Terry Jenkins

My oldest and dearest friend, Terry Jenkins, died after a long, brave struggle with cancer.  Not long after my family relocated to the rural Philadelphia suburb Fort Washington when I was eight, the Jenkins family moved to a century-old house a block away. We became fast friends – inseparable if I’d have had my way – and often played inside his house and old-fashioned garage, on his badminton court, or at a clearing we’d made in the woods across the street.  We started a mail route together for neighbors, picking up their letters from trusting postal workers.  We sang a duet in a Fort Washington elementary school Christmas program directed by fifth grade teacher Mrs. Bytheway (no kidding, that was her name). Our parents were best friends, and I had a boyhood crush on sister Judy.  The two families shared a cabin three summers at Lake Minneola in the Poconos. In high school Terry transferred to Penn Charter Academy, but we frequently got together to shoot hoops and talk.  Summers featured marathon card games with Sammy Corey and Paul Curry. 

Terry and Gayle at Voodoo Chili alley dance, circa 2000; Terry observes air guitain'

After we got married, we’d party with mutual friends whenever I came to town. One time in my mid-20s I tried to buy a six-pack at a taproom on the way to Terry and Gayle’s but got turned away because I didn’t possess a Pennsylvania State Liquor Control Board card. After Toni and I moved to Indiana, we vacationed together at the Jersey shore and Saugatuck, Michigan.  In Miller they attended a memorable alley dance where Dave performed with the band Voodoo Chili. Staying at their place during the Eighties, I’d bring albums as presents, and we’d all dance to the Romantics or Men at Work.  Once I got Terry to play Leonard Cohen songs on his acoustic guitar.  As recently as four years ago, we repeated our ritual of touring Fort Washington to revisit familiar houses (on different occasions we got invited inside both our childhood homes), landmarks, sledding hills, and sites of long gone Mom and Pop stores. Terry appears in my latest Steel Shavingsseveral times, including telling him about meeting Joe and Susan McGrath’s daughter Maria at a history conference, recalling with him when the 76ers won the 1983 NBA championship with Julius Erving and Moses Malone, and burying a bottle in his side yard with information about ourselves that someone might unearth years later.

Over the years Terry and I talked on the phone every week or two, discussing the Phillies or Eagles, joking about this or that, and concluding always with one of us saying, “And regards to the family”– an inside joke repeating what old Trinity Lutheran Church softball coach Lee Beers always said. He was unfailingly upbeat despite disheartening developments regarding his declining health.  Once, when he was resisting wearing suspenders at his New Hope store, I told them they were cool and promised the next time he saw me, I’d be wearing a pair.  We were planning to attend a Cubs-Phillies game in August with son Dave and mutual friend Joe McGrath.   Alas, it was not to be. Last week Gayle told me his health was failing, but he came to the phone and we bantered.  Just a few days later, he was on his deathbed and could no longer speak, but daughter Melissa assured me he could hear and put the phone to his ear.  I told him I loved him and repeated one of our many, many fond memories – the day at Lake Minneola when hiking in the woods we came upon a cute girl, Cookie, whom we both fell for.  A couple weeks later, the post office showed us a letter addressed to Jimmy and Terry, Fort Washington, PA.” No last names, no street addresses. R.I.P. good buddy.

After I posted the above remarks on Facebook, I heard from Terry’s sister Judy, who shared it with friends, and a half-dozen old classmates.  Sammy Corey’s brother Jim, who I haven’t seen since he was a kid, wrote: “Thanks for the Fort memories and fond remembrance of our friend.” The obit read in part: “Terry will be remembered for his infectious humor and wit, unfaltering stoicism, intelligence, unpretentious demeanor, and extreme loyalty.”  How true.