21-0

My mom's cousin, Richard "Sparky" Watts, died on 8/1/13.  He was living in FL with his wife at the time.  But his roots, and mine, are in Marseilles, IL, a small, rural, river town about 90 miles southwest of Chicago.  Sparky was my grandfather's nephew and a close friend of my mother's as they grew up.  But to me, and many of my friends in school, he was one of our baseball coaches.  I had long thought I was alone in my fond memories of those years in Pee Wee League, Little League, Pony League and Legion Ball.  Turns out I was not alone in my feelings. Not even close.

I'd returned to Marseilles to visit my parents, along with my wife and most of my children.  My father's health has been declining for months.  I'd returned the weekend before, a couple of days after a surgical procedure, and he didn't look well.  I left for home that weekend wondering if I'd see him again.  But, we'd already planned the current weekend's tip to Marseilles a few weeks earlier so we went ahead and followed through with the trip with our kids, their significant others and a grandchild in tow.

On my visit the prior weekend I'd learned that Sparky's memorial service would be held the following weekend.  I was conflicted about attending the memorial or spending time with my dad, knowing that each visit might be the last.  I decided to attend the visitation but skip the memorial service and the dinner that followed that.  Little did I know how much an affect attending the visitation would have on me.

As my wife, Lorraine, and I pulled up to the funeral home, we found a packed parking lot.  We found a spot to park on a side road and headed into the funeral home.  I'd told Lorraine I was concerned about running into old friends and not recognizing them.  There are a lot of old high school class mates that I haven't seen in twenty or thirty years.  I wasn't disappointed about my prediction.

I immediately was greeted by John Reynolds and Dave Sergenti, both a year ahead of me in high school.  I recognized Dave but John would have stumped me if he hadn't introduced himself.  I had played many a summer of baseball games against, and with, Dave.  We chatted for a while, asking each other the usual questions, "How are you?", "Where do you live now?", "What do you do?"  And then we moved on and joined the line waiting to visit with Sparky's family.

First in line was Sparky's son, Steve, and his wife.  We were chatting with them when I felt a tug on my arm.  The guy says, "Hey Scott, I'm John Teele."  I hadn't seen John in probably thirty years and he had probably changed as much as I had.  But there was something very familiar other than how he looked. I later realized that he sounded just like his father, Bill.  He handed me a picture of our Little League team from 1971.  I was eleven then.  He was 10.