Sandy Starr

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Today he would have been 54 years old.  He used to say that when he was a kid he could never imagine becoming 40.  He died when he was 38.

We were friends for just over 6 years, but that period of time was a life changer for me. He was 12 years my junior, a gay man, a talented performer.  I was a mother of two college age kids, just out of a painful divorce and pursuing a lifelong dream of being “an actress” as well as a professional artist.

David and I became fast friends and soul mates; from the first day we met and the poor guy had to be my partner in a production number in a play – “Pajama Game” – at a local community theater.  I know I must have crushed his toes more than once, but he never complained (well…maybe a little.  This was, after all, David!)

He and I would spend many hours together over the next years and he taught me a lot about acceptance, living life for today, and enjoying the simple things.  We would watch TV, movies and plays together.  We went out to eat a lot, went shopping and dreamed of traveling.

Since I was an artist (and at that time, an actress in film and TV.  Yes, my ambitions grew quickly!), I was always working a part-time job somewhere.  The summer in question, I was – of all things – selling snow cones at the Cocoa Beach Pier!  I didn’t make a whole lot of money, but I had a killer tan.

One day, David stopped by for a visit at the beach, as he often did, and he told me he wanted to take a road trip.  Did I want to come with him? Since he was living with an unfortunate illness, he thought this might be his chance to see places he had always wanted to visit and never had before.  Plus, there were friends and family to see along the journey.

“Oh, David,” I said.  “That sounds like a lot of fun, but I really don’t have the money to make a trip like that.”

David replied, “Hey, I don’t either.  We’ll just mooch our way across country!”  And so we did…(to be continued)

Happy birthday, my friend.  I miss you.

When I was just out of the first grade at Miami Shores Elementary School, my father took a job as an electronics field engineer with a company based in Baltimore.  Upon the sale of our house, my mom and I headed north to meet him after he completed his orientation with the new job.  His first assignment was at a radar station – in Naselle, Washington!  Talk about hitting the road!

We had a small, early 1950’s era Nash that took us on our first exciting odyssey across the United States.  (No Interstate highways then, just open roads!) I think my love of travel – and the ability to amuse myself for hours – was born from that first excursion.

My dad made sure we visited as many historical and interesting sites along the road as we were able to and I still remember visiting Lincoln’s home in Illinois, Mark Twain’s home in Missouri, seeing snow for the first time in the Rocky Mountains, and many more adventures. I was encouraged to keep a scrapbook of the trip and I still have it to this day!

The window next to the back seat of that car became the portal to a new world and I would stare for hours at the new and exciting scenery I saw.  From palm trees in Florida to rolling plains, from wheat fields in the Midwest to snow-capped mountains and awesome waterfalls, we saw it all. Naturally, I spent a lot of time daydreaming about the different towns we would go through and made up stories to go with what I thought I was seeing.  My dad, whose mother was an artist, made sure I always had crayons, color pencils and lots of paper to put my thoughts and impressions on.

Thus my love of travel and making art was born.