Gerry Komrowski

I want to share a few memories of my very dear friend Gerry Komrowski. My earliest memory of Gerry was freshman year on the soccer team. Bob Hawthorne and I were fast friends , and we shared a silly sense of humor that Gerry found rather uncool. But Gerry communicated his disapproval in an oblique, offhand way that allowed Bob and I to calm down without being too embarrassed.

Gerry was a January baby like me, one of the older kids in our class, but he was always a lot more grown up, and a lot cooler. We didn't hang together much in school; he hung out with a more sophisticated group (i.e., they could get booze). He wasn't very studious, he didn't continue with sports much after that freshman year. He wasn't one of the superstars, but I missed an opportunity there to know a really special person.

Gerry got into an argument with his Dad around the same time I got into an argument with my Dad, and we both got kicked out of the house about the same time - right before we graduated. That summer, Gerry and I shared a humble home at our camp on the river. No electricity, no running water,just a shack with a porch and a picnicc table and the river. It was only then that I learned from Gerry that his Mom had passed away - just before we graduated. So many things happen around that time, you get so wrapped up in yourself, but now I realized why he seemed so good about not getting hung up on the little things.

We had a lot of fun that summer, and Gerry and I stuck together whenever I came home from college. He lived with Louis Green and Louis Green's Mom, who would make breakfast for all of us when we were hung over, God Bless her.

Later, when I transferred back up to Syracuse, Gerry and I were roomates again for a while. Gerry was my roomate when my chopper got stolen, and he was a great consolation during that very depressing time. Later, Fred Gaske put him up in his frat house at SU when Gerry was having some financial difficulty, with some unpleasant consequences for Fred, as no doubt he can better explain. Gerry and I rode motorcycles together all summer.

After I graduated in 1972, Gerry's girlfriend Ginny introduced me to her best friend Katie. We moved into Gerry's apartment in Liverpool. We got married that fall, and Gerry married Ginny only a week later. I thought we would always be together, but Katie and I moved to Colorado right after we were married, and Gerry stayed in B'ville for a while, and then moved to Florida. I hoped he would join us in Colorado, but when I moved to California in '76, I gradually lost hope of ever living near my best friend.

I didn't attend our 10th reunion in 1977, but I did travel home in 1978, and I saw Gerry shortly before he learned that he had throat cancer. Gerry fought hard but he died about a year later, just after his son Matthew was born.

What I loved about Gerry was that when I was going overboard or feeling sorry for myself, he would always let me know without being hurtful, and always in a way that said he still liked me anyway. He was a true friend for not letting me indulge in self-pity. He was a true friend because he accepted me just the way I am, for all my faults, which are many. Gerry was a skilled craftsman, very creative, inventive, generous, fun-loving and optimistic. One of our first times together he took me to a slot-car drag race where his championship hand-built car was beating every challenger. Just before his illness, he was working on building a homemade airplane with Chuck Burtch. He asked me to help him find an Offenhauser racing engine, but I never did. Whenever I was with Gerry, I had to shift into a higher gear to keep up. Although nearly thirty years have passed, I appreciate having him as a friend as much as ever, and I miss him. Gerry, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.