(Note: This writing was originally posted to Facebook on September 11, 2023 in memory of my friend Wade.)
My 9/11 tribute is different this year because it’s not about 9/11 at all. It’s for my high school classmate and friend, Wade.
Wade would have turned 24 years old on September 11, 2001. He died two days earlier, September 9, 2001, because of an undiagnosed heart condition.
I didn’t know Wade very well, really. We didn’t cross paths until 10th grade when we started Minor High School. We had 6th period Geometry together. I didn’t have any friends in that class so I carried a book to read until the bell rang and while our teacher, Ms. Parker, took attendance. My seat was in the front and I would notice Wade join his friends in the row of desks against the wall on the far side of the room. He wore a denim color-block, button down shirt a lot. Isn’t it funny the things we remember?
Junior year we had three classes together: 3rd period History with Coach Pridmore, 5th period English with Mr. Purcell and 6th period Algebra II with Mrs. Thomaston. During football season, Wade walked into History class singing Rocky Top. He was a big fan of the Tennessee Vols. He carried more confidence than I remember in 10th grade Geometry, not cocky but there was a sureness in his stride that year. I noticed him more, maybe because we shared so many classes but more likely because I thought he was cute. I admittedly had a crush, at least as much as a girl in the band could like a boy on the football team.
We had only one class together our senior year, 1st period Economics/Government taught by Mr. Handley and Mr. Jackson, but our lockers were close. We started to speak in the hallways. From my seat in the flute section on Friday nights, I watched Wade play and lead during football games. He was a good quarterback and teammate. I interviewed him for the school newspaper as the team advanced towards the regional play-offs. He told me about the towel he’d worn during games for three years and of his lucky shoe. The toe was split open so he wrapped it with tape instead of throwing the pair away. I met him at the exit gate after games, to give him a hug and tell him he played well.
Wade returned the favor when I participated in the Homecoming Pageant. Anyone who knew me then – and even now – knows I am not a glamour girl but my daddy wanted me to enter the pageant so I did. I wore a beaded gown, my hair in curls and more makeup than my face has ever seen. Wade was one of the escorts and as he arrived backstage I hobbled to him in my high heels and fastened my fingers in a death grip around his elbow. He was waiting center stage when I finished my walk and as he escorted me off stage he told me I did a good job. I laugh about it now because he was pretty much congratulating me for not falling but in that moment his words and his arm were my lifeline.
The last time I saw Wade was at our high school graduation in May 1995. Rain forced the ceremony from the football field to a local church. Anticipating chaos as graduation ended, I mentioned to my family that I wanted a picture with Wade. My brother Chad intercepted him as he was leaving. When Wade and I posed my daddy looked at Wade and joked, “This picture might look better if you were turned the other way.” We all laughed, and that’s the smile you see on Wade’s face in our graduation picture. (Thank you, Daddy.)
I was sitting in church with my mom and dad when I found out Wade had died. Social media didn’t have the reach then that it does now. I’d moved to Troy and later on to Huntsville and lost touch with most of my high school crowd. My friend Jessica, who’d married Wade’s cousin, scooted through the pews to tell me. As the congregation sang Beulah Land, I cried. I wept for my classmate I hadn’t seen in six years, for a boy I barely knew but deeply adored.
Weeks later on another visit home I visited the cemetery. A worker showed me on a map where Wade was buried and how to get there. My hands shook and my heart pounded as I drove the narrow road to his gravesite. His headstone had not been placed. I knelt at the dirt, prayed, and cried again. In 2013, near his birthday and the start of football season, I returned to leave a note and cross at his grave. A few days later Facebook notified me of a new message. It was from Wade’s mom:
“… I found your card and cross on his marker and it filled my heart with joy and my eyes to know he is still remembered…”
Mrs. Shirley and I have kept in touch over the past 10 years. I’ve mailed her pictures, shared words that Wade wrote to me, and told stories I remember from high school. I messaged her Saturday night as I watched football, thinking of Wade because I knew it was the anniversary of the day he died. She responded right away and said, “This is the exact moment I received ‘the call.’”
I did not know Wade very well, really. I think now that our fledgling friendship was meant not for the hallways of Minor High School but to cross years and miles to comfort his mom in the years she’s lived since he died, 22 years now, almost as many without him as she had with him.
So, maybe this remembrance of Wade is an appropriate tribute to 9/11 after all, a nudge that the small moments mean something, there’s significance in an arm to hold when we feel like we’re going to fall, and we should always, always tell the people we love how much we care for them.
There’s a scene at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (I like these movie words better than the book) in which the students are gathered for an assembly and learn how their friend and classmate Cedric Diggory died. In all the years I’ve read or watched Harry Potter and all the occasions I’ve missed Wade I’d never considered the ways Cedric and Wade are alike. Professor Dumbledore’s eulogy of Cedric – which brings me to tears every time I watch – is a fitting way to remember Wade:
“Today we acknowledge a really terrible loss. Cedric Diggory was as you all know, exceptionally hard working, intricately fair minded, and most importantly a fierce, fierce friend… In light of recent events, the bonds of friendship we made this year will be more important than ever. Remember that and Cedric Diggory will not have died in vain. You remember that, and we’ll celebrate a boy who was kind and honest and brave and true right to the very end.”
I asked Wade during that interview with the school paper what he wanted to be remembered for at Minor. I never considered that the question of legacy for his life would be answered so young.
“A leader on and off the field,” he answered. “That I picked up my teammates.”
Touchdown, Wade.
We remember that and so much more.
Wade Joseph Woodfin
September 9, 1977- September 9, 2001
