Harry Daniels was my friend...
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Harry Daniels was my friend from the time we met as next-door neighbors. I was six years old and he was seven. It was known by everybody that Harry had "... a sickness." But even going to the city band concerts together and to the local basketball games, our close friendship never became a reason or excuse for Harry to mention his sickness to me. We cared for each other, in fact quite deeply. His family and mine were good neighbors on a comfortable little street in a quiet little town. But we never learned what was meant by Harry's sickness. Harry's eyes danced all over his face so I thought his secret might be related to his eyes. His head shook a bit and his walking wandered some. But nobody told me what was meant by Harry's secret illness. I went off to college, the winter set in, and our very lovely river, the St. Clair River, began to freeze in its shore pockets. Harry was on the docks at Marysville; doing what? The official guess was that he had kept one foot on the dock and stuck the other out to test the ice in a small eddy. His body was found several weeks later. His father told me, later on, that Harry was subject to a continuous vertigo; he was dizzy all the time. It was a sickness suppressed, denied by his family and thus by Harry himself. What was undisclosed is that which finally took his life. -- Hoornstra
