When I lived in Ohio in the 1970s, I had a dear friend, John Parker, who played bass for a lot of the things I did. I was very close to him, his wife, and his daughter Laura, who was around 7 or so when I moved to Manhattan in 1979. John's younger brother Will was a baritone who sang at City Opera with my friend Faith Esham in Cendrillon and other opera companies, and he died of AIDS in 1993.
One of the last things Will did was to commission the "AIDS Quilt Songbook," which premiered at Alice Tully Hall, and that was the last time I saw John, who had moved from Ohio after his divorce, and was living in California (I think) with his second wife. We lost contact after that, and for years I tried to find an address for John. Laura lived in Manhattan for a while, but, curiously,she never tried to contact me. About a month ago, she sent me a Facebook friend request, and I accepted. Today, in her Father's Day post I learned that John, who had been living in Hawaii, had died from cancer in May 2013.
I am still reeling from the sad news.
