One Helluva Friend

I searched through several boxes but I couldn’t find it.

Twenty-seven years ago, I delivered the salutatorian speech at Franklin County High School in Rocky Mount, Virginia. I thought that I still had a copy of it around somewhere and had planned to post it here, but apparently it’s at my mother’s house tucked away in a box or maybe the attic.

Or maybe it’s gone for good. Probably just as good. Who needs another speech anyway?

I recall that it was about 3-4 minutes long; even then, I liked ’em short and sweet. On the morning of graduation, we came to school and read our speeches to a teacher, presumably to screen them for appropriate content. I read mine to the fresh-out-of-college, first-year English teacher who must have drawn the short straw. You know, the one with the mini-skirt and thick, dark, flowing ebony hair and large, brown, Bette Davis eyes. Not that any of that mattered at all.

After I read my speech, I looked up and asked, “Is it okay?”

Dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex, she smiled and said, “That’ll do.”

I really didn’t talk much about the future or the good times of the past. For me, high school had been defined mainly by two events–a major surgery which left me flat on my back for two months during my junior year and the death of my father less than a month before graduation.

I referred to those and recalled the assistance and compassion shown to me by so many of my classmates; the ones who came to see me in the hospital, helped tutor me back up to speed during my convalescence and stood by me, their arms around my shoulders, at the visitation and the grave site.

I told them that I would always remember their kindness and friendship during tough times, and I reminded them that there would be many situations in life when all the education in the world would not satisfy, that only a kind word and a helpful deed would do. I told them that it appeared to me that they had already learned that lesson–and thank you.

Afterwards, my friend Al approached me. He had been a year ahead of me and was already home on summer break from the University of Richmond. We had taken many classes together, played on the tennis team, and laughed a lot. Al never took anything too seriously, not even a friend’s major thoracic surgery. When I was carrying enough hardware around in my chest to make an airport metal detector scream from a mile away, Al felt that laughter was the best medicine–no matter how much it made me wince.

Embracing me, he said, “That was one helluva speech.”

Over the years, he’s mentioned that night every time I’ve run into him. And every time he says, “That was one helluva speech.” Once I was in a restaurant in Roanoke when we spotted each other across the room. “Helluva speech,” he mouthed silently.

Another time I ran into him at Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Al is a general surgeon now (scary thought), and a professor of surgery with the University of Virginia. He hadn’t changed a bit; same goofy grin, same head of tightly-wound, nappy curls. But this time, he had several of his residents in tow, and he introduced me to them. He told them I was an ophthalmologist (I didn’t correct him) and proceeded to regale them with a few high school tennis stories. He concluded with, “And at graduation, he gave one helluva speech.”

Al, I know you’re probably too busy removing gall bladders and resecting colons to read my blog, but if your eyes should ever fall upon these words, I just want you to know that I appreciate the compliment, although I’m not sure I deserved it.

And by the way–you’re one helluva friend.