CityView Magazine

12 | September/October 2016 McFadyen's Musings Saluting a Friend T hey were very familiar to me at church that morning. She was graceful and comely. He was that angular, trim guy, obviously military, certainly an officer with rank. ey had regularly been to church here before, I was sure. ey had gone away, and now they were back. I spoke to them as if I remembered their names. We had sons in the same grade and daughters close in age. eir daughter was who I remembered most. Half a dozen years ago, First Presbyteri- an Church tore down a crumbling building and built a state-of-the-art one. Fundraising was essential. My wife and I were involved with the junior high youth Sunday School at the time. At home, we also had taken on a new brood of one dozen chicks, the next laborers of our Eastover Egg Company. (It never made us rich; we always ate the profit.) For a class fundraiser, we held the first ever First Prez Chicken Derby. Most Pres- byterians believe that anything is okay in moderation, and so we figured gambling on the grounds was not a mortal sin, as long as the proceeds went towards the new building. For our racetrack, we brought in a round horse watering trough, turned it up- side down as an elevated infield and strung fluorescent vinyl fencing in a larger circle around it. e open ground between the vinyl fence and the horse trough was the racetrack. We named the peeps things like Barbie Q, Cordon Bleu and Sonny Side-up. We asked $5 for each prediction of which peep would be the fastest to cross the finish line. e winner's name escapes me, but the kids raised several hundreds of dollars and eve- ryone at church from that time remembers the Chicken Derby. One of the lasting memories from that day was a photograph of a pre-teen stu- dent holding Barbie Q. Both the peep and she have the most tender looks on their faces. at girl in the picture was Madeleine BY BILL MCFADYEN Clarke, and on this day she was standing in front of me as a young woman. Her fam- ily had returned to Fort Bragg and to our church family. She attended with her par- ents, Richard and Suzanne Clarke, and her brother, Will. Aer a few more reunions and re-ac- quaintances at church, Susie and I invited Rich and Suzanne to our house. It was the day of the Holy Trinity Lobster Fundraiser, when the Episcopalians ship in live lobsters for anyone willing to pay the price. We bought four. It was a frosty night. Susie put on her show for Suzanne in the kitchen with fancy niblets and apéritifs. In the garage, Rich and I cranked up the Bose via Bluetooth. It was a Tom Petty-themed Pandora station and we opened two brown bottles of Amstel Light. e propane blower kept things at about 60 degrees. e pot was boiling over the gas cooker. We were happily comparing life histories. en came the seminal moment when I socially blundered. Fortunately, it was also the moment when an abiding friendship was born, complete with a rapid growth curve taking a new friendship to life-long status. "Rich," I said, "you are a full Colonel, aren't you?" He paused just a moment, choosing a gentle path down which his correcting words would take: "Well, Bill…actually, I am a General." I put my foot in my mouth. Still, in an effort to save an ounce of cool, I respond- ed, "Well, congratulations on getting your star!" "Well, Bill…actually I have two stars." Geez. Royalty. I may as well have offered a Sun Drop to the Queen of England. en he said this: "But I am really kind of glad that you did not know." It meant something to the man that until that moment, Major General Richard D Clarke, Jr, Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, was just a really cool dude from church that I wanted for a new pal. 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