REMEMBERING SCOTT FARGO

OSU 1973
Originally uploaded by jonfobes.

Note: One thing good about having a series of Web sites that go back for years, is that you accumulate a lot of material; but there’s a drawback — sometimes you lose track of things. Here’s something I just ran across from 1995. And it’s not something I want to lose track of.

Eulogy delivered by Jon Fobes at Bethany Lutheran Church, Ashtabula, Ohio Saturday, 16 September 1995 – 4 p.m.

---

I read last night that Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Every man is eloquent once in his life." I am really hoping today is my day.

I am glad to say – and proud to say – that I was friends with Scott for 25 years. We met at the Kent Branch – just up the street here – in 1970. I am not sure if we met because we had a class together or if we met for the first time in the KSU weightlifting club. I think it was at the club, probably early in the winter quarter.

Before long Scott became the equipment manager for a rock and roll band I was playing in at the time with another Scott, Scott Goddard, who was also a Kent student and a weightlifter. One day while lifting weights at the YMCA Scott Goddard and I told Scott that our band was going to be playing at the Psychedelic Lounge.

"You are not!" Scott said.

"Oh, yes we are."

"If you guys are really playing I’ll help you carry in your amps and set up your equipment." And he did. From then on Scott was there for every performance. And that’s really saying something because that band played once or twice a week for well over a year.

We finally said to Scott, "If you are going to be here every night, why not do a song?" We didn’t have to twist his arm too much. And so, at the end of the night, after a few beer breaks, and when the volume and the crowd both got cranked up somewhat out of control, Scott would come on stage and do his song. For a while it was "Summertime Blues." Then we switched to a song by the Rolling Stones called "Little Quennie." They were both good rocking, rolling, blasting, driving songs, and it was fun to have Scott up there singing them.

You may have known Scott as a clean-cut high school kid or a professor of entomology, but you should have seen him then. Hair down to his shoulders. Sideburns. Mustache. He wore a pair of blue jeans covered with stars on the bottom and patches on the top. He had a shirt with Daffy Duck on the front. He had some sort of headgear that looked like a World War I flying ace hat, one of those leather ones that came down over the ears and had straps hanging down. And he had a pair of boots he had spray-painted blue. I had a pair I had spray-painted gold, and sometimes we traded, so each guy had one blue and one gold boot. We both looked like something out of a parent’s worst nightmare – but we had a lot of fun.

One thing I will never understand is how that Scott Fargo, that long-haired, star-spangled, blue-booted, rockin’ and rollin’, space cowboy, in the World War I flying cap, ever got named Lady Elks Man of the Year in 1994. Amazing!

So, as time went on, we had classes together and we ran all over the place with the band. We played in Geneva, Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ashtabula and all over the Youngstown and Warren area and God-awful places like Pymatuning Valley. And once we drove four hours, way down past Pittsburgh, to audition for a job that would have hardly covered our gas money! The point is this: When you add up the time with the band, and classes and the weightlifting club and double-dating and going to parties and concerts . . . you can understand that Scott and I spent a lot of time together those two years at Kent. That alone could have made us friends for life.

But after Kent, we were roommates at Ohio State for three years. That meant even more time together. And when you put that kind of time in, you really get to know someone. I should mention some other people at this point because there was a core group of friends during the KSU and Ohio State years. And I am thinking now of Mike Day, Jim Ogren, Scott Goddard, Jim Buckett and Bud Jerauld. There were other good friends at this time like our bandmates Perry and Stuart Burgess and Rick Tackett, and, of course, Mr. Burgess, who was with us for every job we ever played. Sad to say, Perry is gone too. But in those days, there always seemed to be lots of things to do and lots of people involved in doing them.

I think I can speak for these people when I say Scott was a great friend and companion. If you knew Scott for 5 minutes, you knew he was smart. And if you knew him for 10 minutes you knew he was funny. Or maybe it was the other way around, depending on the day. But if you knew Scott for a week or a month or a year, you knew he was a consistently great person to be with. As I said, he was smart and he was funny, and those are nice traits to have in a friend, but more than that, Scott really liked people. I am sorry that's such a cliché anymore, but he really did. He was interested in his friends’ lives. He wanted to know what they thought and how they felt, and he wanted them to know what was going on with him in his thoughts and feelings. I think it boiled down to this: Scott had a lot of love to give to his friends, and his friends gave him lots of love back. I think that is why Scott had so many good and lasting friendships in his life.

I think one of the things that was interesting about Walter Scott Fargo – and I think it shows you the affection people felt for him – was that he had an incredible number nicknames. In his family, and I suppose in high school, he was known as Scott. When I met him he was being called Wells. I think that was a weightlifting club nickname. Once a Kent English professor named Bill Poese, who started the weightlifting club, had picnic at his farm, and he had a donkey there. Scott was amazed by the donkey. He just kept saying, "Boy that thing looks like a big, blue dog," and so we started calling him Blue Dog Fargo. And that stuck for a while.

Then sometime later on we started calling him Wally, which apparently no one had ever called him before. Then came "The Wally-Eyed Kid." David was at OSU when Scott and I were there, and David was sort of chunky at the time, so Scott started calling him Fat Fark. So we started calling Scott "The Fark." And if you did something Scott didn’t like, he’d look you in the eye and say, "Don’t pimp on The Fark." And someone down at the Spot Cafe used to call him Scotty Dog! So we started calling him that, too. You might think it took a lot of brain power for Scott to get a Ph.D. in entomology, but it was nothing in comparison to the brain power it must have taken for him to remember all his nicknames because even though we invented new names for him all the time we never stopped using the old ones. So you could talk to him for an hour and never refer to him the same way twice.

I said before that I was proud to say I had been friends with Scott for 25 years. I say proud because there was something I deeply respected and admired about Scott: It was his enthusiasm for life and that he always wanted more of life. For example, he was in the KSU weight-lifting club to get in shape, meet people – and get more of life. He graduated from Ohio State and went on to Texas A&M for his master’s and his Ph.D. because he was interested in learning – and because he wanted more of life. He became a full professor at such a young age because he worked hard, had good ideas – and because he wanted more of life. And he was out jogging the day his heart stopped because he wanted to be fit and energized – because he wanted more of life. He wasn’t afraid to work, and he wasn’t afraid to think, and he wasn’t about to sit around and wait for life to come to him. No. He was a doer. And he knew that the right combination of hard work and play is the thing that brings you more enthusiasm – and more of life. And he would not settle for less.

If you want to know what kind of guy Scott was in regards to his enthusiasm and his ability to work really hard, just look at his obit headline. I am an assistant news editor at The Plain Dealer, and I was working the night we ran Scott’s obit. I had talked with the obit writer a few times that week, I had dealt with the photo desk on Scott’s picture, and when the obit page got put together, my friend across the desk asked me if I wanted to come over and see how it turned out. Earlier I had tried to put a little pressure on him to get the obit played high on the page; of course, I didn’t really need to because Scott earned the top spot on his own merit. Anyway, I went over to see the page, which was up on a computer screen, and the person doing the page said he had changed the headline a little bit so it read: "W. Scott Fargo/professor, expert/in entomology." Which is ultimately how it came out in the paper. I said, "Boy, those are two words you’ll never see in my obit headline. PROFESSOR and EXPERT. No chance!" And another person working nearby said, "Mine either. My obit headline will probably say ‘Jeff McVann, he liked to watch TV.’" And then another person said, "My obit headline will probably say: ‘Mary Jo McVay, she liked pie.’" About this time a copy aide walked past and said, "What a morbid topic of conversation," and that shut us up. But the point was obvious: Scott had done a lot with his life. He was a special person.

Quite a few years ago we lost our wonderful friend Mike Day. Mike was killed in a wreck in Florida. There were services for him here in Ohio, but Scott was in Texas at the time, and I was working in Dayton, and neither of us got back for them. So during one of Scott’s summer trips home to Ashtabula we went to see Mike’s grave. As I recall, we were both a bit angry that evening, not at Mike, but at life in general for robbing us of our friend. And we also were sad as we stood there, of course. But maybe most of all we were disbelieving of the fact that Mike was really gone. I remember Scott tapped the gravestone with the toe of his cowboy boot. I guess to see if it was real. I think we both thought it would disappear. But it was no dream.

Scott said, "We lost our pal."

I said, "Unbelievable."

And then Scott said something totally fitting and appropriate. He had a knack for that. He said: "Well, you have a pal that’s still here, that’s standing right beside you, and he is getting pretty thirsty, so I think you ought to buy him a beer!"

So I did. More than one, actually. But what I think Scott was saying was that it is fitting and proper to think about the people we lose as long as we don’t forget about the people we still have. There are people in this world you love and that love you, and don’t let this loss take your attention from them for long. If anything, let it remind you how much you should cherish the people you still have. And buy them a beer. Or a Pepsi. Or dinner. Take them to a movie. Go for a drive. Watch a TV show. Or just sit with them. But cherish your time with them. That’s what Scott would want. So don’t pimp on The Fark.

I think we’re probably all feeling what Scott and I felt when we stood at Mike’s grave. Maybe some of us are angry at life for taking Scott away so soon, when we had hoped for so much more in the years to come. We all are feeling a terrible sadness – there’s no doubt about that. And perhaps for many of us there is an almost overwhelming sense of disbelief. That’s what I feel most: disbelief. Maybe you too.

If so, I would say this: If you can’t believe Scott is gone it’s because he’s not. If you knew Scott they way I knew him then he touched your life in so many ways that you will never be without him. If he was in your life then he is in your life and he always will be in your life. That was the power of Scott’s personality, of his enthusiasm, of his friendship and of his love. Scott will live as long as our memories do.

And for me, that’s a lifetime.