Where were you?

[Walter]

I had aged out two years earlier with Northstars, from Kitchener, Ontario and was doing some travelling with Ventures as tour cook. I was waiting for them to come back from a short trip they were on when the person I was talking to, I didn't know, told me that Jim was killed the week before.

I had never met Jim but when some one dies in our drum corps family, it effects a lot of people not just the people who are close. I sat on the side of the building and said a few short but very heart felt prayers for every one in Spirit and Jim's family. I had to leave the parking lot and go home. I know what it's like to have an instructor die without really saying good bye, ours die in an auto accident in October 1973. I still have nightmares about that day.