I'll miss you, my friend

There'll be a funeral tomorrow for one of the first persons I met when I first moved to Gainesville nearly 50 years ago.<br /> <br /> Mike Banks, who died earlier this week, was still in high school when I walked into the WDUN studios in early April 1964 for a job interview. He was working part-time at the station and filing records (remember those things?) at the time.<br /> <br /> Mike and I immediately developed a friendship that continued until the day that he died - and I really don't consider that it has ended.<br /> <br /> Mike and his whole family took me, a single guy from South Georgia, under their wings. I've written in this space before how his mother, Charlotte, saw to it that I got a Thanksving or Christmas meal, or both, if I had to work those holidays and could not be with my family and had no other plans. And, most of the time I was working. Usually what she would do was prepare a plate for me and have Mike deliver it to me at work and sometimes on just a normal Sunday morning when I was working, here would come Mike with a breakfast plate.<br /> <br /> Mike was off to the University of Georgia not long after we met but we usually saw each other on weekends - sometimes a double-date or at services at First Baptist Church. After a lot of Sunday evening services, a group of us would pile into our cars and head to the long-gone Mr. Pizza on Atlanta Highway.<br /> <br /> There was one particular Sunday, though, that I know we didn't make it to church. That was the Sunday we spent the day at the World 600 NASCAR race in Charlotte. What made that outing so memorable was not the race but the fact that we both came back with very bad sunburns after siting on our car in the infield in the blistering late May sun for several hours. However, fair-skinned Mike was in much worse shape than me, as I recall.<br /> <br /> I left Gainesville in late 1968 but returned in early 1971. <br /> <br /> Over the ensuing years, we remained friends but were not regularly in touch with each other - busy with our careers and our families but in recent years were keeping in touch via Facebook. Then, out of the blue one day a few years ago, Mike called and invited me to lunch - no particular reason it turned out. Seems he just wanted to "catch up" outside the usual business-related setting. <br /> <br /> I never reciprocated - and now I regret it. <br /> <br /> He's gone, along with another man I met that same day in April 1964 - the man who was Mike's boss and was about to become mine for 40+ years, John W. Jacobs, Jr. We lost him just over two years ago.<br /> <br /> Mike, I'll remember you the rest of my life and will always treasure our friendship.<br /> <br /> RIP, buddy.<br /> <br /> (Ken Stanford is the retired longtime News Diector for WDUN-AM, WDUN-FM, 1240 ESPN Radio and AccessNorthGa.com.)<br />

http://accesswdun.com/article/2014/1/269708