In the nearly twenty years graduating from high school, I’ve lost touch with the vast majority of the denizens from that period of my life. But I recently read in the friendly school alumni magazine that one of my classmates (well, a year above mine) Earl Ma passed away in his thirties after a battle with cancer in June of ‘07. If you knew him, you immediately remember much - that in high school seemed rather strange - but weren’t we all, back then.

My memories of Earl:

• Was on the school newspaper staff, along with myself and several other slackers (you know who you are).
• Carried a hard-shell suitcase.
• Creator of The Unions - a comic strip featuring Rover, a dog with a blue nose, and a long list of characters that I’m sure nobody could keep straight except Earl.
• Loved racing, and later wrote racing articles. I remember he had developed some sort of racing card game using index cards.
• Hated Garfield with a passion to the point of having Garfield stuffed animal barbecues.
• Collected motor oil cans.
• Was fascinated with round, Union 76 globes.

Although I lost touch with Earl over a decade ago, his unique personality made an impression, to each time I drove by a Union 76 globe I wondered if he had seen that particular one. Back at my parent’s house in Hawaii, I have several Unions compilation comic books that I bought from Earl way back when. I’ll have to dig them up next time I fly back and revisit them.

My larger feeling after reading of Earl’s death and others’ memories online is he pretty much decided what he was interested in at an early age, and he went for it without being swayed as to what others would think about his hobbies / obsessions. I’m sad that he didn’t get to live a longer life, but find some comfort in the fact that he was doing what he loved up until the last moments. May we all be that lucky.

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