Kit played the viola – and while my experience with classical string instruments was very brief, his was lifelong. Fifty years later, Kit was still playing the viola in the Syracuse Symphony – and later with the musician-owned Symphoria, which rose from the ashes after the Syracuse Symphony’s bankruptcy.
I mostly lost track of Kit after high school. We had run in very different circles, and, aside from memories of somebody I admired, he rarely crossed my mind.
At one point, we rediscovered one another through Facebook. We were each surprised by how much we had in common, and an on-line virtual friendship grew. His quick, sharp wit, sense of humor, and knowledge of quality beer all endeared him to me.
I began camping each August with a group of boyhood friends in the summer of 2005. Some of them were much closer friends with Kit than I was. Brother Brian invited him to come out one year and join us. He did so that year, and each year after. He had to fly all the way from New York, but since both he and his wife (more on Becky shortly) both have roots in Eugene, they would combine trips.
In one sense, Kit brought a level of refinement to our rustic camp. None of wear tuxedos to work, and he is likely the only one who could tell Bach from Rachmaninov, or Dvorak – and he could tell one of their works after a mere handful of notes.
But Kit wasn’t there to class the place up, but to bond with old buddies on a level we all shared … eating unhealthy camp food, drinking beer, playing cards, and generally just loving one another’s company. And he damn sure didn’t wear a tuxedo to camp … more often an Oregon Ducks sweatshirt and cap. He brought unique food from his part of New York … salt potatoes, and Dinosaur brand barbecue sauce; one year, he brought kits so we could make our own cannolis, and helped us remember the immortal line from the Godfather, ‘Leave the gun! Take the cannoli!’
He downplayed his role in helping his symphony survive the bankruptcy, and rise from the ashes. But as one of the longest tenured performers, and the music librarian, he was a linchpin, and his fellow musicians have never forgotten.
He brought a CD one year that included music from Symphoria, and from his side-gig with the Clinton String Quartet. He pointed out one piece in particular; as they were playing it one time, he was moved to tears by its beauty, and when he looked around, he noticed that some of the other musicians were crying as well. I thought that was interesting … I love music, and am sometimes deeply moved by it, but it had never occurred to me that a performer could be, even as he or she performed it. It really touched my heart.
I loved talking with Kit about his lifelong love of Becky. She was his girlfriend when he was in eighth grade, and she in seventh. To my knowledge, neither of them ever dated anybody else. For one like me, whose love life consists of randomly-arranged chapters in a poorly bound book, they are a shining beacon of stability. One time, when I expressed my admiration of their steadfastness, he warned me against idealizing them – and that they had certainly had their share of struggles. He didn’t go into detail, I could tell they had been as serious as most couples face. That they chose to face these struggles together only made me love and admire them all the more.
As a viola player, Kit had to endure the same type of jokes bass players do in rock bands. One evening Becky shared this one, ‘How can you tell when the orchestra stage is level? When it is, the viola players drool equally out of both sides of their mouths!’
We plan meals in camp with two guys assigned to each breakfast and each dinner. I was always glad when Kit and I were paired up for same meal. It was a nice time to catch up, while the rest of the guys were preoccupied elsewhere. He’d bring a unique staple from Syracuse, and I’d be responsible for the more perishable local ingredients.
We had just gotten our meal assignments in the spring of 2016 when Becky told us that we may need to make a change of plans. It seems that Kit had suffered a stroke, and was not likely to be able to come that year. He was having trouble balancing, and she was worried about tree trunks and the other tripping hazards in camp. I told her that, if his condition improved enough, I would be willing to meet him at the airport, and do all the driving, so he wouldn’t have to. He could stay at my house, then as the camping date approached, we could go to Eugene, and just stay at a motel and visit friends, rather than risk the hazards of camp, and the distance our camp would be from help.
For a couple weeks, it looked like that plan might work. But then Becky contacted me again to say that they had discovered that Kid hadn’t had a stroke, but was in the early symptomatic stages of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and that he wasn’t going to be coming to camp this year, or ever again. CJD is a brain-wasting disease that is always fatal.
We stayed in touch with Becky as the summer progressed. Kit has always been a gentle man (as well as a gentleman), and he retained his sweet nature, even as this cruel disease robbed him of everything else. Becky related a conversation they had, as he reverted to a child-like state. She asked him who his best friend in the world was. He thought about it for a minute, then replied ‘Bugs Bunny!’ But when he saw that this wasn’t the answer Becky wanted, he changed it to, ‘You are … but Bugs Bunny is second!’ We are so grateful that Becky kept us close as they went through this transition – and she expressed that she was grateful to have the company of others who had known him nearly as long, and loved him.
That year at camp, we made a batch of cannolis, and recorded a video toast, where we shouted, ‘Leave the gun! Take the Cannoli!’ I posted our toast on Facebook, and Becky said that Kit loved seeing it.
Kit passed away at the beginning of September, less than a month after that year’s camping trip. Our world, my world is a lonelier place for his absence, but a lovelier world for his having been part of it.
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| Kit's Viola |
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