Losing One's Friends One by One -- Dan

At my age (just turned 77 last month) one of the sad phenomena is the loss of old friends -- sometimes a shock as one is checking for an address on Google or such.

Particularly one that I want to share here is Dan Huden. Dan and I met when we were respectively 12 and 13 at a co-op Y camp -- Billings on Lake Farlee in Vermont.
The occasion of our meeting was our mutual interest in a lovely young thing which nearly had us coming to blows in our shared camp tent site when spontaneously both of us burst out with laughter at the humor of the situation. From that moment on as our lives progressed and became busier, we got together on occasions, but looked forward to the time when we would both retire and be able to continue our conversations at length. There was a note of sadness in Dan's life in that his mother and older brother died when an electric cable fell on their car in the midst of a storm. But his great joy was the discovery of his wife, Gudrun, daughter of a noted scholar whom he met while doing military service in Germany. Their lives together were both extremely effective in various types of public service.

Sadly, shortly after Dan's formal retirement, he died of a sudden heart attack.
And so went our hopeful years catching up in conversations -- with a memorial service instead. Gudy and I are good friends, but now we share the sadness of our loss.