Old friends and music never die ~ July 26, 2001

David Heiller

I hadn’t seen Roger for 22 years, since we left the Peace Corps and went our separate ways. We had served together in Morocco from 1977 to 1979, teaching English as a foreign language.

Roger and David making music in Morocco, 1979

We were good friends there, even though we grew up in very different ways. Roger was raised in suburban New Jersey, me in rural Minnesota. But we had a lot in common. In fact, our differences may have brought us together. I was fascinated with his Italian background and big city connections. He seemed the same way about me and my roots in “Minn-Ah-SO-Dah.” (We talk funny to people in New Jersey.)

But our main connection was our love of music. We shared ballads and blues, traditional tunes and new songs, and some that we had written. When we got together, we wouldn’t even need to talk. We would just play and sing for hours, sometimes all night. That doesn’t happen too often.

Roger was a gifted guitar player. He could weave notes and chords into original songs that seemed to flow for hours. I loved to listen to them. He was in a whole other league than me, musically. But he liked my simple banjo tunes and my singing. He always encouraged it and complimented me, which meant a lot.

We tried to stay in touch after we left the Peace Corp, but life got in the way, as it often does. The letters quickly stopped. When my Christmas card to Roger came back “address unknown,” I figured I would never see him again. That saddened me. Every so often I would miss him, and wonder what happened.

Then about a year ago I got an e-mail from him. He had found me using an Internet source. It seemed like a miracle, hearing from him again.

Our letters picked up where our friendship had left off. We arranged for a reunion at his house in Bloomington, Indiana. Cindy and I and the kids drove there last week.

I wasn’t sure what it would be like. A lot can change in 22 years, and a lot had changed. But the reasons we became friends in the first place had stayed the same.

Roger with Maria on a hike
 with the Heillers in Kentucky, 2001

Yes, Roger definitely had gray hair and a gray beard. I guess I looked a little older too. And we both had had a lot of different life experiences. My rural roots bad grown even deeper, and Roger had settled into a very cosmopolitan city and life.

We sat and talked and saw the sights and hiked in the mountains. I got to meet his daughter. He got to meet our two children. We caught up on each other’s lives, on our joys and struggles. That was great.

We played and sang for hours, and that was even better. Roger had stringed instruments everywhere, and he played them with the same love and intensity as before. Our songs meshed again, not only the old ones, but new ones. We hadn’t communicated in 20 years, but we had learned many of the same songs since then, listened to a lot of the same singers. Our lives seemed to be on parallel paths.

I got to know Roger again, and somehow that reminded me of who I was, too.

At times music is like a miracle to me. Last week I discovered that finding an old friend can be pretty magical too.