Mark was my best friend in grade school. We were always playing softball at Davis and Colfax school and sleeping over each other's house. We got kicked out of a baseball game at Forbes Field, together, and we went through a phase when we were mesmerized with professional wrestling - religiously watching Bill Cardile's live Studio Wrestling show on television (last year I wrote a coming of age short story about the experience and it's surprise, abupt, ending for me. It was highly fictionalized, but in essence, true, and it was very important to me that one of the main characters was named Mark).
We drifted apart as we went through high school. When I first learned of his early death (from a brain tumor) I was stunned. It didn't happen to people our age (mid-thirties?). Mark might have been the only person on the "in memory" list if one had been kept at that time.
I didn't know Mark very well in high school. He worked at Forbes Field when he was in high school selling concessions in the stands and I occasionally saw him at Pirates game there. We became friends during college when I attended Pitt and he and I used to hang out at the Duquesne student union with a bunch of other Pitt and Duquesne students, a number of whom also had attended TAHS. Mark met his wife Cindy there. They later moved to an apartment in Monroeville and started a family. I watched the moon landing and Neil Armstrong become the first person to walk on the moon in Mark and Cindy's living room. Shortly after that I began my tour of active duty in the Army. Right before I left, I realized that my hat didn't fit and Mark drove me to the old reserve base near the airport to get a replacement. That is when I learned I was going overseas. Until then, I naively thought that APO San Francisco meant I was going to be stationed in San Francisco. I was, needless to say, shocked and scared. Mark spent the whole drive back to the city calming me down and assuring me that I would be okay. After I returned two years later I saw Mark and Cindy at a party in Bloomfield. He looked at me with a wry, wicked smile and said he was surprised to see me because he was sure I was going to be the first one in our class at TAHS to die in Vietnam. :-)
We lost touch after that. I moved to D.C. to attend law school and Mark and Cindy were raising a family in Pittsburgh. I can still remember Phil Axelrod telling me that Mark had passed away from a brain tumor. I was shocked. People our age didn't die unless it was in combat. Steiny, as we all called him, was a really good guy. He was taken from his family and his friends far too soon.
Richard Fried
Mark was my best friend in grade school. We were always playing softball at Davis and Colfax school and sleeping over each other's house. We got kicked out of a baseball game at Forbes Field, together, and we went through a phase when we were mesmerized with professional wrestling - religiously watching Bill Cardile's live Studio Wrestling show on television (last year I wrote a coming of age short story about the experience and it's surprise, abupt, ending for me. It was highly fictionalized, but in essence, true, and it was very important to me that one of the main characters was named Mark).
We drifted apart as we went through high school. When I first learned of his early death (from a brain tumor) I was stunned. It didn't happen to people our age (mid-thirties?). Mark might have been the only person on the "in memory" list if one had been kept at that time.
Michael Brourman
I didn't know Mark very well in high school. He worked at Forbes Field when he was in high school selling concessions in the stands and I occasionally saw him at Pirates game there. We became friends during college when I attended Pitt and he and I used to hang out at the Duquesne student union with a bunch of other Pitt and Duquesne students, a number of whom also had attended TAHS. Mark met his wife Cindy there. They later moved to an apartment in Monroeville and started a family. I watched the moon landing and Neil Armstrong become the first person to walk on the moon in Mark and Cindy's living room. Shortly after that I began my tour of active duty in the Army. Right before I left, I realized that my hat didn't fit and Mark drove me to the old reserve base near the airport to get a replacement. That is when I learned I was going overseas. Until then, I naively thought that APO San Francisco meant I was going to be stationed in San Francisco. I was, needless to say, shocked and scared. Mark spent the whole drive back to the city calming me down and assuring me that I would be okay. After I returned two years later I saw Mark and Cindy at a party in Bloomfield. He looked at me with a wry, wicked smile and said he was surprised to see me because he was sure I was going to be the first one in our class at TAHS to die in Vietnam. :-)
We lost touch after that. I moved to D.C. to attend law school and Mark and Cindy were raising a family in Pittsburgh. I can still remember Phil Axelrod telling me that Mark had passed away from a brain tumor. I was shocked. People our age didn't die unless it was in combat. Steiny, as we all called him, was a really good guy. He was taken from his family and his friends far too soon.