I am absolutely devastated by the loss of this special man.  Although we've known him through folk dancing for decades, in the past few years, Larry also had become a close friend off the dance floor to both Mars and me.  We are sending separate remembrances. 

Thank you, Paul, for this website, and thank you, everyone, for sharing your feelings and memories. We were far from home when the news came and felt even worse because we couldn't join the community in mourning.  Now we're finally home, 18 days later.  Being able to write and read about Larry, at least alongside you all in cyberspace, is helping a bit, if anything could. 

Mars and I were on a working vacation, teaching dance on a cruise ship, when we heard. As we checked our e-mail in a small electronics store in Seward, the shocking news appeared in seven messages.  We sat shaking and sobbing in that dusty shop, then stumbled to the bus to go back to the boat. The bus driver, a friendly garrulous woman, saw our faces, so we told her.  Everyone heard and, although mostly strangers, they turned to say something kind.  One of the Filippino busboys from the ship reached out to hold my hand.  I kept thinking how Larry, with his strong sense of irony, would have appreciated this scene.

That night we bought three cognacs, his favorite drink at our house, toasted him and drank two.  Then we stood at the ship's rail in the rain and wind and tossed Larry's glass into the sea.  He would have appreciated that, also.  I keep hoping he was there. 

I am so, so sad and enraged to be writing about Larry Hoey--Larry Hoey!!!--using these past-tense verbs. Unbelievable.

We shared more than dancing with Larry.  In the past couple of years, he often stayed at our house when he came to Chicago for the symphony, ballet, and opera.  Sometimes we didn't change our third-floor guest bed because we knew he'd be back the next weekend.  On these Saturday nights, he and Mars would sit up late drinking cognac and discussing music.  In the morning, before he sat down at the piano, we'd talk about our lives and life in general.  Yes, he was a funny guy but part of his attractiveness was his intensity.  (god, "was"!)  I liked to hear about his professional work. He sent me his articles on medieval French architecture and we discussed how he was progressing on his book. He looked forward to going to Europe in the summers to do research, and was in France partly to take more photographs for his book illustrations. 

Before breakfast was over, we would get around to the state of his social life.  He talked about being lonely without a permanent partner, but  agreed that this was his choice. Certainly most of his women friends were at least half in love with him, and for good reason.  Men friends, too.  What a hideous loss for all of us.

The last time he was here, in late June, he had been to the Bolshoi Ballet to see, again, the prima ballerina about whom he was very excited.  He arrived at our house at midnight and couldn't stop talking about her.  Mars had to ply him with cognac to get him to calm down enough to sleep.     It had been so much fun standing in a tight group beside him two weeks earlier at June Camp, laughing at a bad joke together, and such pleasure two weeks later in Door County dancing with him and next to him.  But this memory of Larry's excitement about the ballet, his sparse hair practically standing on end, him running upstairs to my office where I was working at midnight, and am grieving here again at midnight, to tell me about his ballerina--this is the memory of our dear friend that I especially want to share and will always 
cherish. 

Sanna Longden - Evanston, Illinois
SannaMars@aol.com