" A Haunting True Story!" 1964

When I was in the 10th grade, my best friend was a genuinely nice and decent fellow who lived in a broken/dysfunctional home with his single Mom and at near poverty.  He was a wonderful friend.  Sadly, one night, he was with friends in a car that crashed and ran into a creek that killed his two friends, leaving him in the hospital with serious head injuries. I went to visit him and he was so depressed about his friends dying and all he could say was he did not know WHY he was spared.  When he got out, we hung-out together like usual but he was clearly depressed and ALL he could talk about was his dead friends and he felt guilty that he survived.  He would call me in the middle of the night and I would talk him back into feeling better. He said that he kept seeing them in his mind and in dreams, almost every night, as they were calling for him to join them in the afterlife. Finally, after about 4 months of dark depression, he called me and said that he left me a letter and he was going to do something that he had been needing to do for a long time.  After school, I went to his Mom's apt. and got the letter.  He said that he was finally going to join his dead friends because he did not deserve to live since they died instead.  He ended by saying "You are my BEST Friend FOR EVER, Rick!" and said he could be found at the boy's grave site.  I told his Mom and they called the Police and we went to the cemetery and sure enough he was on the grave stones and he had shot himself in the mouth and it was a terrible scene, so tragic and depressing with another "good-bye" letter asking God to forgive him and to understand and his Mom and Rick to both understand and forgive him for doing what he had to do.  For some unknown and strange reason, his body and cloths were soaking wet, as if he had been in a creek.  It scared me and I really believed that somehow he had visited them at the death scene and experienced the creek! I shall ALWAYS remember Larry and those sad and enigmatic days back in 1964.  It was a HAUNTING experience and I still think about him and this story from time to time.   to be continued.................  Capt. Rick Rotundo