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Read our .THE&LOVE&I’LL&NEVER&FORGET
Crookston, Minim hometown, is a farming community of 8000
people, tucked into the northwest corner of the state. Not an
extraordinary passes through .Gretchen was an exception.
For one thing she was an Eickhof, one of Crookston’s wealthiest
families. They lived in a sprawling brick place on the banks of the
red lake river and spent summers at their vacation home on Union
Lake, 30 miles away.
Despite her numerous blessings, which included great physical
beauty, there was nothing snooty about Gretchen. She was among the
first befriend new kids at school and tutored students less able
than herself .She moved through the various elements of high-school
society-farm kids, jocks and geeks-dispensing of bonhomie to all.
Gretchen, the Central High Home-coming queen of1975, clearly was
going places.
I know Gretchen only enough to exchange greetings when we passed in
the halls .Was a good athlete and, in the parlance of the time,
kind of cute. But I was insecure, especially around
females-creatures I found mysterious and more intimidating than
fastballs hurled high and tight.
All of which may explain my bewilderment one midsummer night in
1977 when Gretchen and Bumped into each other at a local hangout.
had just finish my freshman year at the University Of North Dakota
in nearby Grand Forks.Gretchen,whose horizons were much broader,
was home from California after her first year at Stanford.
Gretchen greeted me happily. I remember the feel of her hand, rough
as leather from hours in the waters of Union Lake, as she pulled me
toward the dance floor. She was nearly as tall as me, with perfect
almond skin, soft features and fluorescent white teeth. Honey-blond
hair hung in strands past her shoulders. Her sleeveless white shirt
glowed in the strobe lights, setting off arms that were brown and
strong from swimming, horseback ridding and canoeing.
Gretchen was a poor dancer, Noticed that night. But she moved to
the music enthusiastically, smiling dreamily. After a few dances we
stood and talked, yelling to each other over the music. By the time
I walked her to her car. Main Street was deserted. Traffic lights
blinked yellow. We held hands as we walked. And when we arrived at
her car, she invited me to kiss her. I was glad to oblige.
Summer fun :I never had much purchase on&
Gretchen’s heart. She was fond of me, no doubt. Two years earlier,
she eventually revealed, she had been my “Guardian Angel-the
anonymous benefactor who left cookies and inspirational notes at my
locker before my hockey games.
But where Crookston boys were concerned, Gretchen could be as
elusive as mercury. As passionately as she would return some of my
kisses that summer and the next, for her I was part of the
interlude between childhood and the more serious endeavors of
adulthood to come.
Thus Gretchen and I rarely ventured beyond the surface of life. She
never mentioned the future in any respect, or any nagging worry or
sorrow. She never told me of the time in sixth grade when she broke
both legs skiing and for months had to be carried around by her
farther. Gretchen had to teach herself to walk again after that,
and years later her family pointed to the injury as the root of her
compassion and her independence.
I was dizzy for her, of course, and had a bad habit of saying so .
Each time I did, she pulled away from me . These were college
summers, not the time for moony eyes and vows of undying
One night in 1978 when Gretchen and I were together, our of nowhere
she spoke the words that guys in my situation dread above all.
“Tim,” she said, “I think we should just be friends.”
I told her I was tired of her games and was not as much of a fool
as she thought.
And stormed away. By morning I cooled off. I sent Gretchen some
roses that day, and a note offering an apology and my
friendship.
Gretchen and I started dating again about a month later. But this
time I had learned my lessons. No more moony eyes. I could be as
detached and aloof as the next guy.
It worked beautifully for a few weeks. Finally Gretchen asked,
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong?”
“You’re not yourself,” she said. “You haven’t been for a long
time.” “No,” I said , I let her in my ruse, the feigned
standoffishness designed to keep her near. For the only time I
remember, she became angry. Then she proposed a deal.
“You be who you are,” she said,” and I won’t go anywhere, at
least for the rest of the summer.”
It was a bargain quickly accepted. S HE WAS AS GOOD AS HER
Not long before Gretchen left again for Stanford, she and her
sister hosted a large party at the lake. With all the duties as
hostess, Gretchen would have little time for me , I surmised.
But midway through the raucous event, she gestured for me to follow
as she sprinted the length of the dock, dove into the cold water
and set off swimming toward a distant floating platform. I watched
her brown arms slice the water with power and grace. I nearly
drowned before getting to the platform myself, and she helped pull
The two of us lingered there for a long while, toeing the small
waves and watching the throng on shore. I through it a very nice
way for her to acknowledge our friendship in front of the
Those weeks seemed golden, a bit unreal. One time as we said good
night, I discarded the final wisp of caution and told Gretchen that
I loved her. She only smiled.
I early September I left for college in Grand Forks. Gretchen and
her friend Julie Panicky drove over from Crookston and surprised me
in my dorm room, hauling me& out dancing.
I came back to Crookston to see her off to Stanford in
mid-September. W hale Gretchen packed, I absently shot pool at her
father’s table. When she finished ,we took a last walk around her
family’s horse pasture in the gathering September chill. I thought
of how dramatically our lives were about to diverge and was
saddened. But more than anything I felt gratitude for the fine, fun
times we had spent over the last two summers.
Gretchen planned to find work in California the next summer. For
her, the serious part of life beckoned ,and I knew what that
“Good-bye,” I said as we stood at her front door.
“Don’t say good-bye,” she replied. “Say’ see you
later.’”
Back at school, emboldened by my experience with Gretchen, I
began dating a& student in the journalism
department. Gretchen fell in love with a ruggedly handsome center
on the Stanford football team.
The evening of October9, 1978,I called her in California to wish
her a happy 21st birthday. She thanked me for calling,
but sounded distracted. A loud party was obviously in progress. I
quickly ran off.
The last of autumn leaves were falling on October 13, but the
sky was a cloudless blue, the air crisp and invigorating. Classes
were done for the day. It is rare when happiness and contentment
consciously register with a person, but they did that morning.
The telephone rang the second I stepped inside my dorm room I
recognized Julie Jencks’s voice on the other line, and my heart
soared. Julie was to be married the following month, and maybe
Gretchen would be returning to crookston for the wedding after
But hearing the uncharacteristically quiet scratch of Julie’s
voice, I knew Gretchen was dead.
The previous morning, Julie told me, Gretchen had collected one
of her birthday presents from a college friend: a ride in a small
plane. Shortly after take off, the craft lurched out of control and
pitched into a marsh. Gretchen and her friend were killed
instantly.
“Gretchen’s parents wondered if you would be a pallbearer,”
Julie said.
“I’d be my honored,” I replied.
The word sounded strange even as it left mouth. Honored? Is that
what you felt when you helped bury a friend-a smart, sunny ,beauty
queen who was going places? I left my dormitory and walked
aimlessly. I am told I sought out a campus priest, but 18 years
later I have no memory of that.
Back home in Crookston that afternoon, I knocked on the door of
my high-school hockey coach. He took me out for a drive. As we
talked, I thought it strange that people should be concerned with
such trivial matters as buying groceries and putting gas in their
cars when Gretchen Echo was dead.
How does a person grieve? I wondered, puzzled by my lack of
Saturday night, I drove out to the Echo place, past the horse
pasture where Gretchen and I had walked together. The grieving
family took me in as one of them.& At one point
Gretchen’s mother left the room and returned with a photograph of
her daughter and me, taken a few weeks before. I was squinting, my
arm lightly around Gretchen’s shoulder. She was smiling broadly,
her teeth so white against her almond skin.
“Gretchen was very fond of you, Tim,” her mother said.
The night after the funeral, Joel Rood and I sat in his Chevy
Vega outside the restaurant where Gretchen’s mourning friends
planned to congregate. During high school Joel and I had been
teammates and best buddies, spending countless Saturday nights
cruising the country roads, talking about sports or school, or
love, or what the years after Crookston might bring. Seeing him now
was the beginning of both my pain and my consolation.
In the yellow Vega, as Joel spoke of Gretchen, his voice briefly
failed. That tiny catch in my old friend’s voice dissolved
whatever stood between me and my sorrow. My torrents of grief were
unleashed.
The next morning Joel and I joined a procession from the
Echoes’ lakeside summer house into the nearby woods, Gretchen’s
sisters took turns carrying a small urn that contained her ashes.
It was cool and sunny, and the fallen leaves cracked underfoot.
We came to a lone birch tree, its magnificent white bark
standing out among the surrounding brown maples. Many years before,
Gretchen, her father and young sister had discovered the tree and
carved the date and their names in the bark.
Someone said a prayer. Gretchen’s father placed the urn in the
ground below the birch. Above us, wind rustled through newly barren
I was among the last to leave. I emerged from the woods that day
into a different world, an adult world, where memories of first
love linger, but summers always end.
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