It was 25 years ago today (June 10) that Larry had that fatal accident. He left behind his wife Rene and two young daughters, Tiffany and Melody.
I was a friend of Larry's from the 5th grade at Hilldale on. We visited in May 1983 and he was doing very well with his family and his business. Like a lot of us who were a bit on the partying side of things in high school, by his early 20s Larry had matured a great deal. He was so proud of his daughters.
Back as kids, in those "banana bike" days, just a block away from each other in Grandview, we did a lot of stuff, like doing evil knievel jumps on our bikes, football out in the yard, sliding on the ice in the ditches during winter in our dingo boots, water balloon and snowball fights (where occasionally passing cars just happened to "get in the way" :), and messing around in the nearby fields and woods. Larry had a lot of friends from Hilldale; particularly Dean Pollack and Joel Smith stand out. He was always fun to be around. And, Larry played trumpet in band and was good (first chair). I remember in 6th grade he was one of the guys who played the morning reveille at Hilldale.
In high school, Larry had a great car, a blue '67 mustang (I think that's right), but he and I weren't that great about attending class. I remember one Monday we took one of those 'days off' from school and drove up to Tulsa and somehow ended up with 4 free tickets from a radio station (the one at the Tulsa fairgrounds) to a Boston/Black Sabbath concert that same night. So, we had to drive back and convince our parents to allow us to go to Tulsa (and no we didn't admit we'd just returned from there!) that same night. Somehow, we got to go (yeah, we had pretty tolerant parents).
Anyway, I still miss Larry. I would have liked to have known the middle-aged fellow he would have become.
Larry Gregg died June 10, 1983.