Strick

You know you are getting old when one of the kids you grew up with dies of health related causes. We buried Mark Strickland last week. He died of a heart attack at the age of 55. His son was in the 8th or 9th grade which is strange because Mark's dad died of a heart atack when Mark was in the 9th grade.

I don't really remember Mark in elementary school. My first real rememberance of him was when he was in the 7th grade and I was in the 9th grade. Although I was only a year older, I was 2 grades ahead of him because I started 1st grade at age 5. Mark and I roomed together on our church's first Youth Chior tour. Remember, I was a little guy. I was 5'2" when I started my sophomore year, but Mark made me look big. Mark was really a little kid growing up. I remembering him asking me about girls and how you get them to like you and kiss you and stuff.

I also remember us going to an amusement park in Oklahoma City on that chior tour. There was a fancy red cadillac convertible, highly waxed and shiny, with Illinois plates parked in the lot with the top down. We couldn't believe such a nice car was sitting on the parking lot totally open and unlocked. As we were admiring the car a black guy walked up to use and told us to "go ahead, reach into the car." We looked at him questionally and he said, "go ahead, it's my car." We reached into the car and I don't think we had even touched anything when the horn started blaring and an alarm started sounding. The man quicly shut off the alarm and said, "You gotta have an alarm system like that if you want to keep a car in Chicago."

The next year I started fooling around with a girl (Cindy) in Mark's class at different church trips. She was going with a guy named Guy Davie who was a football star at Nichols and much bigger than Mark. I don't know how or why but somehow Mark and Guy got into a fight over me and Cindy. Mark and Leonard Sanderson had to give me a complete blow by blow account about how Mark had whipped him. Mark was small, but he was tough.

After his dad died, Mark's mother married her dad's brother and they moved to North Carolina. Two years later they were divorced and Mark, his mom, and his little brother Lynn had moved back to Arlington. In the years he in North Carolina Mark grew up a lot and played a lot of basketball. Basketball was king in North Carolina and everyone played that all the time instead of football or baseball. Besides getting bigger Mark had become a pretty good basketball player.

I was now a sophmore in college and Mark was a senior in high school and we played on the FBC men's basketball team at church. That would start a number of years playing basketball together. That will be a separate story. Mark also was working in the mailroom at the Citizen Journal with Verne and me. He continued to work in the mailroom while he went to college at UTA and I moved to the front office and worked in the accounting department. The C-J had a softball team.

I think I told this story in another post, but no story about Strick would be complete without it. We were playing a game at Randol Mill park and I thinkwe were losing. Mark was trying to motivate eveyone and was hollering stuff. Jerry Hyde was the General Sales Manager, stood about 6'2" 240 pounds, and had been drinking. He didn't take well to Mark's encouragement and told him to shutup. Mark, being the banty rooster, combative person that he was said "No'. Jerry had been sitting on the bench instead those chain link dugouts and he started coming out after Mark. It was 180' down the right field line to the 5-foot fence. Mark made the fence and jumped it in about 2 seconds.

Later, when we played on the church softball team, we were playing the Word of Victory church team for first place. The score was close and they were mouthing and had taken a couple of cheap shots. Mark was playing first base when one of their guys grounded out and proceeded to run up Mark's legs. Mark had already had multiple knee surgeries and was already amd and intense from the game. When the guy ran over Mark's legs the tripped and sprawled over the ground behind Mark down the first base line. Mark was on him in a flash, had him turned over, and had his fist lifted ready to smash him in the face. I was playing second base and hollered, "No, Mark, no!" That was enough to bring Mark back to his senses and he didn't hit him. We went on to win the game. Later that season we played Word of Victory in a rematch and beat them again. This time the score wasn't close. They also didn't mouth off or play dirty. I think they scared of us and especially of Mark.

As the years went on Mark and I stayed in touch through church. After we quit playing baskeball and softball we only saw each other on occasion. I wasn;t a golfing or drinking buddy, but we remained friends.

Strick was the first of my childhood friends to die. I guess I am getting a little older.