Besides being a beautiful, kind boy who listened to girls,
Ned was Lower Makefield Township to me, where I moved at ten.
In Bucks County, not flat like Akron. The schools were a grade ahead.
We had a breadman, a milkman, the dry cleaners rattled
as they roared up Brook Lane.
Ned was settled, conservative, fair of face and limb, calm and shy.
He had a group of boys he played baseball with.
Ned was every girl’s hoped-for boyfriend in fifth and sixth grades.
We girls used to sing out his name to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club’s
theme song: “N-E-D-R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-S, Ned Reynolds, Ned Reynolds,
forever let us hold our banners high.” We sat in the back of the bus
and roared our song on the way home from school.
The group I wanted to join with was already holding boy-girl parties
by the time we were twelve. Dances and kissing games started early.
The girls I ate with in the cafeteria made a list of BILTSW. “Boys I’d Like
To Sleep With.” We raised our celery sticks as a salute to this and carried
a small piece of paper with the boys’ names on it in our wallets.
That was good because we didn’t have much else there.
Ned’s name was on every girl’s slip of paper.
Ned and I went to dances in seventh grade and went steady in eighth grade.
He was my first boyfriend. Always a gentleman. He always made time for me
and it has remained that way. Ned became a thoughtful friend, a generous man,
loving husband and father. And close friend to many of us.
In our last phone call, his dying day, he asked, “Are you coming?”
“I am trying,” I could only say. “That’s OK,” he said, evenly.
How we will miss his grace.