On Sunday we attended the memorial service for our dear friend Phil Zahorsky. What a time! So many memories — SO many friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen for over twenty years, and one we hadn’t seen in over thirty. Wow. Is this the way it will be now, I wonder? Will we only run into our friends at memorials? I do hope not.

After the service a friend — one I DO see more frequently, Deb, a fabulous oboist and great all-round person — thanked me for something I had up on my blog. I wasn’t honest with her (sorry, Deb) … I should have said, “Did I blog that?!” (NOT in my best Urkel voice, mind you.) but of course being me I was too embarrassed. So today I finally looked it up and it was an “AH YES!” moment. I had written about some correspondance Phil and I had here. Check it out!

And of course going to the service, hearing the stories, saying “goodbye” to Phil, all brought back other memories. So here are two of mine (hope you find this blog entry, Deb!):

When I was a freshman in college, sometime in October of 1974, I believe, Phil invited me to a lounge that was at Reed Hillview airport to hear a friend — I believe her name was Suzanne — sing there. I think it was his way of getting Dan and me together, as it was pretty obvious I had a crush on the guy. So off we go. now I was young, and I didn’t drink, but dear Phil introduced me that night to my first whiskey sour. Yep, I liked it! On the way out the door Phil laughed and said, “We should go back and tell them you’re only nineteen!” or some such thing. I laughed back and said, “Well, I’m actually seventeen!” The LOOK on his face … and then the response, “SEVENTEEN!?!?” Well, I heard that cry of “SEVENTEEN!?!?” several times after that when we ran into each other at school. He also called me “Patty pureheart” on occasion. I loved that.

Much, much later (just a few years ago, actually), Phil asked something like three questions of the maestro at one of the rehearsals. I just HAD to reprimand him. I explained that one question was plenty, but that really, for a bass trombone player, no question was better. We had a good laugh — we did love to tease each other — and from then on, whenever he asked a question, he’d come up to me and apologize (as a joke, of course!). Sometimes he’d tell me he refrained because of my words.

Yeah, Phil was fun. I’ve never met a nicer man. A friend at the service said she saw him very angry once, many years ago, at another person. Even that he got over, because later he was totally into having that person back with our orchestra, thinking there was no finer person for the job.

Miss you, Phil.