I woke up this morning, as has been the case for the last 67 and a half years. I then went for a run, as has been the routine for the last 3,749 days. These two things you count on from me, since they now they go hand in hand in retirement. As long as I continue to live; I plan to continue to run…every day. Brushing my teeth is the second priority. I’m indeed lucky to have out-survived many of my peers.

Too often now it seems like I lose another acquaintance I’ve made through the years. Recently, it was a high school classmate who because of the similarity of our last names was frequently seated next to me in high school homeroom. Only the privileged “t” in Johnston put me just behind him on the alphabetical classroom roster. I can’t say we were close but his recent death caught my attention. His obituary was posted on my hometown’s Elkhart High School 50th Reunion Facebook page, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have known. It’s a site that is by invitation only in anticipation of our big event later this summer. 50 years since graduation serves as a reminder how quickly life passes by.

As I was reading Stephen Johnson’s obituary, it once again occurred to me what a small world it truly is. About 10 years ago in Austin, Texas I joined a small Toastmaster’s Club and began to continue my work towards its highest level of DTM. This requires hundreds of speeches, plus serving as an officer on the local and District levels. I accomplished this goal four years later after initial involvement with clubs in Indianapolis and Decatur, Illinois. I remember giving one of my first “icebreaker” speeches in Austin about my favorite pizza place, Volcano in Elkhart, Indiana. At the end of the meeting, a fellow Toastmaster came up to me and introduced himself as Mark Johnson. Coincidentally, he also grew up near Elkhart and “about fell off his chair” as I shared my story that day. He would visit his mom back in Indiana but talked little of his father, and over the course of time we became friends.

There are lots of Johnson’s and Johnston’s in this world, and too frequently my name is misspelled without the “t.” For this reason, I did not catch the connection between Stephen and Mark. It’s hard to believe that it did not sink in until I read that Stephen had a son in Austin, Texas named Mark. It’s even harder to believe that I became acquainted with both of them during the course of my lifetime in towns thousands of miles apart. I wish that I could tell Stephen that I knew his son and we went to a Cubs game together in Houston. We even stayed in the same hotel and ran side-by-side on the fitness center treadmill in the first year of my running streak that now is over ten. Sadly, it took an obituary to put this all together. Honestly, I’m not even sure that Stephen Johnson would have even remembered me from high school even though our pictures are side by side in the Elkhart High School 1969 Pennant Annual.