“Are You Doing Something Fun for Your Birthday?”
“Are you doing something fun for your birthday?”
It’s a simple question my Aunt Jill asked me when she called to wish me a Happy Birthday.
“Actually, I’m on my way to a memorial service.” That was my response because that’s what I was doing.
She started apologizing. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
I told her two things. First, don’t apologize. There’s nothing to be sorry for. And second, I actually can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon of my birthday.
And I meant it.
Fred Koerber was the father of a very close high school friend, Kyle. Fred was someone I was very close to as well. And the arc of our relationship is something I keep turning over.
He started as the father of a friend. That’s it. Mr. Koerber. Kyle’s dad who was also a coach. I spent a lot of time at their house in high school.
As I got into college, our relationship made its first shift. Fred was a teacher. When injuries ended my college basketball career, I started coaching 7th grade basketball at Brunswick Junior High. Fred was the 8th grade coach. He wasn’t just Kyle’s dad anymore. He was a peer. Someone doing the same work I was doing.
He also became a mentor. I was considering going into education, and Fred helped me think it through. He connected me with teachers at the school so I could volunteer in the classroom and learn the trade from the inside.
Many years later, when I moved back to Brunswick and joined the Town Commons committee, Fred was there too. For the longest time I kept calling him Mr. Koerber. That’s what he’d been my whole life.
One day he looked at me and said, “I want to get this straight. My name’s Fred. And if you keep calling me Mr. Koerber, I’m going to start calling you Mr. Litchfield.”
Understood!
In that moment I realized our relationship was changing again. He’d always be a mentor and a guide. But he was telling me something else. We’re colleagues now. In some ways, I was now leading him as I was the Chair of the committee.
This type of shift doesn’t happen in every relationship. Most of the people who shaped us when we were young stay in the roles we first knew them in. Fred didn’t. He grew with me.
The service brought together people from all walks of life. That’s what the loss of someone like Fred does. It pulls people out of their separate corners and puts them in the same room.
I saw Jeremy DaRos, who I played high school basketball with and lived with in Portland after college. His parents were there too, wonderful people. Dave Trigianni, probably my oldest friend. Mrs. Zimmerman, my senior-year math teacher.
She was talking to one of my best friends Scott and she didn’t even recognize me standing right next to her. At one point she said, “You and Litchfield, always causing trouble in the back of the room.” Scott just looked over at me. Her face lit up. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even recognize you.”
She probably always knew that Scott and I treated our math tests as more of a team-based assignment. My math skills were maybe a little stronger, and I’d help him out. She let it go. She made learning fun. That was one of everyone’s favorite classes.
At dinner that night, my dad reminded me that Mrs. Zimmerman was also a chaperone on our AP US History canoe trip junior year. A bunch of high schoolers on a river, a violent thunderstorm rolling through that night. She showed up for the adventure too, not just the classroom.
Were there tears? Absolutely. Tears of sorrow and also tears of joy.
People said, “Tough way to spend your birthday.”
No, it actually wasn’t.
Was it fun? I’m not sure. But I do know that it was something better than fun. Something that reaffirms what it means to be human, to have relationships, to be in a community where there’s so much love. It was meaningful.
In my high school days, my birthday included bonfires and all the shenanigans that come with being a teenager. This one was a memorial service, tears, laughter, old friends, and a community I’m grateful to be part of.
So maybe the question I want to ask myself every year on my birthday is, what am I going to do that is meaningful?
Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org
I’m sad to hear about Mr. Koeber. He was a great teacher :( Happy belated birthday!!
It’s amazing to go to a memorial service of someone like Fred, who has been an institution in a community for his whole life (absent four years for college). And to see in this experience, many diverse threads of our lives showing up under the same roof for a couple of hours — and so many other beautiful threads that were distinct to Fred and his relationship with others.
What a beautiful human tapestry: lobstermen, teachers, principals, environmentalists, history and archaeology buffs, family, new and old friends, and even a US senator.