The Passing of Lifelong Friends (Repost)

Barbara plays the ukulele for Cindy.

(This is a repost from July 8, 2022, in honor of another friend and basketball teammate from my college days who passed away recently.)

I received word today of the passing of two lifelong friends. One was the wife of my roommate my first two years of college; the other was a teammate on my college basketball team. Later, I was the junior varsity basketball coach at the private school in Miami where he was the head coach.

I am saddened, but realize that I am blessed that so many of my lifelong friends are still alive.

Louise and I were on the founding faculty of Florida Christian School in 1968 and were there for two years before moving to Chattanooga. In 1968 and 1969 the staff and many supporters of the school spent the Thanksgiving weekends camping at Jonathan Dickinson State Park on south Florida's east coast. The photograph of Barbara Krall playing the ukulele for Cindy was made on Thanksgiving weekend, 1969 with my first "good" camera, the original Nikon F with the bulbous Photomic pentaprism, and a Tamron 135mm f2.8 lens. The film was Kodachrome 25, which I bought out-of-date for very cheap at the Eagle Army-Navy stores in Miami.

The photo below is the young Jenkins family at Jonathan Dickinson the previous Thanksgiving. It was warm that year, not chilly, as it was in 1969. The photo was made with a Kodak Instamatic, the camera that got me started on my life in photography. The film was color negative of some kind, probably Kodak.

 

The young Jenkins family, 1968

Time passes, and so do we all. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available for $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail me a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

If you would like to have a print of any of my photographs, check out my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  If you don't find what you want there, let me know and I'll arrange to include it in the gallery.

Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    travel     Nikon Photomic F camera     Kodachrome 25 film    Florida    Florida Christian School     Jonathan Dickenson State Park    Kodak Instamatic camera     Miami