Why should one freeze to death? Why should the vagabond steal our bread? You think by now they’d have enough sense not to stay outside and freeze to death. “Sun Goes Down” (1985) —Angry Red Planet
I have died, but it is not as bad as you think. —Jeff, 9/9/2023, last message to Boyer.1
I.
I believe Jeff “The Heifer” Harris caught live gigs of both my bands during the 1980s, and two of my plays during the 90s.
Let me start there.
Those early downtown excursions (beyond pro sporting events) stood out because, well, he was easily one of the most popular students of our graduating class, equally liked by jocks, stoners, nerds and unclassifiable misfits, partly because he genuinely personified something in common with all of us.
Why visit me?
Jeff would unexpectedly drop into my life each time after expectedly dropping out. Staying until the end of the set or the show, he would share his infectious grin with some sardonic quip. To me, he approximated an eccentric combination of Dean Martin, comedian Norm Macdonald, Detroit Tiger Ed Brinkman and a quietly glowing Jack-o’-lantern.
Oddly, as often as he smiled, I can’t recall him breaking into extended laughter.
Anyway, why the interest in my ragtag rebellion against our materialist upbringing (and other related causes)?
Why stick around to start up a conversation?
In those rare post high school stopovers, he seemed genuinely intrigued by my detour away from our shared suburban upbringing (in mostly affluent Birmingham, MI), more so than the alternative punk rock clamoring from the Cass Corridor, five miles south of Detroit’s Great Divide of Eight Mile Road.
Even then, his quirky humorous asides could become a bit dark, or esoteric, as if maybe he hid much more than he would ever reveal.
Including his drinking.
In ever precise hindsight, his own detour would be more gradual, self-destructive, and most tragically, seemingly unavoidable.
Jeff’s self-selected profile photo and unmistakable smile.
II.
I never minded being called a loser. —Jeff, 4/6/2020 message.
Let me try again.
During the 1970s, Jeff and I occasionally collided as eager little league three-sport rivals (basketball, baseball and football). We became amiable teammates as above-average students of average height in our middle school years, although my much skinnier physique relied completely on desperately developing certain precise skills (usually in way too many solitary hours of ultimate futility).
His relatable father became an appealing, moderately successful head coach for our ninth grade football team, despite having been hired as a last-minute replacement in a sport, an activity, I once embraced more than any other.
Jeff’s main athletic gift showed me early how mental self-confidence could often overcome size, strength or speed as a vital trait for any achievement. Try as I may, unlike Jeff, my teenage self would miss the go-ahead lay-up, strike out with guys on base, or drop the game-changing catch, feats seemingly effortless in drills or pick-up games but vanishing in contests that mattered the most.
“Heff, maybe I just need to practice more free throws.”
“Billy, maybe you just need someone to try to distract you while you’re trying to shoot them.”
Of course, the comically contorted faces he made could be enough to further throw me off my game, as I retreated to more secluded training. Only two years ago, he would confess his game-situation abilities were only marginally better than anxious underachievers like me, that his highest scoring basketball game occurred only after he had downed a six-pack of Stroh’s beer.
That would be in the 12th grade.
Still, despite my outsider status, he kept trying to involve me in the next practice or school social setting — girls confoundingly included — perhaps because he possessed an early clairvoyance into how his own limited physical skills would not carry any scholarship dreams, how real success should not be measured in any sport stats.
Curiously, in the tenth grade, he had become the only collaborator and co-conspirator of my underground newspaper, Tuesday Edition, at least until an assistant principal threatened to suspend me for its continued publication.
My 25-cent zine rivaled Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder in its weekly researched accuracy of college and pro football spread predictions, with added coinage collected for an innocently ignorant betting pool among a few dedicated jocks.
Even then, Jeff foreshadowed signs of a deep gambling obsession, one only to be upstaged by a more dangerous alcohol addiction.
By the 12th grade, I had narrowed my extra-curricular participation to only football, making the varsity after two years of weight-lifting, running and hauling in passes from anyone willing to humor me, including Jeff, our ever-patient back-up quarterback (he also started in the defensive secondary, setting a school record that year for most interceptions).
My final gridiron memory summarizes my senior high inadequacies, with Jeff trying to hit me over the middle on a deep crossing route, as if only he truly believed in my ability to snare a 30 yard-pass sailing over my confused helmeted head.
A career-ending ruptured disc — a fluke injury during pre-game warm-ups a week later — permanently ended my football delusion. Jeff remained one of only two or three teammates sincerely bothering to check up on me as I helplessly cheered the team from the sidelines those final weeks of a lost season where we almost won the city championship.
To no one’s surprise, he would eventually graduate the University of Michigan with a business degree and a CPA, on to many years of seemingly fruitful accounting work, at least in perpetuating an illusion that everything was all right. I recall once introducing him and his wife to my fiancé at that time, boasting how this will be the guy who’ll be doing our taxes after we’re married.
One summer in the late 90s, in a final active team sport indulgence, he briefly joined my unaffiliated minor league Detroit baseball team, the Cass Angels. He appeared to really enjoy this hardball resurgence playing third base in a couple of games before again disappearing from my last playground, explaining how he couldn’t take more time off work to practice and compete at this level.2
My 30th High School reunion. Kindhearted childhood acquaintance Kristi, jovial Jeff, another half-empty beer and a daffy Dionysus.
III.
My mother had a doctorate in psychology so I don’t trust psychologists. I wonder what Freud would say about that. —Jeff, 10/8/2016 message.
This is hard. I’ll try again.
Look, the over-50 single male population suffers from potentially fatal doses of alienation. Such a “condition” is made much worse through alcoholism or drug addiction, of course, yet also rendered disturbingly troublesome by an inherited aversion to psychotherapy. As bellowed in the words of my own emotionally distant father, “I saw a psychiatrist once, but I realized that’s really just for women. Just let God and prayer take care of you.”
My appeals to Jeff about the benefits of long-term psychotherapy apparently never sounded too persuasive.
Still, a letter and phone call from Jeff prompted one of our best talks together: a beer-free bar lunch in Traverse City, circa 2006, shortly after his recent release from about two years in the Grand Traverse County Correctional Facility for a second DUI. Because his alcohol crime involved his two daughters, he carried an understandably immense shame, an extreme guilt obviously even more difficult to talk about than his divorce.
Yet we both rambled for two hours, on a wide range of private misfortunes and personal missions. Although his slightly liberal politics contrasted some of my more radical anarcho-communist views, I still remember how much we agreed on some false values of our mutual suburban upbringing, including how we did not self-satisfyingly wish to simply replicate the lives and views of our parents.
He had lost his driver’s license but not his sense of humor. In walking and cycling every day, he looked great. To my dismay, I would only see him in-person again for our 30th and 40th high school reunions, in 2009 and 2019 respectively, as he eventually moved out of Michigan, alternating between Colorado, near his sister’s and Indiana, to be near his brother.
After the rather reserved 40th reunion, he stayed overnight on an extra long sofa, after we chatted for another hour into the late night din of our Detroit condo.
Like first semester college freshmen, we traded chuckles on who were our school’s hottest cheerleader-type women in 1979 and now, 40 years later, before babbling onward to more serious topics, such as how wealth and inequality still played out where I lived and taught.
“You still have quite the admirable job,” he reminded me.
“Sure, ok, but I don’t think it’s nearly as transformative for most students as I once did.”
“Maybe you’ll find out more positively after you retire,” he reassured me in a strangely comforting way, as he had so many times before then.
In July 2023, he had planned to attend the 50th reunion of his special Birmingham Little League baseball team which almost won the 1972 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. We tentatively arranged another sleepover at my place, but he had stopped messaging and texting everyone by late May.
Maybe he knew there would be too much alcohol and noxious nostalgia to resist. Maybe he did not want anyone to hear the story of how he passed out drunk in high school at the wheel of his Camaro. Maybe he did not want to answer any more questions about his spiraling life.
At a mostly subdued ballfield and subsequent bar celebration, his old friends and teammates apprehensively asked each other if anyone had any updates on Jeff.
Nobody did. His last two phones numbers no longer worked.
And then I received his cryptic September message re-posted above.
On social media, the amateur photographer left behind a fascinating assortment of over 2,000 photos; an odd mix of goofy selfies, childhood sports nostalgia and striking nature scenes, often with shots on the edge of civilization.
IV.
Tired of anger; mellowing down easy. I certainly don’t scroll thru posts. —Jeff, 6/20/2020 message.
In July of 2021, Jeff barely survived his worst loss where he lived in Fishers, a rapid growth “second class city” outside Indianapolis. His younger brother Dave suffered a fatal massive coronary — right in front of him.
While dozens would offer the usual reflexive thoughts and prayers posts, Jeff responded by publicly declaring he would never get over such a tragedy. After previously losing both his father and a nephew, this catastrophe naturally overwhelmed him completely.
Sometime during the last year of his life, he made it back out to the Denver area, where his sister lived. It’s not clear when, how and where he visited Denver, only that he became homeless at some point, and that he was possibly starting work at an interfaith organization in Loveland, Colorado.
Like most major cities, homelessness and hunger are supposed to be remedied by common citizens and their modest charitable organizations, not at its source with the billionaire class, who could readily solve such massive disparities. Denver, as with many urban centers, conducts frequent police-led removals of homeless encampments, even in freezing weather.
Such brutal tactics have helped cause over 300 street deaths in Denver alone, quite the austere record for such a tourist destination.3 Jeff’s recent passing likely did not make the list of 311 names read out loud for the solstice vigil in Civic Center Park, just three blocks west of the Colorado State Capitol. Maybe one or two of the resident activists still knew of his name and had the fortune of meeting him those final weeks or days before the onset of hypothermia.
Maybe a politician or two once passed him on the way to work. . . .
V.
A week before Christmas, I was dragging an old cheap particle-board bookcase to the curb, a warping shell of a display, the stock type impulsively bought by young consumers unaware of the differences between defective wood and sturdy oak, when I noticed a message about Jeff on my cell.
As other messages started to trickle in, I just slumped down, a profound mix of sadness and bewilderment. I began imagining a missed moment, one where I pick him up at the same airport where we last parted, with his wonderfully grandiose grin, where we now yuck it up about the Detroit Lions finally hosting a playoff game after 30 years.
Pulling him aside, I envision adding, “Jeff, stay for a few days or a couple of weeks at our place, until you get back on your feet. I insist.”
He would have resisted such an overture, yet maybe he would have relented in person.
“Heff, we’ll play catch with my boys, catch a movie and a stage play, and yeah, love ya.”
And yet we all passed up the wide open shot, we all stumbled and fell just before the goaline, hoping somebody else could lift him off the field. . . .
Perhaps Jeffrey’s final lesson: the somber limits of supposed digital camaraderie, that despite its remarkable ease of access, all this instant communication technology, with perfunctory likes and belated social media wellness checks, are just trees falling in a deserted forest, with the sound of us fooling ourselves, of a strayed friend, a homeless John Doe, found frozen and lifeless in an urban city park.
This version has been slightly edited from the original post since some details of Jeff’s passing became clearer in January of 2024.
Here’s a link to one of Jeff’s favorite poems by the late poet Jim Gustafson: Poetry and Baseball
Denver’s chronic homeless crisis can be further explored here: Homelessness in Denver
Bill, that was an incredible and sad recap of our friend Heff. So poignant. I had absolutely no idea of his struggles or problems. I last saw him at the 40th and he seemed like Jeff to me. There are hidden battles everyone faces; that's why close friends are so vital for honest confession and sharing. Small groups, even if not connected with a church, are another good conduit. Heff obviously didn't have a confidant nearby. What a tragic shame. I wish I had been closer to him. He was fun to be around. Full of life. May his soul rest in peace.
Thanks again for sharing Bill. You have a gift with the pen that is special; you have progressed greatly since our NFL Films recaps. What a great memory!
There is a special kind of sadness watching someone we love and care about, spiral down over and over again. The hope of them overcoming their addiction, depression, money problems or tendency to self-destruct dies a little each time we are confronted with another failing. We often vacillate between wanting to see them do well and the fear of losing them. The despair of going through another emotional roller coaster and not wanting to deal with it. Anger at how are lives are disrupted as one more huge favor, one last promise - for good this time - or an unending request for money that stretches us thin and never really solves anything is repeated once again.
The futility and helplessness over time can harden hearts or turn us against our loved ones out of sheer self preservation. When someone dies in this state, we are left with a slew of unresolvable emotions, guilt, remorse and sometimes, a bit of relief.
It's so easy to judge someone who's homeless and feel they could do better. Not everyone who finds themselves in this predicament is a drug addict or did anything wrong. Sometimes family situations don't work out or illness, loss of a job, death of a loved one and rising costs for housing have contributed to the situation. There are less resources out there to support the public including mental health.
I've lost several friend to addiction over the years. Sometimes I've just had to walk away and keep my distance. I know of tragic backstories for some but perhaps they all share that denominator. I do know that it seems like the ones who should shine brightest and have so much to offer are often the ones caught up in this cycle.
There are 12 step groups to support those that are involved with someone who has an addiction. Some find comfort in grief support groups, therapy, religion, friends, writing or holding ceremonies for the deceased as a way of closure.
I would encourage anyone who has someone who struggles in their life to continue to reach out, to offer support and be a friend when possible. We cannot control the outcome but can be there to help them make a better choice. Not everyone will make the right choice...
There is a rise in homelessness and addiction that our cities need to address. There should be programs in place and tiny homes to support the transition off the streets. There are successful stories of this around the U.S. There needs to be more.
For those that have lost a friend or family member, I would say this is not the end of their story nor their defining moment. Think of the things you loved about them and hold onto those as their true essence.
For you, Bill and all of us who've lost loved ones, I raise a glass to your friend and others like him, thank him for the camaraderie, the wisdom, the love and the good times shared. I wish them well on the next leg of their journey.
Cheers!