For Dan

 

Dan Sandifer, who passed away on July fifteenth of this year, is the reason Lamplight Drivel exists.  It's true.  In early 2007 I had gotten back in touch with my old friend on the Classmates site.  It had been nearly twenty years since I'd last seen him, during his weekend leave from the Navy, three years after we had graduated from high school.  It was a gas to communicate with him again, a guy I knew since kindergarten.  He alerted me to his blog, one mainly devoted to his progress on his lifelong quest, to find his birth parents.   

As an addendum, Dan did finally reunite with his birth mother in 2020.

He asked if I had a blog.  It never occurred to me to start one.  What was so interesting about me?  I always considered blogs to be highly personal, like online diaries.  I was coming out of a dark period during graduate school at that time.  Admittedly now with enough time to actually compose some thoughts in cyberspace.  I went to the Blogger site and the rest is history.  I started tentatively, writing only four posts the inaugural year.  For my initial entry Point A, Dan wrote the first comment:  

It's a start!!

Yes it was, the beginning of a journey running nineteen years and counting.  As you know, one mostly filled with cranky film reviews.  Some personal musings and life recollections.  I mentioned Dan in the "Canyon Livin' Part I" post from 2010.  I visited him in California two separate times during trips to the American Academy of Audiology convention.  So great to catch up, to meet his wife and son.  Still the same kind, funny, and genuine soul he always was.  I spoke in earlier obituary of how rare it is to find lifelong friends, ones you pick right up with even if decades have gone by.  Dan was another such friend.  Another one taken far too soon.   Another lost to the ravages of cancer.

Since the terrible diagnosis was made in 2022, he documented his treatments - genetic and traditional chemotherapy - on social media.  At some point he moved from California to South Carolina.  Leaving behind a tribe of folks with which he became very close.  Dan was a huge Dr. Who fan and began attending the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles decades ago.  He started as a volunteer and eventually became a division head.  Along the way he made several true blue friends, like-minded individuals who appeared to be as both empathetic and snarky as Mr. Sandifer himself.  I saw their photos and comments on Facebook.

I was a little envious, truth be told.  Dan finally found his people.  I don't think there were too many such individuals in West Palm Beach in the '70s and '80s.  Like me, Dan was never into the whole materialistic South Florida thing.  Unlike me, he never did succumb to wearing fashionable logos on his clothes in high school.  I always admired him for being himself.

We shared an obsession with all things STAR WARS.  I think he was an even bigger fan.  How I would love to travel back to all those afternoons with him, moving action figures around a pretend Tattooine or such.  

We had a few elementary school skirmishes.  At least two fistfights, one in the boys' room. Probably because one of us smarted off to the other at the wrong time.  Those grammar school years were like that.  So funny to think back on that now.  I haven't had to throw (or take) a punch since sixth grade, thank the Lord.

We were both on the yearbook staff, senior year.  Some great days.  So much fun.  Danny's (that's what he was called back then) job was to input all the layouts and photos on a computer, quite a new concept in '86/'87.  The staff was a very diverse mix of popular and less so people, and we all hit it off, like a family.  Most of the time, anyway.  Our editor Kim and advisor Mr. Bill Matthews were top notch overseers. 

I remember when we were putting a yearbook slide show (to create anticipation among the student body) together at the beginning of the year.  Danny was in charge of programming the music.  I suggested Run D.M.C.'s "Hit it Run", which was roundly rejected by everyone  due to its inclusion of the word "motherfucker".  What's the problem, guys?    

I could recount so many childhood memories, of the times we and our third Musketeer, Chris, rode bikes around town, went to the Mall, hung at the Zoo and the science museum. Dan and Chris introduced me to the band Styx, or more accurately converted me to their level of fandom.  I was even listening to the early stuff, which they dubbed for me on cassettes, a world away from "Babe".

All three of us served on the media ministry at church during high school (I remained until well after college).  Manning cameras, taping each week's Sunday sermon.  Running lights and the mixing board.  Also good fun, with plenty of stories.  We did get a few reprimands.  I will say without hesitation I was the angel of this trio, the one with the fewest infractions.  Other than that incident with the drop ceiling in the control room, but anyway...

Early this past July, Dan posted one final image - him in bed, emaciated and hairless, with his two sons on either side.  He had just enough energy to raise a peace sign.  Heartbreaking beyond words.  Shortly before, his doctor handed down the hard news that he had but a few weeks left.  I can't imagine how he or his family processed that.  I wish I could've been there to lend support, to be some sort of supportive bookend, this time on the other side of his life. 

P.S.  Today would've been Dan's fifty-seventh birthday.  Happy heavenly, sir.  Later.