Yesterday (5.13) morning I lost a dear friend. Mike Gardner, someone I had known and been
friends with practically all my life passed away unexpectedly at his home in
the Sarasota/Bradenton area. My prayers
are with his wife Linda and his mother Nell at this unimaginable time.
Many of you reading this knew Mike and have your own
stories, some of you reading this never had the honor of knowing this amazing
guy, either way I’d like to share a few of my special memories.
As I stated earlier Mike and I were friends pretty much from
birth. His Dad worked with the railroad,
my Dad worked with the railroad. His Mother
and my Mother were friends, it’s a small town, I think you get the picture.
I lived in the City of Mulberry, Mike was raised in the
bustling suburbs, Willow Oak. What this
meant as kids was that unlike so many of my other friends I couldn’t just hop
on my trusty Schwinn Sting Ray bicycle and go over to his house. We were separated by about 10 miles, but with
school, baseball, family get togethers, train trips to Richmond, Va to see snow
(where it would usually be about 70 degrees), we saw each other plenty and had
some great times.
One of my favorite early memories of Mike came at my
expense.
In Mulberry in the late 60’s for most of us boys nothing was
more important than little league baseball.
If a guy my age played I can pretty much guarantee you that I can to
this day tell you which team in our league he played on. This is not some mystical power I have, ask
any of the guys playing at that time and most of them can still do the same
thing.
I was a skinny kid pitching for the Cubs, Mike was a beast
of a young man even at the tender age of 12 playing for the Cardinals. I don’t know if he got ahold of one of my
incredibly slow “fast balls” or a curveball that didn’t break but what I do
remember is it leaving the ballpark at an incredible rate of speed and a
trajectory which took it over the light poles in center field. I’m reasonably sure this was the longest and
highest homerun ever hit on Field #2 at the old Mulberry Little League fields.
I’m equally sure that the ball hasn’t landed yet.
Mulberry High School was great. We had many of the same classes including our
failed attempts as actors in Ms. Wanamaker’s drama class. There was Key Club where we both served as
officers, Mike playing football for the mighty Mulberry Panthers while I
focused on golf which was more appropriate for the slow, skinny teenager I had
become. We had a blast through it all.
Upon graduation from high school we both took the “baby
steps” route and attended community college at Polk Community College in Winter
Haven. Often Mike and I along with a
couple of other shady characters (Drew Eason and Keith McMahan) would ride
together. This was about a 45 minute to
2 hour commute depending on where we wanted to eat lunch.
Now one thing you need to know about Mike is that even in
high school and college he was a very neat and orderly person. I’d come running out of the house half
dressed, with a ball cap on, my books and papers flying everywhere. Mike would be looking sharp all day, every
day. He loved music and kept his large
selection of cassette tapes in alphabetical order in a carrying case. Practically every day that he drove I along
with whoever else was riding together that particular day would “rearrange” the
order of his tapes just for the heck of it.
The next morning and with him never saying a word they would be back in perfect
order ready for us to scramble them up again.
After completing the exhaustive academic requirements of
community college Mike went to the University of South Florida and I went to
the University of Florida. Remember
there were no cell phones, facebook or twitter at that time but through the
years we stayed in touch. Mike marrying
Linda, Me marrying Beth, them settling in Sarasota/Bradenton, us moving from
Florida to Texas, there was always a connection. We were connected by family, we were
connected by friends and we were connected by this little dusty town of
Mulberry.
As we moved into the cell phone era we would talk more
frequently, especially from the middle of August through early January when we
would dissect every Gator victory or defeat.
We had also made it a habit of trying to get together for breakfast
every year at Christmas when I would be in Florida. We were successful in this
tradition more often than not and I am so thankful we enjoyed breakfast
together this past Christmas. We’d check
up on each other, check on our respective families, catch up on any “Mulberry
news”, the latest in Gator football and try to remember whose turn it was to
buy.
I’m not a facebook person and don’t know if Mike was or not,
we stayed connected because that’s what friends do and we did it mainly by
phone. If I called him my standard
opening line was “what’s up bud”? If
Mike called me it would always be “Mr. Tucker this is Mr. Gardner”, God I’m
going to miss hearing those words!
