Inside looking out: In honor of Eddie

He stood 5 foot nothing, but he was a giant among our crew of friends while we were growing up in Piscataway, New Jersey.

Eddie died last week from a brief rage of cancer. What I always do when I am shocked to hear this sudden kind of sad news, I think a minute, I cry for five more and then I reflect. With Eddie this was easy; my thoughts of him filled my mind with tearful, yet wonderful memories.

I don’t recall when we first met, but I remember the vivid moment when he asked me to coach a 9-year-old baseball team with him. We were 19 at the time.

“Eddie, I played baseball,” I had said, “but I don’t know to coach it.”

He laughed. “Neither do I.”

We led the once hapless Arbor Cubs to the league championship game. I remember Eddie wiping the tears off our players’ faces when they struck out. Then there was this one little guy who could hit the cover off the ball, but when we put him in to play left field, he sat down in the grass with his little hands poking around for four leaf clovers. Eddie and I loved telling that story for years.

We had played no equipment tackle football after high school, and one day we met another team on the campus of Rutgers University where I went to college. Unknown to us ahead of time, our opponents were Black Panthers, a team that came out dressed in white T’s, black shorts, black berets and military shoes. The Panthers were a militant African-American organization, and right away, I could see the fear in Eddie’s face. We kicked off to them, and one of their players, who had only one arm, caught the ball and ran through us for a touchdown. Eddie was the last from our team who had missed the tackle.

He ran up to me and shouted, “I tried to grab his arm, but there was nothing there!”

The Panthers heard him. They laughed. We laughed. We played a friendly game and lost by a million points it seemed, but a good time was had by all that ended with genuine handshakes.

Eddie and I stayed tight with each other. I captained the Piscataway 69ers softball team of our high school graduate friends of that year and we joined a men’s industrial league. Eddie would get up to bat and swing and miss so hard, he’d spin around like a top. Just when we thought he might strike out, he’d get a big hit and stood proudly on first base with a big smile, that toothy grin that was his signature trademark.

Eddie fell in love with his high school sweetheart. Her name was Eleanor, and every time my friends and I heard the Turtles sing that song by the same name, we thought of them. They went to our prom together and then they got married.

All was good for a while until news of their divorce stunned us. The truth is that Eddie never got over her after that, and as far as I know, he never took interest in another girl.

Our group partied hard together, and he was always the center of entertainment. He told jokes like no one else could, and after he had a few drinks, he would forget the punch lines that left us groaning in disappointment. Then he’d come back to us later, trying but failing to finish the jokes he had started. The joke teller was funnier than the joke, leaving us falling about the room in stitches.

Eddie was no clown for sure. In fact, his heart of gold was bigger than his short body. He campaigned at his job to have the company hire his friend who was then given employment, only to later pass Eddie by when both were candidates for the same promotion.

He spent two separate terms on the Piscataway Board of Education and he never had a personal agenda, just a loyal willingness to serve the children in the township schools.

He had worked as a supervisor for the town’s recreation, and until a few days before his death, he drove senior citizens to their doctors’ appointments or wherever they requested to go.

The ironic thing about Eddie’s death is that the sadness and grief of his passing will in time be replaced by smiles and laughter whenever I think of him or whenever my friend, Mike, who had known Eddie since kindergarten, speaks of our coming-of-age stories that included our mutual buddy.

Eddie had always called me “Rick,” and no one else has ever done so. I’m glad he did because he had made me feel that I was a special part of his life.

I hadn’t seen him since he came to a surprise party I threw for Mike eight years ago. Even then, he charmed everyone with his jokes and his smiles. Sometimes good friends get separated by miles and by life itself, but they hold a part of each other inside their hearts that remains forever.

Thanks for the great moments you gave to my life, Eddie. I will raise a toast to honor you at our high school reunion next month.

Right now, I know you’re floating somewhere in the clouds telling your jokes to the angels and making them laugh just like you did with us.

Save me a spot with your softball team, too. I’ll look forward to the time when we get to play together again on Heaven’s Field of Dreams.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.