We werent really that close but I remember Bio class.
We had such fun.
"Joe the Fro"
Than making fun of the only guy in the dance team at the pep rally.
Remember when the sink where you wash your eyes out flooded and Rebecca and you were going crazy trying to clean it up before Mr & Mrs Meisel found out.
You will be missed but not forgotten.
Becca,Me,You,and Zach:Greatest Lab Group ever!!!
Bidding Joe Savage a sad goodbye
April 11, 2007
Walden — There is something to be said for boys carrying a casket.
Willing their eyes not to well, clenching their jaws lest a sob slip out, Joseph Savage's friends and family carried his body into the church. Carefully, slowly, they parted a crowd of 500 or more to gently, awkwardly, place his casket before an altar still white with Easter lilies.
Joe died in a fire in the basement of his Walden home on Friday. He had come home late from a friend's house, unbeknownst to his family, and had fallen asleep downstairs. The rest of the family escaped, not knowing there was one more to account for. Fire officials have not released the cause of the blaze.
There is something to be said for a volunteer department that hoists an American flag from the top of its ladder trucks, letting the fabric snap in the stiff crosswinds over the road to the cemetery. Such is an honor usually reserved for weathered firefighters, not shaggy-haired 17-year-old skater-boys.
Joe's mom told his friends they could wear their skater clothes to the funeral. And so Mass at the Most Precious Blood Roman Catholic Church was more sweat shirts than suits; more sneakers than polished leather.
When Monsignor Kenneth Loughman spoke of Jesus' doubts upon the cross, he spoke to a congregation of teenagers, many of whom he hadn't seen in years. One, his Mohawk combed smooth and flat, volunteered to serve as altar boy.
"Joe believed in God," the priest assured them. "Joe believed so much ... that his favorite place for skateboarding was right alongside my church."
There is something to be said when public officials attend services for the teenager who came to see them at Village Hall one night. Joe spoke for dozens of kids when he asked the mayor for a skate park.
It opened last fall in Bradley Park. The teens want it named in Joe's honor.
Skateboards collected in front of the church yesterday, piled around trees, epitaphs scribbled on their decks.
As the funeral procession filed past, a high school pal pointed out his car window toward a circle of middle-schoolers. "I feel sorry for them," he said. "Joe taught all of them how to skate."
"I still have my board that Joe snapped," said another friend. "The next day he bought me a pink one. A pink one!"
He laughs. Clears his throat. Digs in his pocket for a soggy piece of Kleenex. Falls apart.
There is something to be said for young men carrying a casket to the top of a cemetery hill.
Joe's brothers, side by side at the grave, squared their shoulders as their mother and father held tight to them.
After the family was led away, the teenagers closed in.
"You going to the skate park?" they asked one another.
"Yah, we'll be there."