Al Bell, R.I.P.
Allan Bell died a few days ago. He was 74. In grad school, he was my closest friend on campus. We were at the University of California, Riverside in the late 1960's. One of our teachers was the conservative sociologist, Robert Nisbet. We both occasionally wandered outside the history department.
He was not a Right-winger or a Left-winger. But he was never taken in by the academic system. He knew how to work it quite well. I appreciated that. He was my kind of guy.
He liked guns. He went into law enforcement after he graduated. That was an odd career choice for a man with an M.A. in history with a specialty in China.
He never seemed to age much. This was a recent photo.
After he graduated, we had little contact. I visited him once in the mid-1970's. His children were young. We occasionally exchanged emails, but that was about it. Time marches on. It gets away from us.
The friends we had in school, whether high school or above, are only rarely close to us afterward. We separate. People go their own ways. Yet we remember those friendships.
It occurs to me that this is like men under fire in a war. They become a band of brothers. They are in a tight situation. Some of them don't make it. This pressure under fire creates a brotherhood. But it ends after the war ends.
That was my experience in high school, college, and grad school. The pressure creates a bond. But after the pressure ends, the bond ends. The bonds are positive while they last. They help us get through the challenge. But then they end.
We should do more to keep these bonds alive, but we usually don't. We have new pressures and new bonds.
Then comes an obituary.