It could have been him

Today we went to a "showcase" performance, one where nine professional acts (eight musical and one magic) gave twelve minute performances to be rated by the large audience to give local entertainment directors as sense of what their audiences might like to have booked. In the audience were also entertainment directors from the surrounding area. These acts were all talented and varied, and several had bands that had guitarists. One even had four! Two acoustic, an electric guitar and an electric bass guitar. 

I couldn't help but remember Leif playing his four guitars, starting with a blue one he got in high school when he first got interested and started taking lessons in Highland Park, Illinois. That was his "starter" guitar, a decent instrument which he kept the rest of his life. He added a a green Kramer Floyd Rose guitar, the guitar he designed and made himself, and the blue bass guitar he is playing at left. That was the only one he ever played (briefly) in a band while he was a student at Antilles High School on Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. This photo was taken when that band was performing at school. 

Leif loved music and had a huge collection of CDs, spent a lot of money to put a top of the line stereo in his car, and loved playing his guitars. He would practice for hours, learning some of the famous riffs and guitar solos, though never to his desired standards. I still hear them played on the radio or in television shows or movies and always remember Leif playing them.

The groups we saw today had some excellent singers. Leif could sing, too, though we didn't even know that until he turned up on the Antilles musical stage acting and singing the part of Kenickie in "Grease."

So,  couldn't help but think, if he'd had the burning desire to be a musician, he could have been on that stage. 

Leif as Kenickie in Grease

It's been over thirteen and a half years since Leif departed this earth. What can one say that hasn't been said in all those years? And yet, as I go through all the old videos, photos, slides, and negatives, I find new images. I love to see them. I digitized our amateur video of the Antilles High School production of Grease in May 1992, in which he played Kenicke. I was surprised to see that we had some pretty good close-ups of him (that Sony camcorder had a great zoom lens) and I could grab screen shots of him, and am including three of them here. He surprised everyone, including us. No one, not his classmates (except those in the cast as they rehearsed), not us, knew he could act and sing until he got on stage. How I wish he had found a way to use that talent after this performance! He did play electric guitar, but I don't think I ever heard him sing again. He was 17 years old in these stage photos. The high school is located on Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico. 

 

Singing To My Sons

This morning as we were listening to Roger Whittaker singing "Both Sides Now," Peter W. said it reminded him of me singing to our boys at bed time. I said I never sang that song to them, but I guess the kind of song it was made him think that. I thought I had written about singing to my boys on the blog already, but I couldn't find a post about it.

I don't know if my sons remembered all the songs I sang to them once they were grown, but it was a special bed time ritual for many years. I started it when Peter A. was little and continued it for many years, long after Leif was born. I remember how, when I had two of them to sing to, I used to sit on the floor between their two bedroom doors, facing them, and sing in the dark hallway.

I think I particularly remember that place and time because of sitting on that floor. The boys were eight and two years old then.

I started singing when I was in college, accompanying myself on an acoustic guitar. For a short time I sang with a quartet. After college, for many, many years the only singing I did was at home with my guitar or singing to the boys at night. I have no photos of me singing with my guitar or singing to them. I wish I did. 

I sang mostly folk songs, oldies, and a few Broadway numbers. One of the songs the boys loved was "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin' Along," an old song I learned in college. Since I have no photos of me singing to them, I found this video of the melody. There are a lot of videos online with a wide variety of singers, famous and amateur, singing this song but their renditions were so different from mine that I am posting a piano version.

I also loved to sing "Try To Remember" from The Fantasticks, "Inchworm" (originally from the film Hans Christian Anderson), children's favorites like "The Ants Go Marching" and "Found a Peanut," and many folk songs.

Both boys had good voices. Peter A. began singing with the Kinderchor (childen's choir) in Sachsen bei Ansbach when he was in fourth grade and sang all the way through school and the Air Force Academy in choruses and musicals. 

Leif had a wonderful voice, but he never sang until he tried out for high school musicals and won the coveted part of Kenicke in "Grease," when his rendition of "Greased Lightning" made the girls scream like he was a rock star. I've written about that on this blog before.

When my grandchildren were tiny, I thought of recording a CD of the songs I sang to my sons for the grandkids, but I never did it. 

Singing to my sons is a special, warm memory. Bed time was good, with cuddles, stories, and songs, our time.

Leif in Blue on a Sailboat in the Caribbean

I love these photos. Peter W. took them when we were out on a sailboat when we lived in Puerto Rico in 1991. Leif was such a "Tarzan specimen" then, so tall, slim, muscular and handsome. He was letting his hair grow long, was finding good friends and dating, doing well in school, making his own guitar. He loved the sea and sailing. This was the summer that he went on the teen sail adventure in the British Virgin Islands and came home really looking like Tarzan with his long hair in tiny braids -- not the Tarzan ever actually had that hairstyle, but this was the Caribbean version. :) The memories of that time are good, happy ones. I'm glad he had some good times. Though not all his time in Puerto Rico was happy, I think some of the happiest times of his life occurred there, like his first love, K., and his triumph as Kenicke in the musical "Grease," his sail adventure, guitar playing, his group of friends. How I wish the successes he felt then had continued.

Today was a beautiful day, one that would have been lovely for a sail, a day at the beach, or Leif's other joy, a motorcycle ride. As we were driving down Dale Mabry in Tampa, a silver RX8 was alongside us. It might have been Leif's car. We thought of him, talked about him, reminisced, and how we missed him. BOB (big orange ball) was smiling on Tampa today. I wish he'd been there to enjoy it.

There are always so many reminders of him. I was thinking yesterday, as I was driving home from doing some errands, about this blog, about how I've been writing for more than three years. Haven't I said it all? Told all the memories, some more than once? Asked all the questions? At least all that I can put out here for an internet audience to read. What is left for me to write? And then I'll have a new dream, or something will trigger another memory, or I find a new picture or set of photos I'd like to post, and the blog goes on. I'm glad, for as long as it lasts. It's become a part of me.

Rambling Memories

There are nights when I don't know what to write, when my mind seems to go off in too many different directions, or when I can't find the right photo to go with what I want to say. I started out looking at more of the things Leif wrote in high school and college, and wishing I had more of them, but realized that wasn't really what was on my mind.

I thought this evening about how many years of my life were influenced by Leif; eighteen years raising him to adulthood, and another two while he was still living at home and going to college before he moved out to live with Nikko and eventually get married in October 1995 at the age of twenty. I thought about all the experiences we had together, how I taught him, and eventually, how he taught me. I thought about the things he loved, and the things he hated. I thought about all the times we took him on trips, both as a child and as an adult, and what good company he could be, and usually was . . . unless he was in one of his uncommunicative moods, but luckily those were not frequent.

I thought about all the talents he had that he never had the desire to pursue and all the ideas he had and loved to talk about. I thought about how he would spend hours trying to make a report or paper as short and concise as possible so that it would only barely fulfill the length requirements set by the professor or teacher, not because he lacked the information or knowledge to make it longer but because he didn't want to be verbose. He could have been done with them far quicker if he hadn't continued to condense and condense.

I thought about tutoring him in algebra, Spanish and German, the first two in both high school and college, because he was used to things coming easily to him that he hated to study and didn't really know how.

I thought about listening to him play his electric guitars, trying to emulate the sounds of his favorite guitarists.

I thought about him singing the part of Kenicke in "Grease" with all the girls going wild.

I remember the day he brought me my Nokia cell phone in a cute little bag and proceeded to set it up for me. And the time he got my mother her first cell phone (with my financial help) and surprised her with it for Christmas,

There are so many memories, thirty-three years of them, mostly good, some frustrating, some dismaying, but all-in-all, how much he enriched our lives (not financially, but emotionally and intellectually), and even with much humor and fun. I look around this room alone and see the office furniture that he and Peter W. put together for me, the computer he left behind, the monitor he set up for me, his photo albums, the flag case from Melissa with his casket flag and military awards, the book he posed for the cover for, and so much more.

Our lives were intertwined, as all close families are, and even now that he is gone, there is no day, no part of a day, that we don't think of him.

I wonder if he had any idea how important he was to us, how deep an impact he had on our lives, what a tremendous hole his death has left, how much we will always love him. Surely he could not have known that and left us like that . . . or was his life just too miserable to endure despite it? I cry for him, that it was so.
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This photo of Leif was taken at a lake in Japan in 1980 when he was five years old.

Leif With an Accoustic Guitar - circa 1999

I keep discovering new things about Leif. I'm sure that for everyone we think we know, there are many things that we don't know and probably never will. Many families seem destined to learn new things about their deceased loved ones, sometimes secrets they wanted to hide, sometimes just interesting tidbits that round out our image of the person we have lost, and sometimes, intimate details of their lives that would have remained private but for death.

I knew Leif played the electric guitar, and that he had four of them. We gave three of them to him, and he made the fourth. I posted photos of them on this blog long ago, as well as photos of him playing in a band at Antilles HIgh School. However, as far as I know, he never had an acoustic guitar or any interest in playing one. Therefore, I was quite surprised to find these two photos of him clearly playing someone's acoustic guitar.

The photos were of several guys, dressed informally, sitting on folding chairs in what appears to be a basement or garage or some such, with a concrete floor. They have beers. I don't know any of them. The photos were mixed in with photos from the time he was in the Army, so I'm guessing they are Army buddies, but whether this was taken at Fort Drum or while he was in Bosnia I don't know. The only clue about the time frame is his hair. It's a military haircut and he hadn't yet started shaving his head, so I'm guessing it was taken either in late 1998 or in 1999.

I find myself wondering whether he was also singing or what they were all doing. Leif had a great singing voice, but the only time I ever heard him sing was when he was playing the part of Kenicke in the Antilles High School production of "Grease."

Leif has considerable musical talent, a characteristic he shared with both me and my father, his grandfather, but like me, he didn't keep up with his instrumental music as he got into adulthood, unlike my father, who continued to play piano all of his life.

Greased Lightning - Sung by Leif Garretson 1992

When Leif was a junior at Antilles High School at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, he won the role of Kenicke and had all the girls screaming when he sang "Greased Lightining."

The cast of the musical was really good, but they had no real budget for props and scenery, so the "greased lightning" car was just a plywood flat on wheels. At one point, it even fell over, but the guys covered and played it well.

We hadn't known Leif could sing until we saw him on stage. His friends hadn't known, either. He was great! Like a rock star.

Unfortunately, this video was taken with an analog VHS camera in 1992, from the back of a high school auditorium, so the video quality is poor and the sound is even worse.

However, it is the only video we have of our son on stage and we treasure it. We hope you enjoy it.