News of dead college roommates travels slowly.  Saturday I pulled my college newsletter from the mail.  I can’t say it’s a great publication.  On occasion I get cards to fill out and return with the promise the newsletter will inform old classmates where I am and tell them what I’m doing.  The mail lay atop the kitchen counter for several hours while I made lunch and then watched the Florida-Alabama game. Then I flipped through the glossy quarterly, which still hasn’t reported I’ve moved to Delmarva. 

There is a section for births and deaths.  There was a surprise when I saw the name of a guy I was casually acquainted with.  He died 4 years ago and someone at the alumni office was finally getting the news.  The next name rocked me:  Edward Steinberg ’83, Aug. 28, 2007.  “Stoneberg” was my first roommate and while a few years older than I was and a year ahead in school he was a boon companion.  With my later roommate, Jim Wojnovich, Ed and I would often paint the town.  Late that year Ed met a wonderful woman and his socializing became much more focused.  He would marry her and they would move to the northwest edge of the Adirondack Forest and live on a farm and raise children. 

Ed liked the mountains.  He was born in the Bronx in the mid ‘50s and then after his dad died when Ed was young his mother took him to grow up on Long Island.  After high school he wandered the country and worked for a time in Wyoming as a roustabout. 

He ran, did 400 push-ups and 400 sit-ups every day and didn’t smoke.  Yet I think it just bought him a few extra years.  As father’s go sons so often go the same. 

We quarreled the last time we talked.  He also didn’t go into much detail but apparently there was marital trouble.  He still very much cared for his work.  Ed managed a home in Boonville, N.Y. for what once were labeled the “profoundly retarded”.  It had been his calling for one quarter century.  Had I known about his death, one week before I came to Delaware, I could’ve made the funeral but news of the alumni travels at glacial speed. 

In recent weeks I’ve counted the deaths of many old friends and neighbors.  A large cluster n November alone.  For a man in his late 40’s it’s a concern.  My folks both died in their early 60s.  Does it make me feel old?

Not really.  I seriously started thinking of mortality the day I was working in a newsroom and the A.P. wire clattered with the story of an old hero.  It was the day John Unitas died.  He hadn’t even reached 70 years old.  If you think of youth as a bunch of 11 year old boys atop banana bikes trading football cards the loss of Johnny “U” is a devastating milepost.  On the other hand as you age if you find life contains many other splendid things then the pain of loss will sting, I believe, a little bit less. 

Last week a woman friend told me she had been a little girl when Unitas opened a restaurant just down the street from her house.  It was the place her mother would take the children for dinner.  My lady friend thinks of Unitas as the man who owned the restaurant.  It was the place on a Friday night where family escaped the routine of home.  Who would’ve known old number 19 would mean such different things to different people. 

My old friend Ed, the fellow I called “Stoneberg”, lived a short life but he spent the last 20 years on his terms.  He bought an old farmhouse on 40 acres and was surrounded by his children. 

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