St. Matthew Elementary in Indianapolis, IN, 1972. Left to right: Bob Gardner, Bill Lawler, Bert Happel.

Here we've just exited from our graduation ceremony and we are enjoying ourselves while posing for family photos. I had attended St. Matthew's for three years and I believe that Bill had been there two. Bill and I are wearing our honor roll lapel pins.

While we had classmates who lived in our respective neighborhoods those neighborhoods were spread apart. Consequently our friendship was mostly limited to school hours. I recall being very happy to receive an invitation and to attend the subsequent graduation party at Bob's house.

We would go our separate ways the next fall attending three different, though local, high schools. I'd next run into Bob again when we were freshman at IU and living in the same dorm.

I don't know if I ever saw or spoke with Bill again. He died in his early 40s from ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's). I remember him being obsessed with cars and auto racing. Before he died he did some racing and was involved with (owned?) a racing team as his health declined.

Original slide taken by my father using his Kuribayashi Petri rangefinder. I digitized the slide and cleaned a lot of dirt off the image. View full size.