I'm sorry to learn an old pal has passed away. We were classmates throughout junior and senior high school, and the first semester of college in Corpus Christi. All contact ceased about three months after I joined the Army... Vietnam War era... Different life paths, you know... He was very athletic and excelled in every sport he tried. Teachers liked him... Girls liked him... He was witty, fun-loving, and smart. I borrowed many books from his dad's paperback novel collection, mostly science fiction and fantasy. When he lived in the mobile home on Mission Rd. (San Antonio) he did things like buy some old golf clubs from a Goodwill store and sneak onto the Riverside golf course to play the back nine holes. One day the greenskeeper caught him and let him know he could play legally with a student membership, which I think he did get. That didn't stop us from hiding in the woods along the back nine and "collect" golf balls as they were hit into them. We'd ignite bottle rockets and toss them by hand into the San Antonio River to watch them explode under water -- they always made sort of a "bloop" sound with a little puff of smoke rising from the water. I once went fishing at the Gulf coast with him, his mom, and his dad -- we had a blast catching gaff-top catfish (they're incredibly slimy). Richard was very proud to show off a beautiful old Victrola phonograph inherited from a grandparent. We did a lot of things we shouldn't have -- like most, if not all teens. His dad always seemed to have tickets for sports events like the San Antonio Missions minor league baseball team and once to watch the NCAA basketball playoffs (UCLA and Villanova) in the Houston Astrodome -- nose-bleed seats. We snuck down to the court-side entrance and slipped in behind some of the basketball team members and support staff... We thought we were tall and could fit in, but we really were pretty puny behind the actual basketball players... Just one of life's little reality checks... The guards gave us the "eye" but let us in anyway. His best friend was Juan Reyes, a fun loving car thief who lived next door on Stonewall -- Juan went through the windshield of a car during an accident outside his house... Richard was with him at the emergency room and when he was being stitched up. Richard and I both worked at the San Antonio Light newspaper, mail room, and stuffed inserts by hand into the county edition of the Sunday paper -- I think we had to do 20,000 society page pre-prints and then stuff them into the actual newspaper as it came off the printing presses... We would be covered in ink by the time we got off work at midnight or later. An old guy named Harry (who also stuffed papers and told wild and inappropriate stories) would buy us each a bottle of Ripple (rot gut wine) and give us a ride home if we did half his inserts for him. Those are a few memories of Richard I thought I'd share with you from 50+ years ago.