Thursday, July 29, 2010
To the Lawrence family and friends of Mark, My sincere sympathy and condolences to all on your loss. I was privileged to grow up on the Southside with Mark and the Lawrence family. Throughout the years I have looked back fondly at all of the good times we shared together. Mark was always full of life, he always did everything at 110%, he was intense and competitive, but he was always laughing, a great sense of humor, and one of the best practical jokesters! His parents John and Alice were very special and their house was a place where all of us were welcomed at any time and throughout the years in Little Falls. During our grade school days the Lawrence family back porch rooms were like our clubhouse and we met there regularly for years! Mark has left us for now, but he has touched each of us and left us with many memories which will keep him alive in our hearts forever. One of my earliest memories of Mark and the family was when we were about 6 or 7 and as typical for those days we had decided to play war forming two armies, one from Casler Street and the other from Flint Ave and the surrounding streets. We armed ourselves with garbage can covers for shields and sticks for swords. We chased each other around and sometime during our chases Mark�s oldest brother Don went to jump over one of the garden wire fences and got a 2 inch cut through the skin over his biceps. We all stopped to gather around while Don kept flexing his bleeding arm to show all of us the muscle! We played together all the time (baseball, football, king of the mountain, kickball, steal-the-flag, chase, etc) and shared all kinds of adventures from exploring all over Little Falls, building forts up on Ochie�s, swimming in the Barge Canal, hopping railroad cars, sleeping out on summer nights, and sledding down the steepest and iciest streets each winter. We were young, athletic, carefree, careless and perhaps a little crazy as we climbed in, on, over and around just about anything. We were always playing in and around all of the old abandoned buildings around the Southside and up and down along the railroad tracks and the Barge Canal. There was one time, when for some reason I was not playing with Mark, and I will never forget it because it was the summer day he fell off the roof of one of the old brick buildings off the Lock 17 road and luckily only broke his leg and was not killed. I do not remember all the details about just what Mark and the other guys were doing that day when he fell off the roof, but my recollection is that he was trying to take a shortcut from the roof of this multistory brick building to the ground by jumping over to a tree to climb down, or to an adjoining building roof at a lower level, but unfortunately the branch broke or he missed his grip and fell to the ground below. It was a long hot summer and a painful recovery for Mark, but he never let his spirits down and whenever we went to visit him he was happy-go-lucky and the room was filled with his contagious laughter, and the jokes and stories we shared of what we were all up to, and the latest news or gossip. This quality of his to light up a room instantaneously with his laughter and jokes was something he never lost and of course, something we will never forget. With our days at Jefferson Street School over, we started to get a little more home work that required us to do some research and study at the Little Falls Public Library. It was here at the Library that Mark and I had one of our most memorable moments. Mark came across this huge, thick, oversized old book and he soon started leafing through the pages and chuckling and waving to me to come over and join him. Upon sitting down with him he flipped the book cover back to show me the title, which to the best of my recollection was something like �The History of Juvenile Delinquency�. The book had pages of listings of specific actions which supposedly were certain indications of �juvenile delinquency�. Needless to say the more we read, the more we looked at each other and the more we agreed, yes we had done that, and then we started chuckling, and then we started laughing, until after a few more pages we were out of control, laughing out loud with tears running down our faces! Needless to say in those days such behavior in the Library, where you were barely allowed to talk in a whisper, was not tolerated and we were told to leave immediately. In Junior High we were always together and new hangouts like Masle�s Cigar Store, Candyland, Feldy�s Cellar, and Viola�s Pizzeria started to replace our earlier Southside hangouts around the local grocery stores. Mark loved playing football! As kids we first played hard tackle on the West Shore Street cinder parking lot next to the railroad tracks, then at Columbus Park, and finally organized Pop Warner football up at Veterans Park. I played on the Lions Club, and I think Mark played for Cherry Burrell or Burline, and it was here that we first met some of our Northside friends such as B. J. Miller, Al Sefcik, Bob Casullo, etc. Mark and I played football together in High School and we were often right next to each other on offense with me at center and Mark at guard, and on defense where we both played linebacker. The football playing field was probably the only place where you never saw the gentle, playful, humorous side of Mark. When Mark was on the field he was very intense, focused, alert and dedicated to giving 110% on each and every play and making the opposing player pay for any contact they had with Mark on the field. To say that he was a bruising and punishing player to the opposition is an understatement. Mark could not play or practice at �half speed�, he always wanted to go all out, all of the time, and never wanted to leave the game. At times this refusal to leave the field was entertaining to me as Mark would have no idea of what an intimidating figure he presented on the field to our opponents, let me explain. During our early High School football days we did not have a lot of face masks, but we did have these silly large pink mouth protectors that sort of looked like a pig�s snout when you were biting down on them and they were sticking out of your mouth. This was also the days when it was not uncommon to continue to play with a bloody nose or other open wounds, cuts, scratches, etc. Mark loved contact and was always head first in to the fray, and thus he was always cut up and bleeding, and totally oblivious to the fact that this blood was all over his face! Whenever I would look over at Mark with his face looking like a pigs snout covered in blood, I would start laughing as he looked like a character out of �The Lord of the Flies�, and the look of the terrified opponents, especially the last quarter freshman who were just coming in to the game and had to face Mark was priceless! Some of them actually seemed to run away or fall down rather than try and play against this mad man! Mark and I, along with Chuck �Bullet� Crimmins, and Bryant �Dudy� Kelly were night owls and it seems that for some reason we were always out late and always hungry at the end of the night, or should I say in the early hours of the morning. Another thing that Mark loved to do during this time was to cook. We would end up at his house in the kitchen and Mark would whip up a big breakfast for us to eat. Eggs, bacon, bologna, Velveeta, toast, omelets, and just about anything else in the refrigerator was likely to be cooked up and eaten. Looking back I wonder how many times the rest of the Lawrence family came down in the morning to find the refrigerator just about empty! When I left Little Falls I would often hear from my Dad about the �Lawrence boys.� Mark, Pete and Don would often drop by the DeCarlo-Staffo Post where my Dad was bartending and he would always share with me the good times and laughter of the good times they had together. Although my Dad was only about 5 feet 2 inches tall, he had a great sense of humor, and he really enjoyed making other people laugh. Thus whenever my Dad got together with Mark and his brothers their humorous antics together were memorable for their outrageous playfulness, physical slapstick like comedy, and truly entertaining for all. May each of you be blessed with joyful memories of the good times shared with Mark to help you through the pain of his loss. Sincerely, Gary T. Staffo