A friendship to admire and inspire

For about 85 years, my father-in-law maintained a close friendship James Zealy. Although they lived 250 miles apart for most of those years, Pat Witherington and Zealy remained close through telephone calls, occasional visits and a bond of friendship that could overcome distance and absence.

On Saturday, my wife and her sister and their husbands went to visit Dr. Zealy in Tarboro, where he is living in a senior living facility, three years after his best friend died. For a couple of hours, Zealy regaled the daughters of his closest friend with stories of his and Pat's adventures and antics when they were growing up. He filled in some gaps about the friendship that seems so incredibly durable and mutual. Both men were widowed and remarried. Their wives unavoidably became unlikely friends. Pat joined the Navy and served around the globe aboard LCTs and LSTs in World War II. Zealy was 4-F because he had no eardrum in one ear and went to work in war munitions for DuPont. They grew up in Goldsboro and graduated from UNC. Zealy went on to dental school in Kentucky, then returned to Goldsboro to open his dental practice. Pat opened his CPA practice in Statesville and raised four children.

Throughout 40 or 50 years, they would stop for visits with each other when they were traveling, and they would take vacations together. Letters and phone calls were common, the conversation never lagging between them. After I married Pat's eldest daughter, I became aware of the longevity and closeness of this friendship and marveled at it. My own connections to good friends from my childhood were far less frequent than the connection those two had. I had gone 10 or 20 years without speaking to my closest hometown friends and completely lost track of some of them. I clearly missed out on something special, something enduring and vital.

Now 93 and diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Zealy is still mentally sharp (just as his best friend was up to his death at 89) and still able to care for himself and drive. Thirty or more years younger than Zealy, we marveled at his keen memories and lively conversation in the couple of hours we spent with him. We departed for the drive back to Wilson happy and fulfilled that we had taken this time to be with a man who had been so close to the man we miss so much. Their friendship still amazes and inspires us.

We were left with one regret. We failed to take a picture of Dr. Zealy standing with two of his best friend's daughters. We'll have to do it again, and get a picture this time, one to add to the old black-and-white Kodak shots from 80 years ago at the beginning of a life-long friendship.

In cyber age, I have no "friends"

I was on my university alumni association's Web page a few months back when I noticed a link to "My Page." I clicked on it and discovered the alumni association's in-house version of a social networking site, a Facebook or MySpace limited to alumni association members. On "my page" I found the message: "You have no friends."

I had to go to have the alumni association tell me that? And how did they know?

Of course, the "friends" the page referred to were not "friends" in the usual sense; that is, people you talk to face-to-face, confide in and call upon for advice and help. These "friends," of whom I have none, are the people who sign up to share your thoughts, photos and whatnot on social networking sites. I declined to get  involved in the alumni association's network, chose no "friends," and did not offer myself as a "friend."

A few years ago, I assigned a young reporter, fresh out of college, to do a story on social networking sites, including Facebook and MySpace. To my amazement, the young reporter was not familiar with either network and struggled with the assignment. We old geezers in the newsroom had assumed everyone  in college spent half their time on Facebook or MySpace. That's what recent adulatory news stories had indicated. Since that time about four years ago, Facebook has expanded beyond its college campus corral and is accepting members who do not have collegiate e-mail addresses. This has opened the network to older people who are using Facebook to reconnect with childhood, high school and college friends. They're "friending" (a new verb the social networks have launched) their old friends and catching up on their children and grandchildren. (Sometimes they also "unfriend" people they decide aren't worth keeping up with.) MySpace, meanwhile, has been in the news as an alleged haven for sexual predators and has signed an agreement to eliminate those dirty old men masquerading as teens.

My wife has recently posted herself on Facebook and has "friended" some high school classmates and reconnected with old friends (old in the sense of aged) from when we were young parents. She occasionally points out to me the comments or photos of people I know or knew, and she has frequently suggested that I, too, join Facebook. A reader of this blog even suggested that if I were on Facebook, I could promote the blog and gain more readers.

I'm still resistant. For all the joyful connectedness that social networking promises, I still find it artificial, especially for those folks who lay claim to hundreds and hundreds of "friends." Even the most extroverted and interdependent among us can probably claim no more than a dozen or so "real" friendships, not hundreds and hundreds.

And though I would enjoy retaining connections to high school classmates and others, I haven't made the leap into the ocean of connections in social networking, where I might drown in the sheer numbers. Reconnecting to high school classmates? I recently did that at a funeral, and it was real, not cyber.