Lorraine Kee: Our Friend And Yours. P-D 1/5/2003

Headline: OUR FRIEND AND YOURS
Reporter: By Lorraine Kee

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Jan. 5, 2003
Section: SPECIAL SECTION, Page: E1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

* Though many had never met him, readers told us that when columnist Greg Freeman died on Tuesday they had lost a friend. Here's a remembrance from a friend who knew him well.

It was easy to be Greg's friend.

How could you not love a guy who was 46 but still got a trim when his mother told him his short-cropped hair was getting too long.

A guy who called his wife, Elizabeth, his "best friend."
Who never gave his son grief about his dreadlocks or whether he could support himself as an artist.
Who was sure enough of his masculinity that he could acknowledge that he didn't know the difference between the score and shots-on-goal at a hockey game or could only offer me sympathy - not a hammer or a hand - when my Christmas tree kept falling down the first holiday after my divorce.
A guy who loved office gossip, but never had a bad word to say about anyone. Who was nice to people even when they were rude to him.
Who loved working for a newspaper.
Who always saw potential in downtown St. Louis.
A guy who loved cats.
Who was the soul of the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists.
Who liked to start meetings on time.
Who gave much and took little.
Who never complained when I saw him in the hospital through his prostate cancer, incarcerated hernia, his kidney transplant, his muscular dystrophy.
Who had a crooked smile.
Who loved his Beaumont High School reunions.
Who preached diversity in his columns and lived it in his life.
Who had cassette tapes in his car that ran the gamut from Motown to Smashing Pumpkins.
Who was equally comfortable eating sushi or snoots.
Who got way excited one day when we saw the gorgeous Pam Grier in a Washington restaurant.
Who made no apologies for loving those "Brady Bunch" movies.
Who warned me not to try to be hip in my columns because when middle-aged folks like us tried it we just sounded goofy.
Who I could tell everything to.
Who I knew would never hurt me.
Never insult me.
Never judge me.
Never laugh at me but with me.
Who knew everything there was to know about me and stayed my friend.
Who was such a loving friend that I could love him back.
Who imagined us old and gray someday.
Who I called four times on the Monday before he died.
Who didn't say a word when I lingered long at his house last Thanksgiving dinner, savoring the turkey and sopping up the warmth of his family.

A guy who could sing.
     Years ago, when I got the wild inclination to sing at the office Christmas party, even though I couldn't sing, I promptly asked Greg if he would sing with me. He had done it before and our colleagues loved him.
     I can't sing by myself, I said. Would you? Could you?
     He didn't hesitate. That was Greg. Supportive. We practiced. I bought huge Afro wigs. We sang. And I was awful. Of course, he never said that. He was too kind. He just didn't have mean in him.

The last two weeks we had both been racking our brains, trying to remember what song it was that we had performed that night at Blueberry Hill. Neither of us could remember, and we laughed that the memory was the first to go as you age. I'd remember one of these days, I told him. It would probably come to me in the middle of the night, I said, and I'd sit bolt upright in my bed. I'd let him know when I thought of it.
On Tuesday morning, I took the long walkway up to Greg and Elizabeth's place in the Central West End, and I felt an overwhelming sadness.
"Second That Emotion" popped into my head. That had been the song.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

Gregory Freeman writings - home page