Home | Class News | 50th Reunion | Past Reunions | Other Gatherings | Newsletter Archive | Links | Memorials | Classmates Search | Classmates Found | Trivia | Former Faculty | Contacts |


 

Remembering Damon Van Vliet


Ned Groth, May, 2008

(Author’s note: This biographical remembrance is based on documents, including our yearbooks and class newsletters, and my notes on phone conversations I had with Damon. It also contains some of my own subjective impressions. My goal is to create an honest and loving portrait of our classmate, through his triumphs and tragedies. I never saw Damon again after our graduation from Darrow, so most of the content here is second-hand, through the eyes of other classmates. While I’ve striven for factual accuracy, I take full responsibility for any errors I may have made. This remembrance can be expanded, amended, or corrected, if need to be, as others contribute their own memories to it.   –NG)

 

Software: Microsoft OfficeDamon joined our class at the start of sophomore year. He came from Weston, CT, and roomed with Connecticut resident and fellow new sophomore Dave Griswold, plus Jonathan McCann and David Fisher. Griswold writes, in his own remembrance, that Damon was his first friend at Darrow. He had been at another prep school before, and he helped Dave adjust. Damon’s parents had divorced, and when Dave’s father died, just six weeks into that first fall semester, Damon offered Dave badly needed emotional support.

Software: Microsoft OfficeThe next year, Dave and Damon roomed with Frank Phillips. Dave believes it was Frank who bestowed upon Damon his class nickname “The Goat,” because of the way he loved to butt heads, figuratively speaking, in their many political and philosophical debates. Gris recalls that Damon and Frank were ardent Democrats, and supported Jack Kennedy’s presidential bid, while he, Gris, favored Richard Nixon, for no reason except that “Griswolds had always been Republicans.” He recalls being ganged up on by his two roommates, intellectually and physically, but says it was fun.

Dave says he remembers three central things about Damon. First was his intellectual curiosity. “He really wanted to know more than what was on the surface,” Dave recalls. Second, he was a good athlete, in great shape, and he could run all day. Third, he was physically strong. Dave says, except for Anson Perina, Damon was probably the strongest kid in our class. Dave felt fortunate to have Damon covering his back, at least now and then.

I recall Damon as a fairly quiet guy with a big smile and an easy laugh, and definitely an athlete. He and I didn’t play on any teams together, but I knew him by reputation. He played JV football his sophomore year, then switched to soccer, playing on the varsity his junior and senior years. He tried recreational skiing for a year, then decided he’d rather play an indoor sport; he joined the JV basketball team his junior year, and played on the varsity senior year. When Gene Cook was kicked out, the team was left without a captain, and they chose Damon. (On this there seems to be a difference in the historical records. The Yearbook (photo below) shows Damon as the captain, while a sports report in the Peg Board referred to Towner Lapp in that capacity. I checked with Towner, though, and he says the yearbook is correct; he has no idea where the Peg Board got that idea.) Gris recalls that Damon wasn’t a great shooter but was really tough under the boards, and he led the team with his hustle. In the spring, he played varsity lacrosse. Not surprisingly, most of the yearbook photos we have of Damon are sports team photos, and he was also captured in a couple of terrific action shots, driving for a lay-up, and in a JV football game, closing in on the ball carrier with a big grin on his face (see photos below).


Software: Microsoft OfficeSoftware: Microsoft OfficeSoftware: Microsoft Office
Software: Microsoft OfficeSoftware: Microsoft OfficeOf course, Damon did lots of other things at Darrow, as we all did. He went to classes, studied ‘til his eyes were bleary, waited on tables in the dining hall, worked outdoors at Hands-to-Work, snoozed or counted CDB’s “ums” and ers” in chapel. He most likely took hikes in the woods, skated on Joe Face’s Pond, had pleasant and/or forgettable dance dates with girls from St. Agnes and Miss Halls, enjoyed the annual spring outings, maybe got rowdy on the bus home for long weekend in the fall. He must’ve done those things, though I can find no record of it. What we can say for a fact is that he was in the Drama Club in his junior year, and the Philosophy and Religion Seminar his senior year. He made the yearbook photos for those activities. The blurb next to his senior photo in the ‘62 yearbook says he was also a cheerleader (we had cheerleaders??), a member of the photography club, worked in the Milk Bar, served on the Chapel Committee and the Open Door Committee, and was a “barber boy,” whatever that was. But there are no pictures in the yearbooks of Damon with the other kids who did those things. Perhaps he only did them a little, or managed not to show up on the day the photos were being taken.


Image
Image
Two extracurricular activities we can be sure Damon participated in:

 

Far left: Drama Club, junior year

                         Right: Philosophy and Religion Seminar, senior year

 

 

Graduation day came and we departed, headed off to college, most of us. I lost track of Damon for many years. Carl Braun probably saw Damon more than any of the rest of us in the years soon after our graduation. Carl knew Damon fairly well at Darrow. They played lacrosse, Damon at midfield and Carl at attack, and they worked smoothly together. They both also were in one of Horton Durfee’s classes—biology or chemistry, Carl isn’t sure which. As Carl recalls it, Horton made it quite clear that after a bad day on the lacrosse field, there would be consequences (the politically correct term nowadays is “pop quiz”) in class the next day.

Carl went to Rutgers but dropped out in 1963, then enrolled at MacMurray College in Illinois in the fall of 1964. He recalls that he was sitting in the dining hall at MacMurray on his first night there, feeling totally lost and wondering if he had completely screwed up his life, when he heard someone yell, “Hey, Carl!” He turned around, and there was Damon sitting at a table with two girls. What are the odds, he wonders, of running into your midfielder in a college dining hall in the Midwest? The women with Damon were his girlfriend, whom Carl describes as a wonderful, sweet Midwestern girl, and her roommate. An hour later, they were up in the girls’ room playing strip poker. And as Carl tells it, his career at MacMurray was lots of fun from then on.

Carl saw quite a bit of Damon over the rest of that year. Damon was a junior and Carl, because of his year off, a sophomore, so they moved in somewhat different circles, but they ran into each other now and then. Carl recalls that Damon was very laid back and conservative, that he smiled and laughed a lot, but didn’t reveal much of himself. He says Damon adored his girlfriend. Carl spent three semesters at MacMurray, then transferred again, coming back to New Jersey and Fairleigh Dickinson. He says he kind of lost track of Damon after that first year (and in fact, Damon left MacMurray around then, as we learned a few years later.)

AppleMarkIn the late ‘60s, I started writing the class newsletter, and heard regularly from many classmates, but Damon wasn’t one for writing letters. We got news of him indirectly, in notes from other guys. In 1972, Huib Soutendijk reported that he’d seen Damon in his travels for the bank. That same year, Anson Perina mentioned that Goat was living in New York City.

In 1979, the Peg Board said Damon had a new address, in Miami. Around that time, I took part in one of the Darrow Annual Fund telethons, and I spoke with Damon for the first time in 17 years. He gave me a brief life history. He’d spent a couple of years at MacMurray College, not fared too well, dropped out, and done three years in the Army. After getting out of the service, he finished college at the University of Maryland. He had lived in New York for several years (hence the Soutendijk sighting), working in the printing business. He’d been married, gotten divorced. He had moved to Florida in 1973, and opened up his own printing business, doing all kinds of print jobs. He was living in Miami, right on Biscayne Bay, playing a lot of golf, tennis, and sailing; he said he loved it.

In the 1980 newsletter, Dave Griswold told us that Damon was still in Miami and still operating his printing business, and was doing very well. I talked to him again during that year’s telethon and found things pretty much the same as the year before. A couple of years passed, and another telethon rolled around. This time, Damon said his printing business was going well, and he had also started a publishing business. He said he was thinking about moving back to New England; he wanted to live out in the country, experience the seasons, ski again. When I called, Damon’s son, Nathan, six at the time, was visiting him. Damon was enjoying that, said it was a fun age.

Our next vicarious encounter with Damon involved Dave Griswold and Bob Lang in 1984; Dave has written about it in his own memorial for Damon. Lang was traveling to Florida, and he and Dave visited Damon in Miami. They found him living in the penthouse of the Jockey Club in North Miami; Griswold recalls having to go through all kinds of gates and armed guards to get up there. Dave hadn’t seen his old roommate for 22 years, and he was amazed at how Damon had changed. He was really thin, even gaunt, to the point that Dave expressed concern. Damon explained his “health plan.” He no longer ate meat or starchy foods, ate only “health foods,” and was on a “cleansing program” that involved daily colonics. Damon told Gris that his ex-wife had kidnapped their son and taken him to South America; the Goat said he’d made several trips down there trying to track them down. He said he’d lost faith in the American financial system and dealt only in cash; he showed Dave a closet full of Krugerrands, and guns that Goat said he needed to guard his money. Dave found himself speechless.

Gris says he, Goat and Lang went out for dinner, at a very nice restaurant that Damon chose. He and Lang ate steaks, but Damon had an organic salad, onto which he sprinkled all kinds of stuff he carried with him in bottles. He also drank a liquid concoction he’d brought with him. The restaurant staff knew him and didn’t seem to mind. Griswold says that he (Dave) was drinking bourbon, and the more he drank, the more colorful the evening (and Damon) got. After dinner they went to one of Damon’s favorite spots, a pool hall in what Gris describes as “one of the crummier parts of town.” Damon seemed at home there and the people all knew him. He and Lang shot pool while Gris drank more bourbon. Damon drank “some prune juice concoction;” Dave, noting that Goat was packing a .45, stifled his urge to tease him about it.

Gris hoped Lang could recall more about the rest of the evening. They went back to Damon’s place, where Dave gave in to the bourbon and went to sleep. He and Lang left the next morning, and Dave never saw Damon again. He marvels at how, despite our common years at Darrow, their two lives turned out so differently. As Dave puts it, “Oliver North meets Timothy Leary.”

Lang’s recollection is somewhat more colorful and he added a few details. He recalls that the ex-wife was Colombian (and had gone back there), and E-Rock suspected she had some connection with Colombian drug lords. He says Damon kept “a small arsenal” in his closet, was “living large,” was very guarded about his business affairs, and tried to recruit Bob to go with him on an expedition to Colombia to retrieve his kidnapped son. Bob said “no thanks” to that one. He also recalls that the reason they went to Miami was to meet with Damon about printing a fancy brochure for Griswold’s business at the time, counseling former pro ballplayers.

ImageThis photo, taken in Thailand in 1985, on a trip Damon took there with his mother, was sent to us by Damon’s sister, Melanie.

Damon moved back to Connecticut around 1987; a Peg Board issue from that year gave his new address, in New Milford. Bill Anthony gave me his phone number at one of our reunions, probably the 25th; Bill says he tried to get together with Damon a couple of times but never caught up with him, as each time “he had opened up a new book shop and moved on.” I tracked Damon down by phone again, later in 1987, and learned about his latest business, The Advanced Book Exchange. He was selling books, specializing in modern first editions and antiquarian books, books with fine bindings, family histories and the like. Talking with Damon wasn’t easy; he kept drifting away, and I suspected he might be on some kind of medication. A few years later, in 1994, Bob Lang sent along word that Damon was still in New Milford, still selling books, and “alive and well.” He lived in western Connecticut for at least a decade.

Now that we knew he was nearby, someone from the class or the school called him from time to time, trying to persuade him to come to a reunion. We never succeeded. We tried pretty hard, though, especially before our 40th, in 2002. By then, Damon had relocated to Manchester, NH. Carl Braun was the first to tell me Damon had moved to the Granite State, and to call him there. Carl recalls now that Damon seemed very soft-spoke and quiet, and in a way it was like trying to talk to someone with Alzheimer’s disease. Carl tried reminiscing about their days together at MacMurray, but Damon didn’t respond to that. He seemed reluctant to talk about his personal life, but he mentioned that both his son and his father (91 then) lived nearby, and he saw each of them often. Carl had failed to persuade Damon to come to the reunion, saying he “did not want to get blasted by everybody.” But Damon would be happy if I called him, Carl told me then.

I did call, a short time later, and we chatted for a while. Damon sounded more like his old self—or the self I’d known in the 1980s, anyway. I asked if he still had his hair, and he said he did, most of it gray, but still all there. He said he was now pretty much retired, mused that he had had some really successful days, a while ago. He said his current business was focused on genealogy books, a lot of them on CD ROM. He then explained that he believed in reincarnation, and thought that most of us reincarnate into the same family. He went on for quite a while about reincarnation and how much information on the subject there is on the internet. I got his e-mail address and we added him to the class mailing list, bringing him back into our fold a little bit, at least. When I said we were really hoping to see him at the reunion (and he’d be safe there, among friends, no “blasting” allowed), he demurred again, explaining that he had health issues, and couldn’t travel overnight. I sent him an e-mail just a couple of days before the reunion, saying why not come down for just the day? He responded, “Can’t do, but give my best to all.” That was the last I ever heard from him.

In late April this year, I got an e-mail from Noreen Lucey, informing us that Damon had passed away on September 12 of 2003, in Manchester. Noreen, who was a friend of Damon’s, said his parents are both alive: His father, David, is in the Boston area, and his mother, Mona, as well as his sister, Melanie, are still in Weston. Noreen said that Damon’s health deteriorated in the years before his death, but didn’t know what caused his death. She offered us a brief biography, which included highlights of much of the above, plus an additional detail or two. She said that in his Miami phase, Damon had been a dealer in precious gems and coins (that could explain the Krugerrands), and had traveled the world for a while (including, perhaps, a few trips to South America…). She added that Damon’s son, Nathan, may live in the Carolinas (at least, his last known address was there).

ImageAlthough he was absent more than present for most of us ever since graduation, Damon made an indelible impression, and was tied to us, wherever he went and whatever he thought about it. He seemed to enjoy being a bit eccentric and mysterious, letting us use our imaginations to make his life seem maybe a little more romantic and exotic than it really was. He had his struggles, probably more than his share. He left us far too soon, and with too little to remember him by. In the next few months, I’ll try to flesh out our portrait a little, with the help of his family.

ImageMeanwhile, I can only echo Dave Griswold’s eloquent wish, in his own memorial essay, from which I have borrowed freely here. Gris recalls a moment of shared glory on the soccer field, two friends leaping together in joy after a winning goal, and wonders, “Why did it have to change?” Well, we know life is like that, but to us, Damon, you’ll always be “the Goat,” our man of great charm, an elusive lifestyle and more than a little mystery.


Image

When I was in The Netherlands in June this year, I was greeted by this sight (outside the hotel and conference center where I was staying for a meeting), reminding me of the Dutch origins of the family name, as well as bringing Damon to mind. I think he’d have smiled at seeing his name on a dumpster!

 


Home | Class News | 50th Reunion | Past Reunions | Other Gatherings | Newsletter Archive | Links | Memorials | Classmates Search | Classmates Found | Trivia | Former Faculty | Contacts |