Rick Stolorow

1945-2024

Fellow prep school student. Roommate at the University of Michigan, freshman and senior year. 1964 and 1967. Yes, many moons ago.

A few days ago, I got word that he’d died. Struck by a car while walking. He was 78.

I hadn’t seen him in 30 years. He was reclusive. Lived in Rhode Island with his girlfriend, but did not communicate. I tried. Reached out. Many times. No response.

Taught me so many things. We were a team. The two ridiculous brothers. Going to parties at U of M. Smoking dope. Inhale. Cough. Pass that joint. Whew.

We did bits at parties. Anything for a laugh. He had deadpan delivery. The desperation for a response became his—our—trademark. Yes, he pulled a plant from a pot and placed it on his head once. Expressionless. A friend who was there still laughs about it today.

Competitive. Both won awards at U of M for writing. Would-be writers. Maybe. We both had domineering fathers. Lots to talk about. We did.

Freshman roommates the University of Michigan. We’d stay up for hours debating the existence of God. Such urgent inquisitiveness. Pondered other Big Matters.

That freshman year, I was sinking into a dark depression. He was seeing a psychiatrist, and his man recommended one for me. Life saver.

We roomed again together senior year. We had a second floor apartment in Ann Arbor, perfect for rabble rousing. We did. Many tales I could tell.

We spent a summer together—was it 1965?—in New York studying painting. An urban adventure with an odd, larger-than-life instructor on the Upper West Side.

Rick, left, painting. New York City. Summer. Possibly 1965.

Took him home with me two or three times to St. Clair, where my mother lived. Small, insular town with bored semi-delinquents waiting to get drunk and cause mayhem. Rick enraged one of them, last name Bankey, by speaking too long to his girlfriend. Rick, trying to calm Bankey down, urgently imploring, “Now, Sparky, relax. I know you’re angry, Sparky….”

Laughed about that for years.

He was a sweet man, a kind man, a complicated man.

We both graduated, went separate ways. Saw him in Cincinnati years later where he was living. His girlfriend had a child who Rick was most caring toward. Then, more years later, shortly after my daughter was born, in, I think 1994, or so, he came to New York with his girlfriend. Dropped by our apartment for an hour or so. He told me he was writing and publishing here and there. Then he left.

That was that. I never saw him again. Perhaps there was one letter, maybe two. Then, nothing. I tried, but he had a way of living, and that was to be respected. As recent as a year ago, I tried to find an e-mail address for him. No luck. So there is a great gap in his life I really know nothing about. That happens.

I always looked for his work. He’d turned to poetry. I found some of it on-line. I liked and admired it very much. Still do.

Here is a poem he wrote, published in Apple Valley Review:

Otter Lake

by Richard Stolorow

Come up old man from the green water—
I know you are there.  When I dove
in off the back square end of the rowboat
you held the oars.  I was a lonely boy
given to fits of anger in a noisy world
and when I entered the cool sleeve
of Otter Lake there was no sound
among the soft shafts of light
no human motor in the mineral water.
I was home, the other home, where
you are now, my dad, I know.
I take the boat out stroking
to the lake’s blue midst, once my
boyhood tennis shoe day.  There is
a slight breeze, enough to push
a dingy sideways over the surface
where I place my lips, waiting for you.

There is a fine, generous obituary that was published a few days ago. I would be happy if someone wrote something like that about me when I’m gone. It begins,

“Rick Stolorow, of Riverside, RI, walked quietly and with intention.”

I hope, somewhere, Rick, you continue to walk quietly and with intention.