Mark Benecke

Doug was a very close friend in high school.  He was one of the most easy guys to like I've ever known.  One memory I'll never forget involves Mike Smith, Doug and I.  It was a Saturday night in April in either our Junior or Senior year and the next day was the opening of fishing season across the state.  The three of us had planned to stay up all night, meet up with other Franklin friends in the pre-dawn hours, and then head south to Bay Lake (somewhere near Tacoma) to catch our limit of trout.  The lake was supposed to be overflowing with trout.  I guess that's why no one questioned driving so far to go fishing.  It was well after midnight when we, coming from a party on Beacon Hill, decided to take Chesty Blvd down the hill to our rendezvous location with the other guys.  (I wish I could remember who joined us that early morning to go fishing.  Maybe the Bingham's, Mike Diamond, Jeff Yoshinaka, Bill Nelson, Bud Talbot, Rick Reeves..but I'm not sure.)  We were going too fast on the dark & curvy Chesty Blvd road. Suddenly Mike lost control and we slammed into a roadside tree.  Aside from a few bumps, bruises and scratches, the three of us seemed to be OK.  Within minutes of the crash, a passer-by stopped and helped pull the Chevy back on the road.  The car's front end was totally smashed and the windshild was a mess..but miraculously, the car seemed drivable.  We eventually met up with our buddies an hour or so before dawn at 37th & Horton and headed south, in a different car, for Bay Lake.  Of couse, we did not catch one fish that day!  No one even had a bite.  We did manage to get soaked from the non-stop rain.  When we got back to Mike's car, we discovered his '55 Chevy was totally undrivable and needed to be towed away.  How we ever drove it from the darkness of Chesty Blvd to 37th & Horton, will always be a strange, neighborhood mystery.  Doug and I ended up with no repercussions from the the accident, but Mike suffered a broken right wrist.  The injury prevented Mike, a great ballplayer, from playing Spring baseball for Coach King & Franklin that year.  In a somewhat odd twist of fate, I understand Mike retired from Boeing several years ago and is now a fishing guide on the Green River...or is it the Cedar River?  Let us know if you were one of the guys who rode with us on that wet fishing expedition to Bay Lake...all those years ago.  R.I.P. Doug.....I'm sure you're simling and laughing right now.