Hillers - The Way It Should Be

What A Ride

May 19, 2010 – If good friends are one of life’s treasures I’ve lost a pearl. George Franklin Feldman passed away May 5th, 2010. He authored the ongoing commentaries posted on my website titled “Ruminations of a Flayed Fox”.

George was flayed all right… He ferociously fought four different cancers over 15 years and left about 50 pounds of his parts in various Pathology Labs in the process. It never even slowed him down until a few months ago. If anyone asked George how he felt, his instant response was: “ GREAT”. He said it so often that people stopped asking, which is what he wanted. George was an old fox. So am I, maybe that’s why we got on so well.

Some men seek a smooth and gentle path through life; others creep from lily pad to lily pad frightened that their toes might touch the water of experience. George cut a massive swath… he wanted to feel, touch, taste and experience everything. He was a TV news anchor; a reader on Voice Of America; managed 3 campaigns for the United States Senate; 2 campaigns for the United States House of Representatives and an Indiana Gubernatorial campaign… all 6 were successful. One was for Vance Hartke a controversial anti-war, ultra-liberal Senator who fought doggedly for civil rights and equality long before it was a politically correct posture.

George wrote a book about cannibalism and headhunting among Native-Americans, traveled the world, participated in dozens of Archeological digs, founded, ran and sold a large company, drank his share of good and bad gin and charmed the ladies from 19 to 90. George was one a hell of a guy.

George and I had a lot in common; he used to say we were both snake oil salesmen. Me touting my grocery stores on the radio and he Blue Luster Home Care Products (which he founded and subsequently sold…quite handsomely). We both reveled in the written word, in politics (our views differed mightily) in adventure and in so many things that I came to believe that we had to be brothers from different mothers. I envied his excellence as a wordsmith. He said the same about me. The difference was that I was telling the truth. He was the best damned writer I’ve ever known.

George and I even loved the same girl; his daughter Eva… Eva was my mother’s treating neurologist when she died from ALS and no one could have been more gentle, supportive nor caring. George once told me that Eva was his diamond. Something else we agreed on!

We shared a favorite quote too:

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, totally worn out and proclaiming, 'WOW, WHAT A RIDE!!!'

I will miss you George Franklin Feldman.