Blog 3350 – 01.04.2025

Ric Chambers – Birthday Boy

Today is the birthday of my long time friend and childhood buddy, Ric Chambers, Richard Daryl Chambers, whom everyone knew as Butch back then. It is said that friendships formed when we are young are often the most rewarding because we get to really know people before our egos are fully formed and all the walls go up.

I was a very shy and fearful little boy and Butch (Ric) was the opposite. Fear was a word missing from his vocabulary and he was anything but shy. Years before the TV show Star Trek premiered, Ric was already on a life long mission to boldly go where no man (no one) had gone before.

The last time I saw Ric was almost twenty years ago when our East Lake Junior High ninth grade class held a fortieth reunion (pictured above)at East Lake Park which was first constructed in 1896. East Lake Junior High was constructed across the street facing the park and opened in 1927.

I met Ric first in Miss Lane’s fifth grade class at Clifton Hills Elementary where my brother and I started attending in 1960. Ric attend there all six years of elementary school.When we started that school year my family still lived several miles from the school just off Rossville Boulevard (where the schools was located in the community of East Lake) but much closer to downtown Chattanooga so we had to ride a city bus to school and back home each day for a couple of months.

Walking home from school which was a little over a five city blocks from the small rental house that my folks moved us to on Halloween of 1960, I was pleased to find out that two boys in my class lived very close to where I did. Don Price a lived little over a block from our house and Butch just a few houses down Clio Avenue (which bordered our backyard) toward school. I soon started walking to school with Butch (Ric) every morning.

Ric and I were in a different class for sixth grade but he talked me into joining the Boy Scout Troop with him that his brother Mike was in when I turned eleven that school year in November. You had to be eleven to join the Boy Scouts. Ric always got special permission to do things a little early because his birthday was the fourth of January.

After ninth grade, I had planned to attend Chattanooga High (City High School) where my my girlfriend Becky was intending to go, but we broke-up that summer between Junior High and High School so at the last minute I got on the bus with Ric and attended Central High School for three years and graduated from there with him instead. So, all totaled, I ended up spending over have of my public school years in the same schools as Ric.

As boys we once planned to boat down the Mississippi River like Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn when we were grown, but that never worked out. We did get to have a few camping adventures together, before I dropped out of Scouting after only a year. Rick went on to make Eagle Scout and served as Scout Master of several troupes over the years. We had our separate adventures throughout our life journey, but in a birthday email to Ric this morning I wished him a happy birthday and told him that just could not tell him how much the brief intersection of our live’s journeys had meant to me over the years and how he more than anyone else had taught me how to enjoy this Row-Dee-Oh/Row-Dey-Oh. The pretend argument of the correct pronunciation of the word rodeo was a running gag between us. Each afternoon when we got off the city bus that we rode home from Central High School was we parted to go to our separate houses we would yell back and forth to one another, he – Row-Dee-Oh and I Row-Dey-Oh till we got to our respective doors.

I signed off my birthday email to Rick: “Your forever friend and fan, David.” And I meant that with all my heart as I do to you my friends.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White