Dead Head

My second roommate was a guy named Wade from upstate NY. Wade was the world's biggest Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead fan. That was my first sampling of both -- and I have to admit, I thought the music stank. On both accounts. Bob mumbles, the Dead had no talent.

But Wade was a great roommate -- always positive, always had great ideas, and was appreciative of all kinds of music. He was very active in his fraternity, Sigma Epsilon....which I came across again and again in later years. On a campus where national fraternities and sororities are not allowed, SigEp was the only one that I knew of that didn't try to act like a regular frat -- they were more like the explorer scouts I knew as a teenager: out to have fun, screw the formal crap.

That second semester during freshman year I was doing a lot of painting, and for Wade I painted a huge Deadhead skull on our window overlooking the main entrance into Helaman Halls, on the bottom floor facing the Tanner building. It brought a lot of attention, but happily, they never made us remove it. In celebration of its completion, Wade and I decided to turn our room into a dance club....which was pathetic, since we had neither heavy stereo equipment, nor women. Except for one evening a month or so, girls were just not allowed. But we partied as best we could, and even created a sign for the door, and pathetic little flyers which we posted in the lobby.

Notice the hand made poster underneath the sign -- I had this character I created called Phred the Hippie, and that was a poster of Phred and Bill the Cat (Bloom County fame) calling for love and unity between hippies and large, man-like felines. It's not a huge issue, admittedly, but I thought it was important.

I tried to track Wade down a few years ago. I talked to his mom or someone out in NY, and heard that he had been working for a ski resort out in the rockies and was caught in an avalanche and lost a hand or an arm, as well as parts of his face -- and so he sort of lost touch with people. I'd still like to talk to him again - I have great memories of us hanging out.