by Yuni K. L'98

I would like to share some memories and thoughts about Bob, from the personal point of view of a high school friend who was part of his longtime social group, but didn't know him well individually. At first I was frustrated not to be able to recall specific stories, but I realize it's been a long time since Lawrenceville, and the stories are buried somewhere in my mind. I'll have to rely on them to suddenly pop back into my memory at unexpected, random times, and I'm hoping they will.

I met Bob freshman year at Lawrenceville. My fading image from the beginning of II Form is of a short guy with glasses, wearing a collared shirt, khaki pants, and a bookbag, and walking around the Bowl with a contented look on his face. I hadn't met him, but I knew his name was "Bob Frezza" and he was a nice kid and he liked computers. Besides German class with Herr Schwartzburg, I have few memories of Bob from that year, but that first-impression image hits a soft spot in my heart.

I think I didn't really know Bob until Third Form, when I started to eat meals in Irwin with the Griswold guys: Kenny, Yann, Chris, Tony, Bob, Milan, Po, Sven, and everyone. He was a day student and we weren't in any of the same activities, so I imagine most of our interaction was at lunch. It's impossible to believe that was six years ago. I have pictures of Bob dressed up for the traditional boxer run, which took place after the school-wide December holiday banquet. All the III Form "rhinies" ran around campus in their boxers, marshalled by IV Formers in coat and tie, and had to stop at each girls' house to sing Christmas carols. For us girls, this was the best entertainment all year, especially since III Form year it featured all our friends. The Griswold guys had their noses painted red and had to serenade us with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Bob is wearing a necktie and has a large face on his torso, with the eyes painted on his chest. From his smile you can tell Bob was loving every minute of it - there's one picture in particular of the Griswold pack walking across the snow-covered lawn of McClellan House. Kenny is looking at the camera like "Wow, Yuni has a camera," Chris is looking kind of disoriented in his tie and boxers, Arthur Gillett is laughing, and Bob is right in front with both arms in the air, beaming and waving at the cheering, screaming crowd of 15-year-old girls.

Bob is also part of one of my very fondest memories from high school, which was Milan's 15th birthday party. I remember feeling really happy that day, mainly because of the wonderful company. In high school I didn't have the social maturity to recognize people I really liked and go a little out of my way to get to know them better. If I had, Bob would have been one of those people. I guess I can't blame myself for not knowing any better then, but now I'm making an effort to spend time with friends that I really like but never see.

Senior year our group became much closer, especially in the spring. We sat out in the Circle on sunny days and had massage chains and sang songs while Bob played the guitar. Bob was always my favorite person to get a massage from. He did it very differently from everyone else, just running his fingers softly up and down your back instead of squeezing, but it really felt incredible and was as soothing emotionally as physically, somehow.

We sang lots of the same songs over and over again because they were the only ones we all knew the words to. I don't trust my memory on this but I think we sang "Bad Moon Rising" and "Cecilia" and "The Sound of Silence" a lot, and I'm sure someone could remind me of others. Definitely, I will never hear "Bad Moon Rising" ever again without thinking of Bob. I remember being at Bob's house and looking through piles and piles of lyric sheets to see what everyone knew the tune to. If a few people knew the tune we would sing the song, Cindy Drakeman often leading the way, and Bob played and sang, too.

I went to prom with Chris Chin, and Bob went with my best friend Susan. Now I treasure the prom pictures more than ever because they are the only ones apart from the large group pictures that I have with me and Bob. One lasting image I have in my mind is Bob's head resting on Susan's shoulder during a slow dance when I was peeking at other people from over Chris's shoulder. After prom, Bob hosted a party at his house, and we had a lot of fun. The next day we went to Cindy's house and slept over there. When I unrolled my sleeping bag, there was a bottle in the bottom of it with some kind of booze, which annoyed people because we had agreed not to have alcohol at the parties our friends and their parents were hosting. Bob unscrewed the cap, smelled it, and told us, "There isn't enough white wine in there to get an ant drunk." Later we figured out whose bottle it was, but I still don't know how it got into my sleeping bag.

The last time I saw or talked to Bob was at his New Year's party on January 1, 1999 - about three years ago. It was great to see everyone again and to be at another one of Bob's great parties. One memory that Alexis reminded me of was how we were all in the Frezza's basement watching a soft-core porn movie called "The Turn-On," which was about a guy who had this machine that looked like a hand-held metronome. When he turned the dial, the machine made weird whispering and thumping noises and all the women would start taking their clothes off, whether they were at work, at home, or outdoors. Bob was making wisecracks and criticizing the movie the whole time, and finally, during a scene where this man was carrying some naked woman around in the woods, he decided it was so boring, stupid, and pointless that he couldn't take it anymore and we watched LA Confidential instead, which I slept through.

Bob was always an organizer and leader of good times in our group. Besides everything I've written about already, he produced a beautiful multimedia CD for us at graduation, recording our voices and mixing in some songs we all liked. He undertook a pretty big project, and as always, made sure to do it well. He designed, created, and printed and front and back covers and CD labels using Photoshop and a collage of digital pictures. The CD also functions as a CD-ROM, with 430 digital photos that can be viewed and downloaded. One of the neatest features is the way Bob mixed the ends of people's words into the beginnings of songs. I've listened over and over again to Charleen read Winnie the Pooh to the opening strains of "With or Without You," or Milan recite the last line of a poem to the first chords of "Free Falling," and thought about the effort, talent, and love that Bob put into making this CD for all of us.

Bob wrote a wonderful senior quote in our yearbook that I have never tired of reading. Like its author, it is original, funny, positive, sincere, intelligent, and meaningful. He had a mature sense of perspective, and I find a small comfort in knowing (in high school, and, from emails, beyond) that he was a truly happy person who appreciated the many good things in his life.

After graduation, Bob continued to think of our group, and diligently kept in touch, as true friends do without thinking of themselves as diligent. I realized this when I was going through my old emails starting back from freshman year of college. There are emails from Bob compiling all of our contact information at college, setting up an FTP site with hundreds of MP3's (l/p: lawrenceville/lawrenceville), sending us funny anecdotes about his college life, even thinking of us on Valentine's Day. One email is signed, "Love you guys. You're always my best friends, Bob."

These are a few fleeting memories of Bob that I could think of. The rest are either in photos or just in the residual form of familiarity. I look at the photos and everything seems comfortable, familiar, and right, with all of us in the group shots, Bob with his guitar, Bob and the Griswold guys. I can easily hear his voice and his laugh, picture his smile, feel his hug, imagine his jokes. Bob was a genuine and loving friend, and I miss him very much.

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