RFH ’78’s David Memmott: Picture of a Childhood in a Classmate Gone

“What’s that? An iPhone 1?” he quipped as I tried to capture a moment between him and his lifetime friend at a reunion committee party with my sad little smashed-screen phone. Click. “Shut up, Dave! Jerk!” I, a 58-year-old woman child, sniped back, with a 10-year-old kid giggle and arm punch.

Then there was the knowing laughter and the look that was only understood among those like us who had had a lifetime of it. The deep all-knowing complex simplicity of a childhood shared in one little world of a small town by the river.

No. He wasn’t my sibling. In fact, I never really knew him all that well. I knew where he was, though. I knew who he was. He was one of us in this other family. He just was. His snarky comment and my sister arm punch gave it away. We knew. All of us. And I knew that he, along with many others in this unbeknownst childhood family, would somehow always be there. He had to be. He was a piece of our tidy jigsaw puzzle world.

He was that cool kid, in that untouchable, yet arm-punchable, groovin’ kid circle. I could still see him standing with those cool kids, holding their impenetrable court outside of Knollwood before school every day. I could still see him passing in the high school halls at RFH. Playing soccer. Just being — seeing.

He was never really looking too hard. He didn’t have to. Yet, he was always smiling, always seeing. I could just tell that he got it. The whole picture. We all could.

This vision, the picture, somehow never blurred or creased with age. It became clearer. Sharper. So sharp that it cut, chiseled even more intricately the detail of our youth with those chards of my broken iPhone 1, as he called it. The phone that still got the picture.

And last week a sliver cut deep into the core of that childhood never lost to us. Its meaning was only found with more precision, brought back home, with the sudden death of that one of us — David Memmott. Killed in a single-vehicle crash on the Garden State Parkway last Thursday. Cut out of this world in an instant — out of our world.

Dave had grown up in Fair Haven. Everyone knew him. How well didn’t matter. He was there. Until he wasn’t. We all, a bunch of us, grew up together. We went to RFH. We graduated. We went off to college.

And some of us came right back home. It was a wonderful world, after all. Our lives evolved like we did but didn’t. Those pieces of our childhood, those people, we kept with us, tucked away in our pockets like tiny precious gems, became more precious, more polished with time. We had families. For some of us, our kids grew up together, too. We in this insular, exposed world. The gems buffed to a glisten by the safety of our soft, nurturing pockets.

We reunited — and as often as possible for the RFH Class of ’78. We knew what we had, what we thought we’d always have. Dave was on the committee for the last — our 40th. Ouch. Didn’t hurt us one bit. We thought we were still 18 — or maybe even 10 again.

He had been living in Rumson with his family. I had seen him in the Acme. If you’re an RFH dinosaur and still in the area, you always see one another for a Tyrannosaurus Rex high five in the Acme at one point or another. Something like that. We didn’t hang out. We never had. But we were still that unbeknownst family. And after the hugs hello at the Acme, there was that accepted, even expected bit of kid taunting, no matter how old.

One time, he caught me eyeing some Ben & Jerry’s on a bad day. Damn if he didn’t know who I was behind those RayBans, too. Caught! The two-second barbs began as I jabbed back with some kid-like insult about his (our) advanced 50s age. I had even apologized to him in the parking lot. I mean, we were the same age. He laughed and said I spoke the truth and he could not only take it, but agreed with a big smile.

After all, no matter how different, our world was the same one, only more intimate in this one little haven. We knew we’d be around for more. So we thought. We assumed. We’d always have Knollwood. We’d always have RFH. We’d always have the Acme. All of us.

Eventually, we ended up part of that Dirty Dozen RFH Class of ’78 40th Reunion Committee. What a great little circle it was — a nucleus of the bigger one.

The last time I saw Dave was at that holiday time post-reunion committee get-together. That was when I snapped that photo with my sad little phone. I don’t know where it is. The picture. It was lost in the shuffle of tens of thousands I have taken over the years. No matter. I got that picture.

I had had it all along. He had it all along, too. The kid-like grins. The barbs. The knowing. The one picture, or album full, that always takes us back to that place in our minds — a safe place among childhood friends. A place that is frozen in time. That never melts away. Never goes bad. Never evaporates. Never abandons us.

Click. Flash … back. Take the picture. You never really needed that busted little iPhone 1 anyway. The upgrade had arrived long before it.

Rest in Heaven, Dave. We’ve got your picture.

Love,

Us Fair Haven and RFH Kids

Sincerest of condolences to Dave’s wife, Debbie, and children, his sisters, also our childhood friends, Karen and Jennifer. He is remembered.

Remember with us, kissing today goodbye, never forgetting, never regretting. Getting the picture …

(Click below and on the lower right corner to enlarge for the full view.)

Click here for more about David Memmott in his obituary, prepared by family. Services begin on Thursday from 4 to 8 p.m. at John E. Day Funeral Home, Red Bank. A funeral service is set for Friday at 11 a.m. at St. George’s-by-the-River Episcopal Church in Rumson.

KEEP R-FH Retro Going with a Coffee Donation