A Chance Meeting

 It's strange that a chance meeting of only a few minutes can alter your life forever.  Such a meeting happened to me on September 15, 1973.

We lived in east Tulsa at the time.  I was returning home by myself, probably from my parents' house in Mannford, and was driving my wife's yellow Ford Ranchero.  As I negotiated the north leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop, I was following a fairly new Dodge or Plymouth sedan pulling a U-Haul trailer.

As we approached the Denver Avenue overpass, the U-Haul began to whip violently from side to side and, in an instant, came completely around and struck the side of the sedan which was towing it.  I had seen this kind of behavior from trailers myself.  It is caused by not having enough tongue weight on the hitch - in other words, the load is too far back in the trailer.

Ollie Lamont Friend was born on December 22, 1918 in Goodman, Missouri, a small town in the southwest corner of the state.  He grew up there and, on Valentine's Day, 1939, he married his sweetheart, Vera Grace Martin.  Ollie and Vera continued to live in southwest Missouri for some time but eventually moved to Tulsa, probably because of job opportunities.

The Friends were returning to their home in Tulsa after visiting their daughter and son-in-law in San Antonio.  The daughter had given them a window air conditioner for their home but it wouldn't fit in the sedan they were driving so they rented a U-Haul trailer to carry it in.  Ironically, they were less than two miles from home when the trailer began oscillating.

The car and trailer came to a stop in the middle lanes of the expressway directly over Denver Avenue.  I pulled my car off to the side and got out to help.  By this time, traffic began to come to a halt and there was a minor secondary collision behind us where someone had not gotten stopped in time and rear ended the car in front of them.

I walked over to the Friends' car and saw that the trailer, when it came around wildly, had struck the rear fender of their car and pushed it in against their tire.  Not wanting to ruin his tire, Mr. Friend retrieved a tire wrench from the trunk of his car and was trying to pry the fender away from the tire.

While he was attempting to pry the fender out, Mrs. Friend cautioned him against too much exertion, mentioning that he had a heart condition.  When she said that, I told Mr. Friend to give me the tire wrench and I would pry it out.  He handed it to me and stepped back.

All of a sudden, I was struck by something and found myself laying on the pavement about ten feet from where I had been kneeling.  It was such a surreal moment!  I looked around and saw Mrs. Friend lying against their car, moaning.  Mr. Friend was lying on the pavement about twenty feet from me, lifeless, with blood all around him.

As I was trying to make sense of all this, an ambulance was backing up to the scene.  The EMT's attended to the Friends and put them in the ambulance for transport.  As this was happening, a young man walked up and asked if anyone knew what he had hit.  He had been riding a 125cc motorcycle and hit something which knocked his glasses off.

I surmise that the motorcyclist was distracted by the secondary collision behind us and was looking at it and never saw us.  It would appear that he struck Mr. Friend first, knocking him into both me and Mrs. Friend.  I had what I thought was a sprained ankle and I found out later that Mrs. Friend suffered a broken arm and some broken ribs.

Soon a Highway Patrolman was on the scene and had the motocyclist and me in his patrol car.  That's when he told us that Mr. Friend did not survive, something that I had already suspected.  The name of the motorcyclist has been long forgotten, if I ever knew it at all.

When the Trooper released us, I drove home to tell Louise all about what had happened.  By the time I had gotten home, I was really in pain and my ankle was swelling so I had her drive me to the hospital emergency room.  The staff x-rayed my ankle and, sure enough, it was broken so they put me in a cast.

I did talk to Mrs. Friend several times after the accident and, as might be expected, she was very upset.  The motorcyclist had not gotten even a ticket; the Trooper said that we did not have adequate traffic control set up after the trailer had jackknifed.  Also, she was dismayed that the motorcyclist never contacted her to apologize or ask how she was recovering.

As for myself, my recovery was uneventful.  I was in the cast for six weeks and then it was cut off.  My office was very near that of the General Manager, Les O'Donoghue who had his own private bath.  He insisted that I use it while I was in the cast so that I wouldn't have to walk all the way down the hall to the main mens' room.

One funny thing did happen out of this.  Louise and I, along with another two couples, went dancing one evening while I had my cast on.  While we were dancing, I heard a man at a nearby table say "Damn, I've seen tough places before but I've never seen this!", referring to me dancing with my cast.

As I grow older and begin to contemplate my own mortality, I'm reminded of those who have already passed.  Although I didn't know Ollie and Vera Friend, the intersection of our lives left a lasting impression.  Mrs. Friend passed away on November 5, 2006 at the age of 85.  She never remarried after her husband's death.