He and I, along with the rest of the crew, spent many late nights in dress rehearsals tweaking lines, checking blockings and fine tuning the spots between carry-out meals from the Parkmoore on North Kingshighway at Cote Brilliante. In our senior year he became our theatre’s director of lighting and created magical settings for our productions. “ Larry was a very good trumpet player… (and) was one of the few people in our class who had previously played a band instrument prior to McBride… b ecause of that, Larry and those like him, were the backbone of the McBride band and the foundation for its long reputation of high quality ,” recalls band member Ron Wojcicki. ”Īs first trumpet in McBride’s Concert Band, years later Larry always grew wistful as he lovingly shined his prized silver trumpet and wondered what might have been. was a great teammate and a key member of the best team I ever played with. So, you could say he was our spark plug and the guy Coach Eilerman wanted to get us going…I would say he had to be a. He was a good hitter with an ability to get on base consistently, a nd he was also fast…I suspect he led the team in steals. Third baseman Bobby Joe Scanlon adds, “ Larry always batted leadoff. McB Baseball Greats Larry, Bob, Marv, Ray In short he was just a really dependable, fundamentally sound High School player and the kind of guy you wanted on your team ,” Marv remembers. He was a really good right-fielder as well. Larry was our leadoff guy and was one of those guys that drove pitchers nuts. Hard to strike out and would run up the pitch count on you. Louis) Post after one of our games - we were 19-3 - that said, ‘ Chik Clicks for Micks ’. His role on McBride’s 1969 varsity baseball team-arguably the best team since the school’s founding in 1929-was prodigious according to the team’s catcher Marv Schaeffer.
Larry’s triumphs during our high school years at McBride were in band, theatre, and baseball, and they’ve taken on an added aura over years of reminiscing.
Quite a remarkable achievement, not once equaled in all my other relationships. And while we disagreed often, we always laughed, and were never, ever, disagreeable to the other. We discussed every conceivable dream, worry, elation, mystery that might intrigue two 15-year-old boys through their teens and early man hoods, into their lives as husbands and dads, finally wrestling with life’s questions as early seniors. Larry and I shared many, many long talks over the last 50 years. Louis Post-Dispatch and most of all his wife Nancy, his son Michael, his grand-daughter Tori and niece Lanae. For Larry, life was an immense question mark, and he never lacked for an opinion. Through it all, Larry was always Larry: patient, giving, loving, and incredibly curious. We explored life’s mysteries, inhaled life’s exalted moments and were thrilled by each other’s simple triumphs. We stood for each other on our wedding days, and we mourned our mothers’ deaths together. I met Larry in the early fall of our sophomore year (1966) at McBride High School in Brother Sheehy’s home room, and we remained friends on a nearly daily basis until his death in June 2020. For me, it’s taken almost one year to say good-by to mine: Larry Chik, my BFF of more than 52 years. It’s damn hard to say good-bye -forever-to your BFF of more thanĥ2 years. And it seemed most fitting to me, the day of his funeral Mass was the day devoted to the celebration of Thomas the Apostle, commonly known as Thomas the Doubter. His self-proclaimed high school ambition to be a ”Soul Searcher” rings true to those of us who know him. Larry is a true native son of Missouri, and certainly the state’s motto ‘Show Me,’ could easily be Larry’s epitaph. And so, I feel compelled to write his story as I remember it. But at the micro level, at the day-to-day granular level, his life is poignantly important to many of us and should always be celebrated, and never forgotten. Larry Chik’s Easter Morning Text to Author Dik Ganahl (2020)ĪUTHOR’s NOTE : Larry’s life, like most of our lives, is relatively unremarkable at the macro level and will be little remembered one-hundred years-or even twenty-five years-from now. May you, Suk and Irene have a BLESSED EASTER. It’s a little past 8.’ Then my phone ‘dinged” and I knew all was right as it should be.
Then I thought, ‘Dik will be calling soon. My mind rambled over to the founding of our nation on “religious freedom”: (as long as you’re a Christian) and then to the Palestinians in Israel. “Dik, I was laying here in bed (been awake a while but Nancy’s still sleeping) thinking about Christ rising and his most painful time on the cross.