Forrest and I met at Northern Arizona University. He started as a junior, I think, because he attended two years at Phoenix College. It was either my freshman or sophomore year. It must've been my sophomore year although I can hardly remember college without him which is why I sometimes think freshman. So it was probably October 1984. It was a running joke with us that Forrest not only remembered the exact date we met but that he remembered the exact day of the week (I think he said it was a Wednesday) and he remembered all of the details. I'm glad he did because it would mark the beginning of a lifelong close friendship and him becoming a part of my family.
We met at the campus radio station, KRCK, and both held management positions there. In fact we ended up being the ones that eventually ran the station--me as Station Manager and he as Program Director. I was the political force and he...as he always is...was the brains and the one that made it happen. Everyone I knew in college procrastinated everything, including myself, but not Forrest. He was a 'do-it' kind of guy. He was also the only student in college that carried a briefcase. So Forrest.
I later followed him to the NPR affiliate on campus, KNAU-FM. I was just an announcer there but he handled so much for that station including all of the network feeds. I was blown away by all that he did there.
In addition to Radio/TV, I was also into Theater (my other major) and dragged him into my world there. I even got him to be in a play I was directing (my first full-length play), "The Dining Room" because I didn't have enough guys to be in it. He did well and he gave it his all and even though he was nervous performing, he did it for me because I needed him to. That's the kind of friend he was. I think he enjoyed it and it helped bring him out of his shell. That was our relationship. I brought him into the world of my crazy theater friends and performing (he also got stuck being in several of my TV projects and several short film projects I did after college) and he thrived. He was the responsible one who got things done. We co-wrote a play in college that won 3rd place in the college playwriting contest, and we produced all 3 of the winning plays at KNAU--me as the director and he as the producer (which meant he did 95% of the work) and we both performed in them. He was brilliant even in college.
I was the loud outspoken attention-getting one and he was the one who got everything done. If he were here right now I would start singing "The Wind Beneath My Wings" and he would say "Don't make me slap you."
Forrest had many friends in both Telecommunications and Theater at NAU including the amazingly talented and funny Susan Geary, who, to this day made her dream come true and was really on the radio (you go, girl).
In college Forrest was every woman's 'guy' friend that you could count on if there was a problem. One time when my three roommates and I heard sounds coming from this storage room basement below this removated bar where we lived, we called Forrest to come over and help us. He was our strong guy who went outside with a flashlight and 3 girls following. I was on guard inside and heard my roommates screaming and running back inside. It seems that a skunk peeked it's head out of the basement window. It took awhile for us to get rid of that skunk and the smell.
After college when Forrest moved to Phoenix he lived in a 12-unit studio apartment complex my parents owned. There he met his very dear friend, Laura Durant, who really is the master of the entire Phoenix Theater/entertainment scene in Phoenix. Forrest worked in radio in Phoenix and those that worked with him can better fill in those details as I moved to California in 1987--first San Diego for graduate school and a year later Los Angeles.
[The rest of exactly when Forrest lived where are a bit fuzzy for me. I wasn't good at keeping track of that. Forrest was the one who remembered all of that with his very scary memory and I'm sad that I can't ask him. I may have some of it in my handwritten journals but I'm in Phoenix on vacation and not at home in L.A. to look it up.]
Around 2000 Forrest lived with me, and then later for a time with both myself and my future wife, Nina Minton. I remember that he was living with us because he watched our cats while Nina and I took our unofficial European honeymoon (before we could legally get married in California) in the summer of 2002. Forrest liked Los Angeles but didn't love it as it's not the best commuter city as he'd given up his car. I think he went to Oregon after that.
It was either the late 90's, in-between living with me in 2000 and 2002, or shortly after, that he lived with my mother, Sally. After my parents were divorced and money was tight for Forrest, he rented the guest room in my mother's house in the Sunnyslope area of Phoenix. I felt good about it as I was glad he was there to watch out for my mother during this rough time, and my mother felt close to him and treated him like a part of the family.
So, at some point he went to Oregon (Bend and Portland I think) and later back east near Washington, DC and then Baltimore. There are others who can better fill in those pieces of the complex puzzle that was our dear friend, Forrest.
As Carolyn said below, he was a Renaissance Man and it's funny to think that several separate people have coined that phrase for him. He wrote, painted, and cooked. I will never forget the first dinner he made for me in his college dorm room. I don't remember the entire meal but I do remember that he cooked eggrolls in his toaster oven with a special sweet sauce to dip them in and we had a port wine for dessert (the drinking age was 19 then so we were legal). I hadn't known him very long then and I thought "Eggrolls and port wine? Who is this guy?" He later introduced me to a casual chinese restuarant with a cheap lunch special that became one of our frequent haunts in college. (We may have lived a past life in China together.) In Phoenix we continued our love for Chinese food and even though I don't drink coffee we loved to hang out late on those hot summer nights at a coffee shop at the Biltmore mall and have long talks.
Forrest was the kind of friend you could talk to and always count on to be there emotionally for you--always caring, always without judgment, and always trusted to keep things just between the two of you. He listened to all my boyfriend troubles and was one of the first people I came out to when I felt in love with a woman. Everyone in my family knew Forrest. I was sad that he didn't stay closer to his own family but Forrest couldn't be persuaded to do what he didn't want to do and so, at least, I could make him a part of mine. I'm glad to hear that over the last few years he had started to reconnect with his own family. I know that the loss of his sister just a few months ago hit him very hard.
Forrest was the kind of friend that even if I hadn't spoken to him in months we could pick up the phone and talk as initimately as we did when we saw each other several times a day in college. Forrest was always watching out for me too. The TV show I worked on, "CSI:NY" was on the verge of being cancelled in February and Forrest was sending me internet links for leads on pilots. Even as recently as this past May Forrest was sending internet links for possible job connections -- never letting on how really bad his health was--thinking of me first.
Forrest and I had so many chapters of our lives together and I can't believe there won't be any future chapters together. I just never imagined we wouldn't grow old together. I will very much miss my lifelong friend, Forrest. My dear friend Forrest, I will miss you so much.