The First to Go

By Mark Mangie. One of the many blessings of my life has been a long association with a group of people with whom I went to college. We met in 1968 at the newly designated Youngstown State University. 

The old St. Joseph Catholic Church was located at the corner of Wick and Rayen Avenues.  It had an old, creaky pipe organ to which, for some unremembered reason, I was given access to play. While practicing one day, a voice called up to me in the organ loft and said he was enjoying the music.  He introduced himself and asked me to join him at his club’s headquarters located in the old church rectory next door. That was my introduction to the Newman Student Organization, the Catholic collegiate organization.   

It was the heady time of flower children and political turmoil.  The Newman Center provided an old fashioned “safe space” for us Catholics to delve into the realm of political activism.  I was the outsider because I went to a public school. Everyone else went to Mooney or Ursuline.  Over that time, we all became good friends as we made protest signs, closed down Wick Avenue, dated each other, went to “art” movies at the midnight show at the Foster Theater.  Two priests ran the place.  They became our mentors and confidants.

We saw friends drafted and sent to war as we safely hid behind our college deferments.  Then when the deferments ended…we sat through the first of several draft lottery drawings.  I was lucky and would be drafted after Tricia Nixon.  Some of my friends weren’t as lucky and had to scramble to finish their education and find alternative forms of service.

We changed our majors as we made life decisions.  Some of us got engaged.  Several of us got married. We saw each other every day and became part of each other’s lives.

In 1970 I decided to transfer to Ohio State. By sheer serendipity, several members of the group also decided to go to Ohio State. Two went to medical school.  One went to law school. One transfered just for the hell of it. While there we kept in contact with each other and our friends back home.

As we each started our lives, we went back and forth from Youngstown…but most of us ended up here. We saw each other through life’s rewards and challenges…divorce, illness, marriage, children, grandchildren.  One of the priests left the priesthood.  Another of the priests, the one who gave my wife and myself pre-Cana, faced another set of problems.  Most of us have come to terms with that.  Some of us…not so much.

As time went on, we got in the habit of quarterly get-togethers at each other’s homes.  Christmas was and is the big one when those of us who moved away come back to town to visit family and friends. A group of 16-20 grows by another 10. 

So it went throughout the years….for 50 years.  Through it all, we remained remarkably healthy; our group intact.  There were one or two deaths from that collection of rebel Catholics at the Newman Center, but they had moved away…and we lost contact with them.  Those who remained in the area stayed healthy and alive.

Until this past week.  One of the pillars of our group, LaVearn, passed away of cancer after a short illness.  She was the first to go. 

LaVearn was the spice in our group.  She was a single woman who lived life her way.  She was caustic, opinionated, infuriating, more than a tad obsessive compulsive, quick to criticize the foibles of others, and quick to let you know she loved you anyway. Most importantly, she could make you laugh.

Standing around the casket in the chapel at Calvary Cemetery, I looked at my group of life-long friends. It was a real-life version of The Big Chill. (Look it up…Kevin Costner’s leg played the corpse.)  We were all older and maybe wiser…a little bit.  Some cried.  Some stood there stoically. Some touched the casket.

Fifty years brought us from the Newman Center on Rayen Avenue to the Chapel at Calvary Cemetery. Our group will never be the same not only because we will be minus our good friend at our next quarterly reunion, but at an age cluster around 70 we lost our innocence of infallibility.   This close-knit group of people who have experienced life together now look forward to experiencing something much less desirable…together.

The officiating priest at the funeral, in probably not one of his finest moments, looked around at all of us and said…we will be seeing a lot of funerals over the next ten years.   You could hear the collective gasp!  But at the mercy dinner afterward, we toasted LaVearn, our time together, and a determination to bury the priest before he buries us. 

LaVearn is probably still laughing in heaven. LaVearn...if you can hear me...go easy on God. Amen.