Johanna Montiel - Dallas, Texas
My relationship with Steve could only have happened,
as it happened, in the period when it happened. (Get all that?)
I knew Steve in high school, but we were really just passing acquaintances. He knew one of my cousins in Lake Wales, where he’d attended school before moving to Sebring. He was a football jock, and I wasn’t, so we tended to run in rather different circles. Nonetheless, I liked him well enough. We were just coming from different directions back then.
Fast forward 40 years or so: Steve found my email address someplace — it might have been Classmates.com, where I blew a few bucks one year — and, being Steve, reached out as if I had been a long lost buddy. To start with, I wasn’t sure who he was, but when he mentioned Bully Folsom, whoI had known for much longer, I remembered in a flash the big good-looking blonde guy who was the other football star. Thus was renewed our acquaintance, which quickly blossomed into an online friendship.
Over the years that followed I read several drafts of his books, edited one, and we just kept a general chatter going back and forth with email. Oddly, I never spoke to him in person, either by phone or f2f. Getting together was something that we talked about, but because at that time most of my traveling was to see my 95-year-old mother on the other side of the state, I just never seemed to get to Jacksonville under conditions where I had time to give him a call.
I followed his bout with prostate cancer closely, both in his writing and when he felt able to correspond by email. I knew that the disease had returned, and going up to see him was a priority, then he became so ill that I thought I’d just be in the way. Besides, who expected him to die? When his son-in-law emailed to let us all know he was gone, I just broke down. Steve was such a powerful presence in the world, that even from a distance I had fallen under his spell. I felt, and feel, really ripped off by my own procrastination (which has bitten me in the ass in similar ways since, I might add, and far closer to home). The world is an uncertain place, and we neglect our relationships at our peril.
Even a year after Steve left us, I still find myself thinking, at least once a day, “Steve will get a kick out of that,” or I’ve gotta send that to Steve.” And sometimes, like right now, that empty place opens up again and I really, really miss him.
When I think of Old Florida, I think of Steve Robertson. When I drive down 301 past the old roadside motels shaped like an L so every room could have a tropical breeze, I think of Steve. When I stop by the Orange Shop in Citra, Florida and buy orange marmalade and sweet Vidalia dressing, I think of Coach. When I float in the ocean, down the Sante Fe or in one of Florida’s natural springs, I think of Summer and Sunny’s Papa. He was quintessential old Florida and loved the state that defined him. He’s bullfrogs in the evening; he’s an afternoon thunderstorm in August that provides relief from the stifling heat; he’s every fish ever caught by anyone who loves life on the water. Let’s celebrate the man who taught us to embrace where we are, where we are going and where we’ve been; a vibrant and intentional life as beautiful as Old Florida itself.
-Vanessa Wells
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