My only picture of Larry is the one in my mind of him grinning.  He grins and seems to want to say something, but I'm not sure what. 

Somewhere in the background he's dancing, too.  There's all that Balkan that he loved so much and did so well.  There's the one time we tried swing together.  I messed up - being inexperienced in swing - but he apologized.  He thought he should have done better because he was the lead.  And he was in NY at the time of our 400th birthday celebration. 

More of my dance pictures of him are doing Scandinavian dancing, where he was much less expert.  We danced together in Milwaukee.  We danced together in Door County.  We danced together at Folklore Village. 

Still my favorite dance memories of Larry come from the times we drove to Chicago together to dance at Roo's Sunday night Scandinavian dance.  The dance was great, but the drives to Chicago were even better, especially the last one.  He wasn't sure he could make it because he had a meeting for the Milwaukee folkdance group, but when I explained that I'd be leaving  Milwaukee before the next Sunday dance, he agreed to meet me for the Chicago dance that was our last Chicago dance experience together. 

It was coincidental that we had our most personal time together that last drive, discussing the important things in life - dance, my project on 'learned optimism', Chris, relating in general, music, and my daughter in particular.  It wasn't the first time that he had been truly interested in a proud mother's babbling about her daughter's musical accomplishments.  He was truly  interested, and remembered details from one conversation to the next months later. 

He wanted to play the Brahms' clarinet sonatas that all of the violists play with her when she was in town.  They were going to play Brahms in December, but Arvilla had just had her impacted wisdom teeth out and wasn't interested in having a viola anywhere near her jaw.  She hadn't been back through Milwaukee when I heard of Larry's death.  Larry, I hope that you have lots of music today.

Pat Blochowiak

Pat Blochowiak - Cleveland Heights, Ohio
patrbl@attglobal.net