Years Gone By

This past September our high school class had its 40 year reunion.  Not everybody came of course.  That isn't unusual, time and distance being factors for most.  One who didn't attended was a big part of the high school fun.  Richard Westergard and his wife Carrie are on a mission for our Church.  They will be coming home a week after Halloween.  We would have loved to have had them at the reunion.  I was digging through some older pictures and found the following.

These are old photos.  This one has me on the left edge with Dick (yes I know his name is Richard, but we called him Dick) right in the middle.  To his left is Pete Ipson.  The young girl is my sister Tiffany at aged 10 and my younger brother Kirk.  This was June 22, 1976.  A couple of weeks later he and I drove up to Rexburg to scout out an apartment for school in the fall.  He somehow talked me into going up there and playing football with him.  He was a Cornerback on defense and I was a Quarterback on offense.  I was 4th on the depth chart as practice began 7 weeks after this photo was taken, but I ended up starting the first 5 games until I had a hand injury that kept me out the rest of the season.

Here we are later than night in the basement of my home in Centerville.  I was excited to see him and he evidently was excited to have me home.  We worked out a little over the weeks, but mostly worked and tried to save some money for school.  The real reason is he had just returned home from his mission in France about 6 weeks before me, he didn't have a girl friend and didn't have anything better to do than wait for me to come home.

This is in the Spring of 1977.  It is graduation at Ricks College.  He was engaged to Carrie and so this is kind of our last hurrah as roommates, but not as friends.  We ended up at Utah State University and then at The Dental School at Northwestern University in Chicago.  I was figuring that Dick and I have been friends for about 54 years or so.  Not too bad as far as friendships go.