Happy New Year!
Every year, at some point on New Year's Day, I remember Tony.
It was New Year's Day in 1978 when my friend, Anthony Scott Theisler, died after a drunken New Year's Eve that found him playing chicken. His car burst into flame after hitting another car head on near the beach where he lived. I don't remember who told me or how I reacted. To this day, I vividly remember being a pall bearer at his funeral. 16 tears old and carrying a friend to his grave four and a half months after standing at my own father's.
I remember moving his casket through the church past his parents, family and friends. The nervousness I felt, hoping my sweaty hands would hold. The biting cold at the cemetery and someone having to pull me away. I had been in cemeteries too many times and couldn't comprehend it all.
Tony was the son of a friend of my dad's, fellow police officer. During junior high school our parents had put us together hoping a friendship would grow. At the time, Tony was very ill, hadn't attended much school and didn't have many friends. Our parents had hoped our friendship would help Tony through his illness knowing I knew what being that sick was like due to my bouts with asthma. I did go over his house a number of times and when he entered the same junior high school as I did we spent some time together. As with many friendships, time and other interests took its toll, we drifted a little and finally different high schools made the final rift between us.
Tony started playing saxophone in the junior high school band and got better and better and better. So much so that, as 1978 approached, Tony was being courted to record professionally. He and I talked occasionally on the phone and I was excited for him and proud to know him. Something about him didn't seem right, though.
I never racked myself with, "What if I had known" or "How could I have been a better friend". Years later, however, when I was going through my own alcohol control problems, I did have his ghost to wrestle. I had been out drinking and drove home drunk one night. Just a mile from my house the road took a turn and I didn't. I hit a telephone pole and wrecked my car. This was long before DUI laws even existed and drunks were brought home to sleep it off. A family friend was the police officer who responded and he brought me right home. In my drunken stupor I lamented how I had let Tony down. For seven years I didn't drink. Every January, while I lived in Rhode Island, I visited his grave on this day.
These days I do wonder what might have been. Where would his talent had taken him. How would our friendship have changed. What would he have even looked like n his 40's. I have gone back to drinking. I have been drop down drunk. I have even driven drunk. Does that diminish Tony's memory or lessen the impact his death mad on my life. I'm not sure. I think he had other reasons for drinking that I never had. I could make some sort of philosophical stretch that his last moments on earth were more a race away from something than a race towards another car.
I also think the fact that I'm still alive says a lot, too.
I miss you, Tony.
4 comments:
Maybe you should get your story straight before you post, the person your talking about, my brother did die on that night in a car accident, he wasnt playing "chicken", and he was also killed by 2 of his so called friends, 2 people who were also drunk, and took my parents car for a ride. Get your facts straight before you smear somone in the begining part of your story
Jeff
Jeff;
If you re-read this post, as I did, you will see I meant no disrespect for Tony. I still love him and miss him. If you read this drop me a line. towaway@gmail.com
Hi, Jack.
I, too, think a great deal of "Anthony," as I always called him, at this time of year. We were dear friends in junior high, in seventh grade, when we were both a Winman. He was an extraordinary musician even then. We re-connected briefly in the Fall of 1977, and talked by telephone quite a bit, though for some reason my parents would not allow us to continue seeing each other after that first occasion. Thank goodness for the phone!
Anyhow, I would have met you at that funeral, IF my mother would have allowed me to go. She didn't, and I have always felt terrible about not being able to pay my respects.
I heard so many rumors about the accident, but chose to believe that is was simply a horrific accident that should never have happened. Anthony, as far as I knew, valued the possibility of kick-starting his jazz career too much to consider playing chicken.
30 years later, you are still trying to make sense of a senseless waste, as I am.
I wish I had appreciated Anthony more when he was living. God knows I treasured our conversations, and always hope he would go far. To the angels at age 16 was not what I -- or indeed, any of us -- had in mind, but for whatever reasons, which I still cannot fathom, that was the way it was.
30 years later, he still haunts me. I had no one to turn to or talk to on New Year's Day when I heard the evening news broadcast. I still remember that sense of total disbelief. No, it couldn't be him! But it was. I still grieve. I still wonder. And occasionally I do feel him spiritually present.
There's a quote from Rory Gallagher, the late, great Irish blues guitarist, that sums my feelings to some degree.
"If you'll be around when there is no sound, I won't let you down, I'll give you so much love that you'll remember."
I remember. I will always remember. Thank you for writing about him. It was nice to see that someone else thinks of him, too. you, I, and his dear family, are not alone.
"Mad Angel,"
who remembers Jeff when he was four years old, so many years ago...
To all who read this story. I will say this one more time, there was no playing "chicken." There is a bench on conimicut point that was put up for a memorial to Anthony. So if anyone would like to visit it, its at the top of the point, there is a plaque with his name and my father on it.
Jeff
Ps. We are trying to figure out who Mad Angel is.
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