In Memory

John Griebel

John Griebel



 
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06/06/12 11:58 PM #1    

Garry Sellers

John and I became best friends at Edison Jr H.  We ate lunch together every day. In 7th grade he was our starting center on our basketball team at 5 '8" and I was a 5' 5" guard.  He played center like his hero, Ray Nitschke!  John is the only guy that I ever saw with a two-handed over-the-head jump shot with all the finesse of a bull elephant.  The ball would vibrate off the backboard!   By 9th grade John was 5' 9" and I was 6' 2". He played for one year at Custer and then either threw in the towel or was banned from the court for destroying so many backboards!

At Custer we would walk home after football and basketball practice together (he lived at the very eastern end of Villard and probably should have gone to King).  On our way home we'd usually stop at Santo's (I think owned by Asians which was very unusual in those days) at about 39th and Villard for a cheese pizza.  Then we'd have to go home and lie to our Mom's who had always saved dinner for us!  I don't know how we ate any of it.

John so wanted to be a football hero ... but he just sucked at it!  I did too and at 145 pounds I usually got the stuffings knocked out of me.  I think Coach Spicuzza said something like I was as uselss as two tits on a goose! Terry Janke thought he'd do me a favor one time and threw me a pass.  OMG I actually caught it!  Then five guys landed on top of me and I didn't breathe again until the next semester!  John thought it was hilarious!   He's probably still snickering over it.

At the end of our senior year John sold me his '55 Olds convertible with a souped up engine.   A couple weeks after I bought it I had a date with Sue Sharpless (how's that name for an oxymoron?).  And of course the transmission blew!  So at 12:30 in the morning, I called John to come pick us up and take us home!  I don't know who was more angry, John for being woken up or me!   I don't think I even got a good night kiss ... from either Sue or John!   I don't believe Sue went out with me again.  I sold the car a little while later ... for practically nothing!

I've got a million other Griebel stories ... some of which need serious sensoring.  We often laughed ourselves to tears. There are still days when I can sense John around laughing at me for one reason or another. If you remember the last line from the movie "Stand By Me", the writer says, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.  Jesus, does anyone?"  That applies specifically to John for me.  After 50 years I can honestly say, I miss you  friend.


06/11/12 05:54 PM #2    

John Leopold

I wanted to add a comment or two about John after reading Garry's comments. John and I met on the Freshman/Sophmore basketball team in our sophmore year. Yes, he "played" one more year. For some reason in those days teams had about 15 players and Coach Hinchcliffe used only about 8 in his rotation. John and I met at the end of the bench. At some point early in the season we decided our goal for the year was to get in the game enough quarters to qualify for numerals. The magic number was 13. Every now and then we'd get in for a minute toward the end of a game but our practice times weren't impressing anyone and needless to say, things weren't looking too good for us. Garry has already described John's skills and at 5'5" and 130 pounds I wasn't much of a backcourt threat. One night toward the end of the season we're at our usual spots way down the bench when John points up toward the rafters and nonchalantly says to me, "Look at that." "What?" , I say, bewildered because I don't see anything. "There go our numerals flying away", he says rather whistfully, and we both started laughing.  He''d calculated there now weren't enough quarters left in the season for us to get those beloved numerals and probably out of relief that the absurdity of our situation was finally over we couldn't contain ourselves.  Since we were losing the game Coach Hinchcliffe wasn't too happy about us giggling like two tweens at the end of his bench and let us know about it after the game. That was just enough added incentive for us to leave our uniforms in the locker room that night and never return. But it cemented our friendship and was a shared story whenever we saw each other later in our lives.

To this day I regard John as one of the most genuinely nice people I have ever known. We maintained contact until a few years before his sad, tragic and finally, merciful death.  


06/21/12 07:37 AM #3    

Patricia McCarthy (McCarthy)

In our 9th grade art classJohn and I had paintings submitted to the Milwaukee Journal Art contest. I don't remember mine at all, but John's was a winter forrest scene with rabbit footprints in the snow. There WAS something whistful about it, and maybe that's why it stays in my mind.  Whistfulness was not a quality  possessed by most 9th graders.


06/25/12 09:16 AM #4    

Barbara Blair (Brenzel)

Although I knew John in High School, we became friends at the 25th Custer reunion & stayed in touch while he was residing in Escanaba, Michigan.  John was a fine man and had a GREAT sense of humor.  The saying is, "the good die young" and it surely was the case with John.  His is missed by many.


08/21/12 03:43 PM #5    

David Holm

In my memories of John he is either smiling or laughing.  He was one of the regulars at our lunch table and I had a brief  chance to play basketball with him at Edison Jr. High.  We called ourselves the Bonnies (as in St. Bonaventure).  Maybe the reason I saw him laughing so much was because I was the only one on the team worse at the game than he was.  He is missed as one of the truly nice guys.


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