Absent Friends: John McLoughlin

I lost a friend about a year and a half ago.
Even though I hadn't seen him since 1991, I considered him one of my best friends, and part of my circle--that group you have when you're a teenager and finding out who you are and all of that.
Like I said, hadn't seen him for years... but when I heard he was gone, I wrote the following.
Don't know why I'm posting it now, except that things like this are transitory-- and I don't want to forget what my friends-- past, present or future-- have meant to me.
Here goes.
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Who was John McLoughlin to me?

Writing something like this is never easy. In fact, it’s some of the hardest writing there is. How do you capture, in a handful of words, someone who was such a singular person? John McLoughlin was someone who defies easy description and completely demolishes classification or categorization. He was like no one I've ever known.

I'll start at the beginning, which for us would have been 1977.

I met John through Peter Nixon. Peter and I had discussed shooting our own version of Star Wars with action figures, or maybe even some live action. John, a friend of Peter’s, wanted to play Chewbacca. The project never came to anything but it did introduce me to John.

We got to know each other better when we started playing Dungeons & Dragons. John wore an Army fatigue shirt almost all the time—that’s one of the things I remember best about him, from those early days. He was also a big fan of all things military, which included Robert Heinlein’s book Starship Troopers; he believed Heinlein’s somewhat right-wing philosophy was really on to something. And he might not have been all that wrong. He had a spent LAW anti-tank weapon in his garage and a German shepherd that he loved fiercely.

John had a way of calling things the way he saw them. He was unflinching in saying how he felt and what he thought. That didn't sit well with some, but he was honest. Say what you like, I never knew John to say anything he didn't really (at some level) believe. He had integrity I can only admire.

We played D&D a lot that first year. We also played Risk up in John’s room. John was a tough competitor; the only person who really gave him competition was [his brother] Tom. They had a turbulent relationship, to put it mildly; Tom was the only one who could make John absolutely crazy.

John had me over at his house for sleepovers several times, and me likewise. Once, when he was at our house, I was freaking out over a TV commercial for the movie Dawn of the Dead. John laughed about it and convinced me that my fear (of a TV ad!) was pretty ridiculous.

He was a regular at Paul Skeen’s and Peter’s homes, and at mine, but we spent a lot of time in John’s home as well. I remember the GI Joe he kept hanging from his light fixture. Dark humor, certainly, but that was John.

He was generous to a fault and already building up the persona that we'd come to know in high school. In many ways, John was larger than life. He was the John Belushi of our circle, the guy who was always doing something. Life around John was never dull or lacking things to talk about.

When John had a fistfight—in Paul’s driveway—the only one I ever saw him in, I was there. I didn't want to be but John was my friend and I supported him. The fight came to nothing and John wasn't hurt. To this day, I don't know what the fight was about-- but I think he ended up friends with the kid he was fighting.

John’s hairline began to recede after his fifteenth birthday. To make up for it, he started doing his best to grow a beard—and when he succeeded, he wore it always after that. With his beard, high forehead and brawn/bulk built up from his Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) training, he was a teenager who looked like he was going on 40... but he never seemed to age for years after that. And, though maybe this shouldn't be said, he rarely had trouble getting served in bars.

He came to visit on an overnight at Rutgers my first year there—part of a large group that included my sister Beth, her friends Kelly and Diane, Paul, Stephanie and Dwain Smith. It was quite an evening; John was one of the few who wasn't running around half-crazed, thrilled and neurotic about being loose on a college campus.

I could tell a lot of stories about John. If there was a wacky anecdote from my teen years, odds are good John was in it somewhere. He was “As Du Valant,” a French Gran Prix driver, in a memorable incarnation sometime around his senior year in high school, and he was Tristan of Lochmoor for many years in the SCA. It’s telling that his self-given name was included in his obituary; I believe that in many ways, he found himself through this kind of singular reinvention.

My mom’s favorite memory of John is him sitting at our dining room table, making chain mail and describing how it was done. He made some beautiful pieces and took pride in being a craftsman. He also brewed mead, though I don't know if that effort was as successful.

He had a wide circle of friends. D&D introduced him to the Carroll sisters, which led to the SCA. He was the lead techie in the Drama Club [at Monmouth Regional High School] and pushed hard for tech workers to be accorded “varsity letter status” along with the performers. He always drove as many people as could fit into his family’s green Vista Cruiser—perhaps the best-known vehicle from the Drama Club years at Monmouth Regional—and never left the cast parties before they were over, often in the early hours of the morning. He knew everyone and everyone knew him.

A couple of anecdotes weren't so wacky. When Peter collapsed at Rutgers, coming to visit me on his first day home from McGill, John was there... and he drove Peter’s car back from New Brunswick, after we grabbed dinner together. We'd seen Peter to the hospital safely—I was the one who called the family and made sure they knew where he was—but it was John who brought his car back to Tinton Falls.

John was rough-and-tumble but always there when he was needed. He came to my dad’s viewing and, if he didn't actually send the condolence card, he bought one.

We saw each other once in awhile as he finished college and spent more time in Philadelphia and south Jersey than in Tinton Falls. I'd graduated and was working, so I had less time to catch up. Our lives were on diverging paths but we made time every now and then. We hung out at Paul’s shared house in Atlantic City one weekend and at his dorm room another time, where John said his floor (he had the job of watching his floor that year) had given him the nickname “Eage”—short for “Eagle,” off his receding hairline. He had a boken (a bamboo practice sword) with which he enforced peace on his floor, which seems appropriately.

The last time I saw him was Christmas Night, 1991. He came to my mother’s last holiday party, before she gave the house to Beth and Glenn and I moved on. We never spoke again and I don't know why. Maybe it was distance, that we were both moving around... or maybe it was that we were both moving on.

He didn't attend the weddings of any of our high school group, that handful of events where we were all together again. Those gatherings were incomplete without John.

The last any of us saw of John might have been 1995 or 1996, when Paul and Stephanie saw him in the stadium parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert. But that isn't my story to tell. As of 2003, Paul heard that John was working in Philadelphia doing construction and was starting to teach computers.

I like to think—I hope—he found tremendous happiness and joy in life, that he had a large circle of newer friends who loved him the way we older friends do. I'm sure they had many stories to tell and miss him just as deeply. All I know is that I regret how nearly sixteen years passed since we last spoke. Maybe John and I hadn't seen each other in a long time, but I knew he was out there somewhere. Knowing now that he’s gone, I miss him even more profoundly.

One last anecdote: in 1980, Peter Nixon came to my door to go to school, teary-eyed. “John’s dead,” he blurted out. My mind reeled. “John McLoughlin?” I asked. “No,” he said, puzzled. “John Lennon.” John got a smile out of hearing that story.

Twenty-six years later, almost to the month, Peter brought me news that John was gone. This time, I got the name right. And I really wish I hadn't.

In Memoriam: Luray Hodder

UPDATED 9/21/07
Musician Luray Hodder-Kuca, 39, of Portland, OR, died by carbon monoxide asphyxiation on Sept. 6, 2007. Her husband John Kuca committed suicide with her; their daughter Ruby, 5, found with them, was the victim of homicide according to Portland police.

An anonymous commenter to this blog has reported that police have not yet closed this case and have not ruled Luray's death a suicide. On that basis, my text has been amended and any conclusions stated herein are retracted, with my apologies to any who may have been offended or alarmed. (It appeared to me that the media reports were calling it a suicide, but if the police have not made a determination, it is more responsible to report it thus.)

Luray attended Monmouth Regional HS for some of the years I spent there. She was part of the Drama Club and was part of an extended circle of kinda-sorta-friends; we didn't visit each others' houses or anything but when the Drama Club went out after a performance, both of us were usually there.

It's a sad ending to a life. What makes it monstrous is that their daughter was murdered when Luray and her husband died. I can sort of imagine being so distraught that you'd want to kill yourself if your wife had terminal cancer (as Luray did); I can't under any circumstances imagine wanting to take your only child with you into the Great Beyond.

Kat and I extend our thoughts and prayers to her family and her husband's.

More here.

Monmouth Regional Class of '82 Reunion!

40-Somethings Rampage in Central Jersey- Film at 11!

Just came back yesterday from my 25th high school reunion. We had about 50-60 attendees for the obligatory Friday night stop at Morgan's and the picnic on Saturday afternoon (I have no idea how many showed up for Monmouth Park on Sunday, since Kat and I were already headed home).

It was great seeing so many people. I didn't have the chance to say hi to as many folks as I'd have liked-- some of you were probably ducking me-- but did manage to catch up with a number of classmates I hadn't seen since '82.

A big "great seeing you!" to (alphabetically):
Mary Ellen Abbiati, Bernie Banks, Glen Campbell (and family), Vicky Damrose, Bernie Daniels, Joe Episcopo, Mary Ellen Ferrigno, Ben Forest (and family), Charlton Goodrich, Craig James, Lynn Joshua, Lenzy Kelley, Michelle Levesque, Anna Martinez, Carole McCall, Ken McGee, Adam McInnis, Mary Beth Murphy, Larry Neis (grandmaster of the reunion group and a great guy), Cheryl Persson, Carole and Cindy Redd, Cathy Reinbacher, Sean Smith (and family), Scott Thacke... who am I leaving off this list? And of course, there were a lot of you that I saw but didn't say hi to-- maybe next time.

And thanks to Katie Schondel for her business card-- my wife's family LOVES Marriott!

The 30th reunion is set for July 12, 2012, and I hope we'll see everyone there. In the meantime, check back here soon-- I plan to post (or link to) pix from this reunion, as well as from some recent fun stuff Kat and I have done.