Clark Fredericks

And we lived at a lake community.

So we had the lake, we had a dam, and it went into the river.

There was basketball courts, tennis courts, softball field.

Jungle gym, just everything down there.

So everybody congregated down at the lake and especially at the dam area.

And I had an older brother, six years older than me.

And my next door neighbor, Jeff, who was six years older than me, he and my brother were joined at the hip.

So Jeff was like an older brother to me.

And they got involved in the scouts, Boy Scouts, since they were older than me.

At six years old, I had open heart surgery.

I was born with a hole in my heart.

The doctors monitored me till I was six years old and they said we have a six month window to operate.

So I got this life or death surgery back in 1971.

And less than three, four months after that surgery,

my brother's Boy Scout leader, who was also a Lieutenant in the Sheriff's Department, always had a gun, always had his badge, big hulking guy, but someone who I loved.

Like I was a little guy and he was this towering presence of authority and safety, so I thought.

Next to my father, that's who I looked up to.

And he came to our house on a summer day

And everybody, we had a big backyard.

We had a screened-in porch.