I have three friends who have disappeared. And while I knew them pre-internet, it is pretty hard to hide in this day and age. And as best I can tell, they are MIA. I wonder where they are and what they are doing.
Jeff ‘Max’ Klinger was my freshman roommate in college. He was from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In college, he played both soccer and baseball. He was a devoted Philadelphia fan. As a freshman, Max threw our TV out our second-floor window during a Flyers and Islander playoff game; the Flyers lost.
Jeff and I were friends throughout college. During our sophomore year, Jeff was invited by some of his baseball teammates to live in dorms called ‘The Suites’. I stayed in the dorm we were in our freshman year, Brown Hall. In our Junior year, Jeff and I reunited as roommates in the infamous room called ‘The Triple’ in Hoyt Hall. Our third roomate was Bill Keough, who is also MIA and I discuss below. That was an epic year. We built this huge loft where we slept and the downstairs was effectively devoted to partying all year. Our senior, we each had singles next to eachother on the second floor of Hoyt.
Jeff and I stayed in touch for almost two years after college. We met up a couple of times with other Drew Alumni in New York City and he also came to my place in Maine with BillKeough and Dave Leskauskas.
Our buddy Dave Leskauskas was getting married a few years after we graduated and both Jeff and I were in the wedding. About a week before the wedding, Jeff called me in a quandary. The Eagles home opener was on the same day as Dave’s wedding and he couldn’t decide whether he should go to Dave’s wedding, which he was a groomsman, or go to the Eagles’ game. I convinced him he needed to go to Dave’s wedding. I was looking forward to seeing him. However, he no showed the wedding and I assume went to the Eagles game.
This is Jeff and I at graduation.
Jeff always wanted to be a lawyer and I don’t really remember but I am pretty sure he went to law school. I want to say I remember him trying to pass the bar in New Jersey.
I tried a few times to reach out to him but I could never connect. I recall talking to his mother, who I want to say she had conveyed that he was struggling some. I know other Drew alumni had tried to reach out to him with no luck.
Bill Keough and I became friends through Jeff. I believe Bill was on the soccer team during our freshman year with Jeff. I am sure our paths crossed and the introduction happened at some party. Junior year is when I really became friends with Bill because we were also roommates in the Hoyt dorm Triple. During our senior year we spent a lot of time together. After college, Bill and I hung out a bunch. He had come to my summer home in Maine a few times and we would meet with some frequency in New York City.
I lost track of his timeline after college as he had gotten a job with Goldman Sachs which we all thought was pretty impressive. The catch was he was going to Japan and had to learn Japanese. As I recall, he went to Japan and was there for a while. What I can’t reconcile was how we had hung out in Maine and he met his job requirements in Japan.
A few years later, I had moved to San Francisco and Bill would stop by for a few days on his way home to Mahwah, New Jersey. He then showed up unexpectedly at my wedding. Somehow he had gotten hold of my now-wife to get the details of the wedding and flew in from Hong Kong. I believe that is the last time I saw or heard from Bill.
This is Bill at Chimney Pond which is below Mount Kathadin in Baxter State Park. We would start climbing toward the peak shortly after this picture was taken.
Ron Sykes was my roommate for a while in San Francisco. I had been into the Bay Area for a couple of years and lived in a bunch of places. I got sucked into the insurance industry working for a third-party administrator for casualty claims called Crawford and Company. Ron worked there as well. We became friendly and both looking for a place to live. We found a place in Pacific Heights.
I think we were roommates for at least a couple of years. Our apartment became quite the party location amongst our gang of friends. It didn’t hurt that we had a pool table in our dining room. Ron and I had a lot of memorable adventures during those years. This time in my life was pretty great.
At some point, Ron got an offer to be the manager of the Bakersfield office for Crawford which he took. He moved out and we stayed in touch for a number of years. He had moved back to Southern California at some point and there were some epic visits.
At some point I lost touch with him and there was some rumor that he moved to North Carolina. Our close friend Rick Cornejo always had the best information on Ron but it was always vague. Every time I would see Rick, we would ask each other what, if anything, we each had heard about Ron’s whereabouts.
I remember this night. It was some random weekday night where we decided to go out to a bar and have some fun.
Postscript - January 2025
Ron resurfaced a few years ago. I pressed him on where he had been for the last ten-plus years and the answer was unsatisfying. Nonetheless, he is back and alive which is all that ultimately matters. We see each other with our mutual friend Rick Cornejo about every other month meeting in Hermosa Beach to watch some sporting event together.
With respect to Jeff, I have found him on some pretty basic Google searches. It is nice to know that he is alive as there was some speculation that he had died. I need and should try to reconnect with him!