I hope in your lifetime you will experience people that leaves you in awe and wonder.
Humans, like me, are naturally attuned to wonder and awe. Once we experience it we feel expansive and life possibilities open. We begin to look beyond our five senses to attempt to understand our wonder. I’ve been lucky to experience this twice in my lifetime. George and Pavel are the only humans who have ever left me in deep reverence of their personal existence. The way they approached their lives has struck me as so visibly unique that it now in this moment deserves my full attention and expression of thart awe.
I cannot further explain how George was a part of my life unless I bring to light our initial meeting.
During the coldest month in Ohio history, I graduated college. It was December 1983 when the meanest of polar vortexes struck. The bitter cold became significant because my plans post college were to move to Ann Arbor Michigan and train with the Domino’s running team coached by one of the best middle distances coaches in the country. My goal? Simply to run times fast enough to make Olympic trials qualifying standards in my events, while I was still young enough to do it. Running at BGSU was a mixed bag for me; spectacular promising performances peppered with injury and burnout and quite frankly a lot of disappointment. I wasnt easily coachable and I selected the wrong school for my talents. I did manage to catch the eye of the Michigan coach, and he thought I had a future in running, at least somewhat. “You’ll never make an Olympic team” he said, “but you’re good enough to make the trials and own a lot more success than you ever achieved at Bowling Green.” My ears were open!
While finishing exams at BGSU we were engulfed in a vortex that brought the chill factor to 52 below. We weren’t allowed to go to class, and it was too dangerous to be outside. Everything including, classes, events, etc. were on hold. We’d go outside our dorm door for 5 minutes or more just to spit into the air and watch it freeze before it hit the ground.
Michigan and Bowling Green are about 45 minutes apart. As I was all set to move north to Ann Arbor, it just didn’t happen . My parents had moved 2 years earlier to the southern Atlantic ocean tip of North Carolina while I was in college and the weather there was phenomenal compared to Ohio. After a week of periodic frozen spit into the air for entertainment, I decided I’d rather be warm than be a professional runner. I headed south in my Toyota corolla.
Moving back in with my parents wasn’t ideal, but it was temporary. I had to wait for my fiance Dave to finish his degree, which wasn’t going to happen until May, so it could be a time for me to work and save money. I worked two jobs and rarely had a day off. I missed my teammates and college life, I missed my organized running done twice daily, and I just missed everything about the coummnity life of college. I missed my interval training runs so I decided I would try doing that at least once a week.The only track in the area was a cement track at a local high school.
Cement is a poor choice for tracks, but at this time in history, places where track wasn’t revered as an import sport, and high schools with limited resources would often have cement tracks. I didn’t know how long my shins could handle the pounding but I decided, I’d try a workout at the cement track.
I headed to the cement track on a parting of seas day where I didn’t have to report to either job. I ran a set of 200 meter reps, noticing a few other athletes there who seem to be doing their own workouts, stretching, communicating with each other. I was focused on just being around the track, it’s familiarity and the temporary comfort it brought me. Over the past decade, the track had become my second home, and I preferred doing fast workouts rather than slow runs on the roads. The track was where I felt my personality flourished. It was perfectly measured, perfect for timing reps, structured, predictable. Only this one was cement.
Stretching after my workout, and I could see a figure approaching from my left. Ah shit I thought, some guy is going to bug me, so I did my best not to make eye contact. It didn’t deter him from introducing himself as a local runner from the local college, UNCW and he knew how to draw me in. He asked me what my main distances were, he complimented my form, and recognized me as more than a jogger. I briefed him on my track career and current situation and we got into a series of discussions about running. My heart began to lift for a time, I had found another student of the sport. My people! He invited me to local running events and a Running Club New Year’s Party where he introduced me to other runners. I believed he had sensed my lonliness and connected me to the local running scene. I was in awe of how many people he knew and how he could easily make friends.
Fine, powdery, inorganic binder that hardens when MIXED with water, creating a stone-like mass that BINDS sand and gravel.
George seemed to be the definition of cement…in the best of ways.
Didnt take much time before we were doing some easy runs together, occasional meet up at the cement track for quick intervals with his running fried and former UNC star Marla. We went to organized Wilmington Road Runners events and I drug him to and old dingy theatre near campus for three hours of Dr. Zhivago. After watching that movie we went to a local cafe and discussed it for another three hours. The man knew his bolshevik history, and I had found a friend who loved discussing movies.
George had a knack for romancing the world. Everything was an adventure. He spent one year, preplanned, not spending any money other than his rent. You might wonder how you can do that, but he carefully plotted every happy hour that offered free finger foods, every social group on campus that ordered snacks for meetings, he managed all the details in advance. His toiletries came from left over soap bars in the communal bathrooms on campus. He rode a bike everywhere. He had his mind set on not buying anything and we could not convince him otherwise. Obviously, he was saving money, but for him, it was more about the challenge. It felt like an experiment that not even he was sure he could manage, but he did. Myself and others looked on in awe, helping him with an item or two he might need. He relished the whole primevil idea and we watched in awe.
As he made it month by month, we cheered him on. He was romancing austerity and we were the audience.
As years tolled on, we found ourselves with hundreds of hilarious stories concerning our quirky George. The time he qualified for Boston Marathon but never made it to the start line because on his uber ride over, he saw the North Church and demanded the driver to stop while he explored this block of history. Time eluded him as it often did and he missed his race.
While his first love as History, George was actually a journalist. He wrote school newsletters, running club newsletters, he wrote and wrote for his own pleasure. He created a blog that explored deep cultural and political topics, typically prefaced by historical observations. Eventually, he taught history at a high school in Charlotte NC where he quickly become the favored history teahcer and his students adored him. He made history romantic and they never forgot enthusiasm to view the world as its own spectical. He ran like an artist too however, his style, the stiff guy in the stiff shoes was something of awe too. He chose common forms of training, basic high mileage (which George thrived on), lots of tempo and long grueling runs made him come alive. He scrapped most track training, which weren’t his preferred training surface. The more he trained, the faster he ran and the faster he raced until he was a force in the southwestern region of the country winning the prestigious Charlotte Marathon after not intaking any water or gels (for George reasons unknown) and practically crawled in his last two miles. His form was quirky at best, stiff legged he still glided over roads like they were nothing. Even his running shoe of choice was bulky and inelastic, the Chariot shoe by Brooks. The rest of us would pine how we hated those Brooks, but for George it was the magic elixir. Steady stiff and with his cement shoes, George began to own the roads in his neck of the woods and left a lot of national class athletes scratching their heads when he pressed them during a race. We continuted to look on, always in awe.
Highly unique my sister would say. Where’s his girlfriend, where’s a wife? “He’s gonna find a partner one day, and she’s gonna love him for all his quirkies.”
He did meet a partner, Elizabeth. She was a collegue, another high school history teacher. Again we cheered. They married and raised Elizabeth’s son from a previous marriage. He’d call Dave once in a while, speaking about the trepidations of raising a teen boy while we’d laugh as he practiced his parenting quotes over the phone. His style was old fashioned, similar to all of us products of the post depression baby era. George seemed to be parental inorganic binder that hardens when mixed with water, in other words, cement. George welcomed the role and he played it well and the two came to understand each other over time.
While George’s teaching style was nostalgic and sentimental, the same way he carried out his friendships. Teaching to him was beyond a paycheck, it was his personality and soul sharing itself to the outer world. Students who struggle with attention admitted Mr. Walker’s class was the only class they were engaged in. He brought in props to make history come to life with the same sonorousness he brought to all aspects of his life. When he spoke, people listened. When he ran, people noticed. When he wrote his soul was bared with each word and sentence. He was an observer of the outer, but very much communicated the inner.
As years passed, we could talk about our running and our youth without losing a sense we were aging in different ways and that running was going to age with us.We lost a few steps, but our memories were solid. Our time was past, but our hearts still understood the feeling of running with such intention and fervour. My husbnad and I suffered a crushing life defeat, but he wouldn’t let us give up. He bonded himself to us with a quiet and powerful way of loving us through his simple presence. He reminded us that although severly damaged, we still had something to offer, even if it were only memories of the people we once were. Cemented in.
Fine, powdery, inorganic binder that hardens when mixed with water, creating a stone-like mass that binds sand and gravel.
Then came the ALS diagnoses. This cannot be, we all thought. There’s too much awe here for such a disease.
This vibrant mind and athletic man could not possible be stopped by a neurodegenerate disease that would severly stifle his ability to communicate. His romancing of the world shrunk. We watched the body slow, but we never witnessed any deterioration of his spirit. He communicated with the same fervor, this time using his working thumbs to text his thoughts and document the world he still found fascinating. He showed little fear. The last time I spoke in person with George he asked about me, he asked about my family members. He never focused on his discomfort .How deeply perplexed he must have been to understand this fate. His only job now was to finish out a hero’s journey, the one we all expected. We weren’t giving up on the awe, and neither was he.
Fine, powdery, inorganic binder that hardens when mixed with water, creating a stone-like mass that binds sand and gravel. Difficult to break.
To the Universe:
We say goodbye to our good friend George. Like Pavel, we appreciate being able to have enjoyed their true beautfy for the time they walked among us.. Their souls sparkled, and we were in awe. Our time felt too short, but never hollow or dull, as they had no way of living in either of those two domains. With trepidation, we commend their spirits to you as we grieve so heavily, because both are worthy of the heaviest grief. They brought us joy. We love them as ferociously as they loved us.
They were not ours to keep.
But they were always your brightest wonder.
And so it is.
Stephanie Agosta