Harry Kreps

For Andy

So this really sucks...losing another old friend.

And I can still see it so clearly.

Leaving my house on Thames Blvd, walking down along
Buckingham to the grassy triangle at lower Winthrop, across 
Jefferson and passing Tokaloca, then making a left on Ogden
and up the hill a little to Andy's house.

601 Ogden Ave is branded in my soul.

It's where a group of boys met on Saturday afternoons. Andy's 
Andy's parents worked in the city at the family luggage business,
and we had the house to ourselves.

We talked about girls and sports and listened to the Four Tops,
Temptations, and Miracles. The British Music Invasion had already 
started, but in the knotty pine walled finished basement on Ogden Ave
Andy only played Motown.

They were glorious afternoons that have stayed with me all my days.

My friendship with Andy ran on thru high school, at college in Ohio
we roomed together for 3 years. And for the last 50 years shared the
stories of our lives, hardly ever a week passing between calls.

Some of us knew that Andy was very sick and wasn't going to get
better. Somehow he managed a comeback from life threatening surgery
in 2015, and about 3 years ago decided on another operation to help with 
his quality of life. This time it backfired on him, only leading to unimaginably 
long hospital stays and mostly uncomfortable days. He was tough and he tried,
but it took almost everything from the once and always happy go lucky Andy.

Not long ago I spent an afternoon with Andy at his home in Delaware. It was
great seeing him and it was sad, realizing this would be our last time together.
I couldn't believe how frail, unsteady, and skinny my old friend had gotten.

Skinny was not a word used to describe Andy.

Kindhearted was.

Later I'll probably be sitting at a bar remembering Andy, Ogden Ave and boyhood 
friendships. And wondering how Glenn Davis, Kenny Blumenthal, and now Andy
could all be gone. That was half of the core group from those afternoons. It leaves 
me and Jerry Zaro, and Ronald Bernstein is somewhere, whereabouts unknown.

But there were others, Seltzer and Flateman

And others, Epstein, Rosen, Scales and Krass

Later on came Gothelf and d Koizum

And still so many more, Andy had a lot of friends, I was lucky to be one of them.

So to all the Whittier School boys who passed thru Andy's house, and to all the 
others who somewhere along the way passed thru Andy's life,

Love and Mercy tonight 
Carpe Diem

Harry Kreps 

The night before the 20th reunion in 1989, I met Ken at the Wigwam on Cedar Lane. We had a lot of catching up and talked and drank for hours. And we've been in touch ever since. I last spoke to Ken about a month ago, knew he was very sick, but he sounded good and said the next call would be his.

The memories of Whittier School boys, his basketball playing are a part of all of us who knew him.

I called him Blumenthal, he called me Kreps.

Peaceful journeys Blumenthal.

To the boys of Whittier School, who long ago played ball on those fields and shot baskets at those horrible metal backboards.  They were glorious afternoons.

And gone are, Glenn Davis, Evan Relkin, Jeff Tischler, and now Roger.

They were all there.

Those boyhood memories have stayed with me, though the only ball I’m playing these days is with my grandchildren. 

Oh boy, till the next game.