J.P.

My father always said that you could count your true friends on the fingers of one hand.  John Phillips was one of mine.  He died suddenly a few years ago.  Tragically, his son Jim, in his mid-thirties, has also since passed away.  At my daughter Jenny’s suggestion, I wrote “JP,” some stories about John, for Jim to read.  Unfortunately, I didn’t finish in time.  With John’s wife Barbara’s permission, I’m posting “J.P.”…

Had the Gods of football smiled on me for one more week, I would have played opposite John Phillips in the 1950 Andover-Exeter game.  But the Gods were not in my camp.  A blind-side clip in the Tufts freshman game the week before hobbled me, and I was forced to watch Exeter trounce us from the stands on crutches.

I got to know J.P. before I ever met him.  We both wore the same number — 69.  Three weeks before The Game, the names of our counterparts were stenciled on the padded uprights fastened to the blocking sled.  I hit “Phillips” at least 10 times each practice as the defensive line drove the sled backward until our legs could churn no more.

Fast forward to the fall of 1951, freshmen football tryouts in New Haven.  The guard slots were hotly contested.  Our friendship started right there.

I was one of the smaller entries, maybe the smallest.  My advantages were speed and agility off the snap, both diminished by the knee brace and bandages I was forced to   wear.  I got hit again and decided to pack it in.  I later underwent a successful knee surgery to remove the lateral meniscus cartilage and have a tuck taken in the lateral collateral ligament.

J.P., Richard Haskel and several other Uglys, as we guards and tackles became known, carpooled daily to the Field House for practice.  Friendships that developed that fall have lasted a lifetime.

J.P.’s family and five generations of my own have treasured time spent on Fire Island, experiencing the wonders of growing up and living on the beach.

In June 1954, J.P. was one of 12 college juniors who Mom and Dad let me invite to the family beach house in Lonelyville for a weeklong holiday between finals and our Summer military training — some Army, some Air Force, some Navy.  By then the friendships formed freshman year had become bonds.

The holiday consisted of daily rugby games at the ocean, with scrapes and an occasional bloody nose, swimming in an ocean that was nearly perfect all week, topped off with great food and nightly forays to Ocean Beach about a mile away – the only community then with more than one bar and an abundance of action.

Our group had an advantage.  We had our own piano player.  Goldie’s was the bar of choice, the owner was one of the great jazz players of his time.  He also owned a lively, trendy bar in midtown Manhattan.  Our friend the piano player sat in for Goldie during breaks.  The girls crowded around him as he played, perfect for the rest of us to poach.

Dad took a picture of us that week with Mother seated in the midst of what she called her “Beef Trust.”  The picture still hangs in many of our dens today.

Represented in the photo, then as freshmen, were one All State Ohio high school All-American halfback, three guards, one center, two tackles and one end.  Many of us played more than one sport, so also represented were three lacrosse players, three wrestlers, one hockey player, one soccer player and one tennis player, plus one aspiring jazz piano player.

In later years, this same group contributed in business and education — a bank president, a paper company CEO, an airline president, a shipping magnet and lawyer, one of Wall Streets top investment strategists and a hedge fund pioneer, top executives in business, brokerage and business consulting, Wall Street partners and executives and one college professor.

Four years of college went by in a blur.  In the space of just a few hours in June 1955 — Graduation Day — our lives changed abruptly, from students to graduates and for a great many of us, from civilians to commissioned officers, J.P. in the Army, me in the Navy.

Although the Korean War had ended, animosities still smoldered and there was still a lot of saber rattling the U.S. and the Russians.  Plenty to think about!

Several of the “Beef Trust” reconvened on Fire Island for one last fling before heading for places, responsibilities and circumstances unknown.

One of the group asked me to rent a place for members of his secret society for their post-graduation celebration.  J.P., the piano player and I took on the assignment.  We settled quickly on a four-bedroom house in Ocean Beach with a guest cottage attached off the back deck.

The renters from New Haven were not due until the weekend.  The three of us decided to use the house for three days.

I signed the lease and put down the security deposit.  The real estate lady must have been greedy or just plain out to lunch, probably both.  Unbeknown to us, she had rented the guest cottage to two young very attractive divorcees.  The combined rentals had all the ingredients of a train wreck.  Like raw meat and a pride of hungry lions, primal instincts began to rise.

We moved in, provisioned the kitchen and set about getting ready for our first night on the town.  J.P. was the last to shower.   We were sipping a beer and planning our moves.  As he emerged, ready for action, there was a lull in our conversation.  The unmistakable sounds of soft music and female voices came wafting through the thin sheetrock wall separating the main house from the guest cottage.

J.P.’s curiosity bubbled over.  He approached the source of the sound, cocked his head back and accelerated it forward, crashing through the sheetrock wall (fortunately for him there was no 2×4 in the way).  There, before him in the cottage, were two half-clad beauties readying themselves for a trip downtown.

Startled at the sight of J.P.’s head sticking through the wall like some hunter’s trophy without the horns, they screamed and squealed. The music stopped and one of the girls dialed the police number posted on their icebox door.

Meanwhile, J.P. couldn’t back his head out of the jagged hole he had created.  We came to the rescue, breaking more of the sheet rock in an effort to free him.  It appeared to the frightened girls that we were trying to break down the wall entirely and enter their quarters.  We finally freed him.  Following the age-old adage that “discretion is the better part of valor,” we decided to vacate the premises before the arrival of the local constabulary.

Safely ensconced and seated at the bar at Goldie’s, worries of our earlier skirmish faded quickly, and we began to enjoy the evening, oblivious to the chain of events unfolding.

The police roused the ditzy real estate lady and checked the house.  I had left my copy of the lease on the kitchen counter complete with my name and my parents’ phone number.  They also knew me from life-guarding and knew my grandfather as the doctor who tended for the Ocean Beach community.  Calls were made to my parents and Gramp.

We moved from Goldie’s to Flynn’s in Ocean Bay Park.   Each of us found “lodging” and spent the night away from the house.

The next day, I made a routine phone call home.   All hell broke loose.  “Where have you been?  The police are looking all over for you.  You’re in deep trouble.  Turn yourself in.  Call us right away.  Your grandfather is on the warpath!”

Fortunately, the lifeguards and police had always enjoyed an almost fraternal relationship.  I called them and said I’d be right in, assuring them that we meant the two girls no harm.

I arrived at the police house contrite, but firm in the contention that the real culprit was the stupid realtor.  I offered to apologize to the two girls, and assured them that I would personally repair any damages.  The girls agreed to drop the charges.  I called Mom and Dad at work and Gramp, surviving three tongue-lashings, offering a tepid defense.  I knew that we had dodged a bullet.  The fact that I was reporting to my ship in two weeks also helped minimize the severity of their reaction.  The incident faded.  The details have not and will be preserved for a book not yet written.  How about “The Perils of Parenting” for a title?

J.P. completed his military active duty before I did.  He was well on his way to a very successful career at First Boston before I got out and started looking for a job.

Gramp set me up with a friend of his best friend, the Chairman of Citibank.  I was thrilled and called J.P. to tell him of my good fortune.  He invited me to lunch at The Hargus, a quick serve top-of-the-line restaurant across from the NYSE.   I arrived early and seated myself.  He arrived. WOW!  He looked like he had just stepped out of an ad in “Gentlemen’s Quarterly,” sporting a finely tailored dark blue suit, white button down shirt, with a maroon and blue regimental striped tie and carrying an expensive looking leather brief case.

“J.P.”  We shook hands. “What’s in the brief case?”  He was one of a kind.  He cleared his throat and the guttural giggle that started at his toes soon became louder and erupted into the famous Phillips’ laugh, filling the restaurant.

He looked at me sheepishly and opened the brief case revealing the contents — a softball glove, a copy of Sport’s Illustrated, The Fall Football Review and a bologna sandwich tightly wrapped.  The contents didn’t matter.  I bought one just like it the next morning.

J.P. was a wonderful storyteller.  Swapping them was a favorite past time.  He related one of my favorites to us on the back deck of his Point O’ Woods house.  He began by saying, “George, you know how tough it is for linemen to keep the weight off… My doctor, Barbara, and the kids kept after me.  I finally gave in and signed up for a weight loss program — 12 days at a spa in rural New Hampshire. Most of the “inmates” were  unfriendly and just as unhappy to be there as I was.  That, plus the monotonous daily routine — up early, sweat pants, vegetable juice, more supervised exercise, skimpy tasteless meals, endless nutrition lectures — it all began to get to me.

“One afternoon another disillusioned male inmate and I decided during a carrot juice break to ‘bust out’ that night.

“Shortly after lights out, we snuck out of our rooms, dressed in the darkened hall and made our way to the window at the end of the corridor, sneakers in hand.  We looked right and left, opened the window and slipped out into the night, no one the wiser.  We put our shoes on and trudged down the country lane about a mile to the main road.  Our escape went off without a hitch.  The strip mall on the main road featured a McDonald’s. The staff couldn’t believe their eyes.  The number of quarter pounders, French fries, chicken McNuggets and milk shakes we consumed in short order rivaled anything they had ever witnessed. To top it all off, we ordered apple pie and egg McMuffins to go and large cokes to wash them down with.”

J.P. looked around and started his laugh as he began to relate the story of their return. “We got back, opened the window and slipped over the sill — Scott free — not so fast.  The hall light flashed on and there staring at us from the end of the hall was ‘The Warden,’ a sallow faced, frumpy, spinsterish matron, lacking in many things not the least of which was a sense of humor.

“She screamed at us, ‘Get to bed.  We’ll deal with this in the morning.’ Like two truants reporting to their middle school principle’s office, we received a lecture on proper decorum.  We were grounded, not expelled, but also not invited back the next year.”

Half the fun of listening to J.P. tell a story was watching him tell it.  He always laughed that wonderful infectious laugh, shaking his shoulders up and down and nodding his head, everyone joining him.

I think of J.P. often: his mischievous smile, rollicking laugh and love of life.  I also think of his son, Jim, who shared so many of his wonderful qualities: warmth, humility and wit.  Some friendships last a lifetime.  Others, like mine with J.P., last even longer, kept alive through wonderful memories – cherished, written and retold.

George S.K. Rider