Happy birthday, Anthony

Posted 3 days ago

Today is my friend Anthony’s birthday. I can’t remember the last time we have spoken. I know that I saw him in June 2004. He and his family attended my sister’s wedding. We sat with him and his wife at the reception and his two daughters and my daughter had so much fun dancing and playing the bubbles generated by the machine. And then we met up the next day at a local pizza place with my family, my parents and his family. I enjoyed getting to see him again and get a chance to see our children interact.

I may have seen him once more on a subsequent trip to Kansas City. We were living in Orlando at the time and with two young kids, we did not travel much. Oh, now I remember. I saw him in April of 2005 when I was in town. My mom had breast cancer surgery and I came up for a couple of weeks. Anthony and his family came over to my parents house for lunch and an afternoon visit. I think that was the last time that I saw him.

We lost touch somewhere along the way of raising kids (we added a third the next year) and life transitions. I was thinking about him several years ago and tried to find him through the Internet. He was no longer on Facebook. I reached out to one of his daughters but it looked like it had been some time since she was active. I tried several different things but came up empty.

I tried again three years ago when I was in Kansas City for my mom’s funeral. Once again, I was unsuccessful. We did not share a lot of friends in common. So there is no one I can think of to reach out to in order to reestablish contact.

Anthony and I met in health class during our sophomore year of high school. I remember we did CPR training at the beginning of the semester which meant we went the gym and had more time to visit and interact. In one of those conversations, we learned that he lived only one street over from me. It was in a separate sub-division and I cannot remember if one of the streets connected at that point.

One afternoon after school, he decided to walk over to me street and see if he could find me. I was not outside but my sister was. He approached her and found out that she was my sister after asking if she knew a Jeff that lived on the street. Sometime shortly after that, I started picking him up and we went to school together. He had a late birthday and did not have his driver’s license at that point.

Anthony was very enthusiastic and very eager to pursue a friendship with me. I think that weirded me out a bit because I had not had a friendship start like that. We had a lot of differences. But I soon discovered we shared a lot of the same interests and I enjoyed hanging out with him.

We spent a lot of time together that summer going to Oceans of Fun (season pass), drive-in movies at the Twin, hanging out at the mall, or cruising Nolan Road. He introduced me to Chinese food. We also had a shared interest in the Royals and Chiefs. I had bought a Nintendo that summer and we enjoyed playing video games on it, especially Baseball and Super Mario Brothers. We would also hang out at the arcade at the Blue Ridge Mall. I think he always had the edge on me when we played this hockey game with rods that you could move the players limited places and pass and shoot the puck.

He moved to North Kansas City after that summer. And I was involved in band and soccer so we did not get to spend as much time together as we had. But we would still hang out regularly.

I remember that on his 16th birthday, he had driven over to my house on a Friday night. Unfortunately, I was at a band event and then went to a party afterwards. This is back in the days before cell phones. He ended staying at my house and helping my dad put in a new window AC unit in my converted attic room. I think he enjoyed hanging out with my family and they liked him. I came home and felt bad that he had come over and I was gone. But he ended up staying over and we had a lot of fun that night.

Anthony was a very loyal friend. I am not sure I appreciated that as much as I should have at the time. We continued to stay in touch and hang out through the rest of high school and I was see him when I was home from college. He did not go to college and started working a variety of jobs. I remember one of the last jobs he had when I was still in college was driving a truck for a company that provided linens and other things to restaurants. I think he was really good at it. He was much more of a people person than I was. I remember one time we went to an Italian place that was on his route and we didn’t have to pay for dinner. Anthony was Italian and had moved to a predominantly Italian neighborhood.

Which brings me to another fun story. I was part of his wedding party when he got married my last summer home from college. It was a big Catholic wedding with a big reception afterwards. I remember sitting at table with people from the neighborhood. There was an older women who sweared that she knew me and that I had grown up in the neighborhood.

I am not Italian but I have had people say that I look Italian. There were several people in Italy that said that when we visited there when my wife and I were living in Europe for a year.

I am not sure if this is a tradition at all Italian weddings, but at this wedding, they introduced the wedding party. The DJ would announce our names and we would walk into the big room with the reception. You heard all of these Italian names and then, “Jeff Bridgforth.” My dad ribbed me about that a lot. We had a lot of fun that day and I counted it a privilege to stand with my friend when he made his marriage commitment, which from as much as I know, he never broke.

I don’t know where Anthony is today. I am not sure if he is even still alive. There are many people my age that I went to high school with that have passed away in the last couple of years. I hope he is alive. And I have a glimmer of hope that we might still reconnect in the future.

Happy birthday, Anthony! Thank you for being such a loyal friend. Thanks for pursuing a friendship and for the countless hours we spent together doing all kinds of things together. And “how’s it going?”–that would always be the first thing he asked me when we talked on the phone.