I just received a letter and a notification from the eldest son of a friend informing me of the death of my friend a few days ago. I had received a Christmas letter from Mel a week or so before he died, and I sensed that he was in serious concern about his health. He had not told me about his bout with prostate cancer in earlier letters. The only time he ever revealed any serious concern about health was when I saw him several years ago during a professional stopover when I was in Phoenix, where he lived. He was then recovering from a medical procedure which kept manifesting itself in some dysfunction, but he insisted that he was managing. We reviewed matters, and he was encouraged in that I had encountered the same problem and had recovered fairly well. We separated not to visit each other again – but in touch. During our boyhood years, Mel and I were best friends. I was born in January 1923: he was born six months later. The Weils live in the adjoining duplex to my parents. The two units could be joined by opening a barred door, which the two mothers quickly arranged so to assist each other and permit two baby boys to play together. The bond was made in the friendship of the mothers and in the frolicking baby boys. Many situations in poor homes drew us close together, and the friendship never ended for all concerned. I am the last of the members of the long ago families remaining alive – of the elder and junior members of those families, including my sisters. Mel died peacefully at ninety one years of age on December 18, 2014.
We were true friends. We never fought with each other or even fussed. Our mothers took care of us as though we belonged to both of them. I warmed to Mel’s father, almost as a surrogate father because my own father was soon absent from our family to ultimately die of tuberculosis in his mother’s care. Our relationship flourished to the degree it can for children until Mel’s grandfather died and the Weils moved back to Indiana to take over the family farm, and care for Mel’s grandmother. We remained in touch with each other in boyish ways, even including plans to go into business together when we grew up. We would have a huge chicken/egg business – the largest in America. I spent summers, or portions of them, on the Weil farm treated as a brother to Mel. I had my chores and he had his. Our work was a part of our play. When we were assigned to watch the cows grazing along the road we took BB guns so to sink corn cobs in little pools along the ditches of the roads. Teddy, the dog, was always with us, and may have helped with the cows. On Friday the huckster would come for the eggs and separated cream, traded for the produce and meats we needed. Mel and I always thought hot-dogs were the best. On Saturday late afternoon we would always go to town, usually Fort Recovery, Ohio, a vintage town from Indian wars. The greatest day was always threshing day when the itinerant machinery was brought in and the farmers’ circles, including smaller wife circles came for threshing small grains. Large grains were harvested after school opened in the fall. So it was that I would return to my mother and her boarding house – to school in Akron, Ohio.
Then Mel was stricken with a lung infection. The doctor advised moving to a climate like Arizona’s. They had a sale that I had to attend, so to take my mother in my cool 1928 Model A Ford, for a day that was quite dramatic, offering lessons on lives in the agricultural context. Mel was best man at the time of my marriage. Other friends entered my life and became closest for periods, but none replaced Mel. There was a list including Mike, Dick, Milt, and others, including many students, men and women from variant backgrounds. I pray daily with a friend, Carlton, from a college I served, we of different races, but the same Lord. Friendship has spiritual meaning. It is affirmative, forgiving, loving, sacrificial, humble on occasion. Mel would have come to help me through a problem. He would have been there in a trice. He would have provided funds if I had asked for that help. There would have been communicated that true meaning of love/care that had no negative modification. That first friendship was a lesson for all those that followed. It is my belief that lost meaning of true friendship gives rise to the same sex marriage context, confused as intimate marriage, a biological contradiction. The illustrations of David and Jonathan, of Ruth and Naomi, of Jesus and the Disciples provide lessons in right friendships. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020