I wrote the note below about Doug after I heard the news, remembering him. Perhaps next year I will come up and ride in it rather than supporting someone else.
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From January 25th, 2009
Doug and I were friend in college in Dayton. I met him when I was 18. We spent a lot of time together during a four year period. I last spoke with him around 10 years ago.
Mary sent me pictures of him last night taken 20 years ago. Doug was always one for a picture, with a smile on his face for every single photo; goofing with Ted and Mike, partying with Erin, Tracy and Cindy or just hanging with friends.
He loved music. He listened to everything, but what I will always remember was how big of a Def Leppard fan he was and this was when Hysteria came out sophmore year of college. Every party at his Kettering Dorm room had half of Hysteria played at some point in the music mix. That was a great album and it's what I may always associate with Doug more than anything else.
Doug always had the best parties at Kettering Dorms and at the house on Wyoming. He was the one that got all the cute girls that we worked with in the dining hall to show up at the parties. We went to several concerts together over the years: The Rolling Stones, Boston, Farm Aid, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Henri Lee Summer and a few others I am probably forgetting.
That 1989 Rolling Stones show was a highlight for him. Mike and I waited in line for 38 hours to get those seats as the number 2 and number 3 people in line at UD Arena for our group on a hot summer day and night and day. I think Doug even brought us beer at one point while we were waiting now that I think about it.
Leading up to the show, we told him we were in the 300 level in Riverfront Stadium and didn't actually give him his ticket until we walked to the field level and he asked why we were going onto the field if we were supposed to be up in the nose bleeds.
He about shit himself when we finally got through security to our 8th row, dead center seats. We were so close that the inflatable doll during "Honky Tonk Women" was above AND behind our heads. When the flames shot up during the opening, we felt the heat from the flames!!! Mick and Keith are really ugly up close.
Doug was a huge fan of Living Color and they opened the show for the Stones that night. He was the one standing and singing along with every one of their songs during their opening set.
And when the Stones came out, he went apeshit when they played "Bitch" as the second song of the set. It was his favorite Stones song and the one song he really hoped they would play.
He was a fairly funny guy and on rare occasions he had a very hilarious and raw sense of humor. That was surprising because he would sometimes (often) be very offended by comments that we (mostly I) would make.
One night, junior or senior year, at one of Doug's parties at that house on Wyoming, Erin (and maybe Tracy) were standing, facing Doug, Chris and myself sitting on the couch in the front room at Doug's house. As was typical, there was a lot of alcohol consumed at the party by this time.
Erin was PISSED off about something and reading Doug and Chris the riot act for something they said or did. Doug reached down on the couch and casually grabbed the remote. He hit play on the VCR remote as he made like he was moving the remote out of the way and apparently there was a porno in the VCR. I think the magic elves must have left it as I'm sure good practicing Catholic boys at a Catholic university would never have one of those in their house.
It was quite a graphic movie as the next thing I saw on the TV behind Erin while she was yelling was a humongous erection and I say that NOT because it was a 19 inch TV.
The three of us sat there trying desperately not to crack up as Erin went on and on about whatever she was talking about for the longest two minutes I'll ever remember. I remember looking at Doug and Chris and back at Erin a couple times as they sat there with suspicious grins growing on their faces (and I did not have a poker face either) and Erin is not registering at all what is going on the TV screen behind her.
Finally something clued her in to the fact that all three of us were stiffling laughter (we were bursting at the seams as giggles were escaping by this point) and she turned around and was so disgusted with what was on TV and upset that we were sitting there laughing our asses off seconds later that she stormed out of the room. I think Doug finally collected himself and went after her to calm her down.
The rudeness was completely out of character for Doug yet it was perhaps the funniest thing I ever saw him do.
When I drove by that house last month on my way to a local Dayton bar, just before a UD basketball game, I couldn't even pick Doug's house out of the eight or nine houses on the right despite my spending many, many nights drinking with friends there 20 years ago. Chris had to point it out when we passed it after the game. I even roomed with him for a short period at that house one summer as he and I worked in the dish room handling inventory counts and repairs to the furniture in the UD dining hall. I almost roomed with him and his roommates midway through sophmore year when a roommate moved out of Kettering, but one of his roommates didn't know me so he vetoed Doug's suggestion.
I watched game 7 of the 1992 NL Championship series at his apartment on Irving near Kramer's bar while I did laundry that night. His apartment building had a coin laundry in the building. It was the Braves versus the Pirates. Francisco Cabrera had a hit and Sid Bream, half hobbled from injury, slid across home plate just beating the tag in the 9th inning. It was thrilling to watch the series that year and that was an unbelievable finish to the NLCS that year. Even though we were both Reds fans, we both cheered over the excitement of the play as we literally leapt off the couch.
I watched a few Bengals and Reds games with him at the house. He grew up in Cincinnati and moved back there after I left Dayton in 1993.
The SNLs we watched during the 1988 presidential election were good times. Remember Jon Lovitz's Dukakis imitation ("I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!") opposite Dana Carvey's Bush imitation?
He came to Columbus for the Octoberfest on a surprise trip with Chris, Matt, Ted and Mike to see me and we experienced our infamous dunking booth incident in 1993. I was glad security did not escort us out of the festival. The phrase "Please do not throw the ball at the girl" (said twice over the loud speakers) is a memory from that night that none of us will ever forget.
I can't imagine all the conversations he and I had over the years working in the dish room at Kettering, working banquets, all the parties he threw that I attended. Just every day conversations, long forgotten, not very profound or important.
He was the most decent one of our circle of friends. It's not a coincidence that all my memories and stories of Doug are good memories.
Erin and Mary both contacted me on Friday and let me know he was moved to the Hospice in Hamilton, OH. I only learned in December he had been battling cancer.
And now he is gone at the age of 39. I've spent the past two days thinking of him and sharing some of these stories with friends. I thought it was the best way I could celebrate him and remember him.
