When I listen to my 4-year-old discuss his friends from school, I can’t help but think about the influence they wield over each other. We don’t often consider just how impactful the people we surround ourselves are on our lives, nor how those friendships will influence us throughout our lives. Reflecting on my own childhood, I realize how lucky I was to have the friends that I did, and one in particular paved the path to the person I became.

Geoff and I met as 11 year olds competing in junior golf tournaments in 1991. The first two tournaments that first summer we played in separate groups, and the only thing I knew about Geoff was what I could see on the results board, and the only thing that board told me was that we were equally terrible at golf. At the third tournament, I saw on the tee-sheet we’d be playing together, which excited me because it meant I might finally beat someone. 

There are two things I remember about that first round of golf with Geoff: 

1. It was the worst golf I ever played, and 
2. It was the most fun I will ever have on a golf course

In fact, number 2 was the cause of number 1 because I was unable to swing without falling over with laughter. When my dad picked me up and asked how it went, I didn’t even mention my round. I told him I just spent two hours with the funniest person I ever met.

When I was in 8th grade and Geoff in 9th we were enrolled in the same junior high journalism class. It was in that setting I realized the source of Geoff’s humor, which was his effortless storytelling abilities. I’ve yet to have a friend who can tell a story as well as Geoff could at 14. And those stories were not merely in the service of a joke (although they were always funny), but also instructional in how to identify what is true, what is interesting, and what is important. To most middle schoolers, Geoff’s interests might have seemed nerdy. I just thought he was cool, and my hero worship quickly turned me into his apprentice. In high school, Geoff volunteered at the local television station taking high school football scores, edited the school newspaper, was a leader in student government, worked summers at the local golf resort as a cart jockey, and drove a sports car (kind of): it was a 1991 gray Ford Probe with a stick shift. I made it my teenage life’s mission to follow in each of those very specific footsteps.

I believe I have the distinction of being the first person whose writing Geoff edited. Even in high school, he was selfless in the pursuit of a good story, and I was often the beneficiary of that selflessness. In January of 1997, we teamed up to report on the biggest sports scandal in school history. I was assigned to write the news piece, but it was Geoff who made my story happen: he set up my interviews, told me what questions to ask, guided the story’s focus and framing, and was my cheerleader as I produced his vision like a paint by numbers. Geoff designed the page and wrote the accompanying column. The section was entirely his handiwork, and yet, when the page won multiple state-wide interscholastic journalism awards, it was my story he praised while shrugging off his own contributions. Intellectually insecure at the time, his elevation of my work bathed me in desperately needed self confidence. It is no exaggeration to say that his generosity transformed the arc of my life. 

Geoff and I lived very different lives after college. I returned home to Traverse City to teach English; Geoff went off to big cities to chase bigger stories in the fast paced world of journalism. In a surprise that has pleased us both, our friendship has only strengthened over that time. It’s been assisted by our love of University of Michigan sports, the hunting of old Jim Harrison haunts in Leelanau County, sad sack indie rock, our shared addiction to nostalgia, and the never ending pursuit of a great story.

While I gave up trying to follow in Geoff’s footsteps a long time ago, I follow his career with pride, admiration, and the amazement that my belief in an 11-year-old kid in 1991 turned out to be faith so well placed.