Sean Cook

In Mitch Albom’s excellent book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the main character, Eddie, an elderly man who has worked most of his life as a maintenance man at an amusement park, dies and encounters five people who teach him important lessons about connecting to others, sacrifice, forgiveness, love and purpose. The people were all related to him in some way, though his connection to some was not obvious to him at first.

We all connect to people every day, in so many ways, and the importance of particular moments, or even particular relationships, isn’t always readily apparent. Later in life, as you reflect back on college, the importance of some connections you have made will become clear. In this spirit, I’d like to share some stories of people I met during my time in college, and the lessons I’ve learned.

Hopefully, glimpses into these people’s lives will tell you a little about my own values, or allow you to reflect on your own. Take a look around. When you look back on college, who will you remember for their effects on you? Why? And what did you learn from them?

Person # 1: Dave Dondero

I first met Dave Dondero my during my freshman year in college. I moved into the residence halls in January. My parents had planned to keep me at home, since we were local, for at least my first year, but I guess we all realized it wasn’t working out, as I wasn’t making friends and really wasn’t getting out and doing much.

On coincidence, I was assigned to a room on 3^rd floor, E-Section, of Clemson’s notorious Johnstone Hall, with a guy who was also from Clemson. We hadn’t requested each other, but we were neither good friends nor mortal enemies, so I thought things would work out. But I annoyed him (a story I will leave for another day), and he moved out only a few weeks into the semester.

After Todd moved out, I ended up having the room to myself for the remainder of my freshman year. I quit hanging around with other kids from Clemson (I didn’t really fit in, anyway) and started to get out and make other friends.

Dave was the drummer in a band with some guys on my hall. He had transferred in after some time at Coastal Carolina and was getting really involved in the band scene. I didn’t really know many punk rock types and I found him and his group of friends to be fun and different. I wouldn’t say we were the best of friends, or that I was particularly a member of the band crowd (I really didn’t have a crowd), but Dave and I did periodically hang out on the hall and do stuff, mostly involving the drinking of beer.

This was in the days before card-access door locks on the residence halls, and weekends in Johnstone, a huge complex of several thousand men in an archaic lift-slab construction, pre-fab military barracks-type of building, were pretty much a free-for-all. Dave’s band, the Fat Stinkin’ Belgian Bastards, played at least one impromptu show in the middle of the hall that semester, but I missed it for some reason, probably involving alcohol or time-wasting of some similar sort. Women roamed in packs through the building on weekends looking for parties with free drinks.

On one of these nights, Dave was hanging out across the hall in his friends’ room and I was home looking for something or other to do. Some girls passed by and he called out to them, and we proceeded to tell them some bullshit story about how I was from Clemson and that my middle initial was “C” and it stood for Clemson (it’s actually Christopher). It was fun, but I don’t remember these girls being all that impressed, and they really didn’t stay long. One other time, Dave and I went downtown and got pizza at Chanello’s. It was snowing and everyone else was out. We ate and then started to head back, when Dave saw a drunk girl walking alone in the snow and having trouble. We walked her back to her building on the other side of campus, and once we knew she was okay, went back to Johnstone.

I never did get to see the Bastards play, and the school year quickly drifted away. I moved to another floor and Dave and I lost track of each other for a couple of years. Then, when I was in grad school, I wrote entertainment articles for the Tiger, Clemson’s student newspaper, and Dave and I crossed paths again here and there. He was playing in a new band called Sunbrain, and he was the lead singer. I spent a lot of time at Edgar’s, the campus pub, and his band played there a few times. I reviewed their shows and helped scan some artwork for an EP they put out on a local label, Rage Records. Later, their self-produced first album was picked up by a bigger indie, Grass Records, and re-released. I covered the album’s initial release and their eventual signing to the label. The next year, I reviewed their second album, and interviewed Dave about it.

My relationship with Dave was never exceptionally close, but it was built on a mutual respect for our common love for music, and I think, our generally accepting and caring outlook toward other people. Dave works hard, tours like crazy and doesn’t make a ton of money, but I know for a fact that he would give someone who needed them the shoes off his own feet. He’s just that kind of guy.

I believe that Dave has a natural goodness to him, and a sensitivity toward others, that draws people to him, and it’s part of what has made him such a good musician. A young label-mate of his, Conor Oberst, has a similar sensibility and they became friends as they crossed paths on tour. Oberst, whose band Commander Venus was unceremoniously dumped along with Sunbrain and several other bands when Grass was bought out by a major label, has since earned a reputation as a one-man indie-rock industry unto himself. His sound very much emulates Dave’s, and his band, Bright Eyes, has achieved a respectable level of fame. He helped found the respected label Saddle Creek and later another Team Love. And he put out two albums by Dondero.

During my time at Penn State, I was glad to be able to share David’s music with students in a show one summer night in Pollock Commons. Dave and another of my friends, Danielle Howle, sang their songs in two sets, and talked about their careers in music in between. It was good to reconnect with him and we do still occasionally trade e-mails or Facebook notes even now. In 2006, NPR’s Robin Hilton listed Dave as one of the 10 best living singer-songwriters. Those of us who knew him always thought so. But in the end, he will always be, to me, that really nice and funny guy I hung out with my freshman year, who taught me, in the way he treated others and looked at the world, some good ways to live.

The lesson: You never know the who the people you meet in college will end up being years from now, so it’s good to meet everyone as a potential friend. And no matter where you go, remember who your friends are and they will remember you.