’s memorial with the people who hold Dan and Peggy dear—old friends, family, musician buddies and those who were touched by Dan. We wore our masks and our Hawaiian shirts. It was the most colorful memorial I’ve ever been too. Just the way he would have wanted it.
Good bye buddy.
