Goodbye, My Friend: Daryl Katz Tribute

March 31, 2018

Welcome everyone. Thanks for being here, and special thanks to Emily and her husband Dave for hosting this celebration of the life of our dearly departed friend, father, and ex-husband, Daryl Jennings Williams Katz.

It is with great sadness, yet at the same time with much honor, that I stand here before you today to talk a bit about one amazing person who touched all of our lives in one way or another – whether it be personally as family, as a neighbor at the house on DeKalb Pike, through playing music, being a classmate, or from one of the endless careers he had. There is so much to say about this charismatic, comical, caring and charming individual, that it is hard to know where to start. So, I will start at the beginning.

Daryl was born on June 7, 1953, and his parents were Eileen and Jennings “Bill” Williams. At that time Eileen was almost 28-years-old, and she had been a dancer. Bill, at age 53, was 25 years older than Eileen, and he was, according to neighbor Frank Tyson, “a hard worker who worked during the week and built the house at 330 W. DeKalb on weekends while they lived in a mobile home on the site.” Two years later, Daryl’s sister Michelle was born, and the two kids grew up in the small family house with the huge front yard. Frank – whose sister Toni is here today – remembers Bill Williams as “a great carpenter, and he built a dance studio next to the house for Eileen to use to teach students.” Frank recalls the Williams family “in the little house on the hill was a strong and memorable family unit.” But tragedy struck a few years later when Bill Williams died in 1956 of a heart attack, shortly before his 56th birthday.

Somehow, Eileen and her two children forged on, and she supported her family by teaching hundreds of kids how to dance at Michelle’s Dance Studio. Some years later she remarried to a man named Seymour Katz, who became Daryl and Michelle’s step-father, and this is where they got the last name of Katz. Daryl and Michelle went to nearby Candlebrook Elementary School, and then on to Upper Merion High School.

My first memory of Daryl was seeing him driving his 1963 Chevy Impala around the high school parking lot at Upper Merion in 1971. Only cool guys – and I was not part of that crowd – had nice cars back then. Daryl was a year ahead of me in school, and I knew that the car had belonged to Billy Walker. Billy’s brother Jimmy was in my class. I thought it was odd that someone else was now driving Billy’s car, but someone told me that this “Daryl Katz guy bought it from Billy.” As it turns out, earlier Billy had purchased the car from Daryl’s next-door neighbor, Michael Capaldo, whose brother Johnny is here today.

Fast forward to one year later, in January of 1972. My brother Terry was working at the Acme at the King of Prussia Plaza, and he introduced me to two of his co-workers – Daryl Katz and Victor Verdi. Daryl played drums, Victor played lead guitar, and they were putting a band together with a singer named Lee Makowski. And they needed a bass player. So, I went over to Daryl’s house one night, and we all met in his mother’s dance studio. Terry and his friend Jack Griffith were there, and they played maracas and tambourine. We played a few songs, and suddenly The Flying Garbanzo Bean Express was formed. While stocking shelves at the Acme, Daryl had come across some garbanzo beans in cans, and he thought the name “garbanzo” was funny. At that time, there was a professional band called The Flying Burrito Brothers, so he borrowed part of their name and added “garbanzo.” There was a talent show coming up at Mother of Divine Providence church, and someone got us a slot on the show. We learned four songs to play. Naïve kids that we were, one of the songs was “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, which, in hindsight, was a very odd choice to play at a catholic event! We also played “Midnight Rambler” by the Stones, “Beginnings” by Chicago, and my world debut as a singer and band member was “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash, a song I still sing today. Even though the band only stayed together for a few months, it was the start of my musical career. More importantly, it was the beginning of a 46-year year friendship with Daryl, who encouraged me to sing and be the best player that I could be. I can only wonder where my musical path would have taken me if I had never gone over to his house that first night…

Even though some of the other band members moved on, Daryl and I soon became good friends, and we hung out while jamming quite a bit with other players during that time, including the late Bill Peacock, who was in Daryl’s first band in high school, which was called The Magic Bubble. On occasion we also would make late-night trips down to Somers Point at the shore, where the drinking age was 18. We’d start at the Anchorage, where you could get seven glasses of beer for a dollar, and after they closed at 2 a.m., we’d go over to the Dunes, a club that didn’t open until after midnight but was able to stay open all until dawn. After watching the band play, we’d then drive back home, arriving as the sun was coming up. Other times we’d stay local and go to Johnny Kamuca’s Valley Forge Tavern in the King. Daryl somehow knew Johnny – whose son Juan is here today and who we all got to know years later – and we’d drink beer while eating Miami cheese steaks, even though neither of us was 21 yet. Or we’d go for drives around the area in his 1970 red Fiat 124 convertible.

In the fall of 1972 we were both taking classes in college, he at Montgomery County Community College, and me at a local Penn State branch campus. After I finished my two-year stint there and he at Montco, I talked him into going up to Penn State, and we both left home for the first time on March 1, 1974, moving up to State College (with his dog Earl in tow) in his blue and white 1966 Volkswagen bus, where we became roommates while living outside of town in an apartment called “Sunglow.” The guy we rented from was named Dr. Sun, and the apartment was adjacent to Sun’s business office, which was called Sunglow. Dr. Sun, a professor at the university, was from China, but he was also a notorious slumlord in town. Before long, to make some money on the side, Daryl – talented guy that he was with his hands – started doing some handyman repair work for Sun. When the doctor would call on the phone for Daryl, in his Chinese accent he would ask, “Can I speak with Mistah Keetz?” And this is how Daryl earned the nickname “Geetz.” Which, years later, morphed into another nickname, “Mr. Getez.”

Speaking of nicknames, I credit Daryl with establishing mine back in the day, and which I still use today. He called me by my initials, “L.C.,” but he’d pronounce it fast, and it would come out sounding like “Elsie,” as in Elsie the Cow, who was a mascot for Borden’s Dairy.

We had some good times up the college, partying and jamming with some newfound musicians, some of which I am still friends with today. Since there was no Dunes nightclub to go to up there, another crazy late-night tradition was created by Daryl: we’d get some takeout beer, pile a bunch of guys in his VW bus – which was hardly a four-wheel-drive, off-road vehicle – and go riding on the fire roads in the mountains. These became known as “smoke rides,” and it’s a wonder that we never broke down or got pulled over by forestry service! A little less than a year a later, Joe Lawler came up to join us for a short while in State College, so we moved to a bigger place that we aptly named “Moonglow.” We formed a band, and along with a female singer named Nancy Stetler, we played a few gigs as The DiNucchi Brothers, a name that Joe came up with. At Daryl’s urging, on Wednesday nights at the house we’d invite some friends over for “Hump Night” parties, where we would drink beer and shoot darts. As the saying goes, “Those were the days.”

Around this time, I saw an ad in a record store that a good band in town called Sunday Drive was looking for a drummer, and I told Daryl about this. He got in touch, and he soon became their drummer. They were writing and playing original songs, and they were quite good. They wanted to try to do something with their music, so in late spring of 1975 they moved together to Philly, and that was the end of Daryl’s time in State College. I stayed up there to finish school, and so with the distance, we no longer saw each other on a regular basis. But every time that I would come back to the King of Prussia area to visit my parents, Daryl and I would hang out.

A few years later, in 1979, I moved west to San Francisco, where I have been ever since, so I would see Daryl even less, as I would go back to visit once or twice a year. But we stayed in touch, and the friendship was never in doubt. He wasn’t much of a letter writer, and this was long before email and texting. But whenever I did come back, we’d just pick up where we left off from the last time I was there.

While I love living out on the West Coast, one of the drawbacks of being so far away was that I missed out on all his weddings (to Annalie, Emily and Jenny), the passing of his sister Michelle from breast cancer in her ‘30s, as well as knowing his sons Jaz and Caio.

Daryl was quite the Renaissance Man, as he went through an endless series of jobs and careers. Besides being an excellent drummer, I remember him also as a Good Humor Ice Cream truck driver, a construction worker, a chimney sweep, a honey-dipper, a chef, a sandwich shop owner, and an organic vegetable farmer. I am sure that I am forgetting some other jobs that he did, and perhaps others here today will fill in the gaps.

The last time I saw him was in July of 2013, on one of my visits back in the area. A few months later he moved down to Florida to help take care of his ageing mother and step-father, who had moved down there many years before. Seymour died at age 93 in the spring 2016, and Eileen soon followed in September of that year at age 91.

Although I had not heard much from him while he was in Florida, after his parents were gone there were rumors that he might be coming back to his house in Glenmoore. He finally did return a few days before Christmas in 2017. I sent him a text on December 21st asking where he was. He wrote back, “Just got home to Glenmoore early Wednesday a.m. Unloading, ugh! Too old for dis shit.” I then asked if he had the dart board up yet, and he replied, “First thing on the list!”

A few days later, during a frigid cold snap back here, I sent him a photo of the weather forecast where I live – it was 60 degrees and sunny on December 30th – and his reply was, “F U. It’s f’in freezing here…after being in FL for 4 years…too old I guess.” Then on New Year’s Eve I sent him a funny photo of him and Juan Kamuca from many years ago, where they both look like aliens, and with a caption that says, “Greetings from Pennsylvania.” On New Year’s Day I got a reply from him that said “LOL…happy happy.” And that was my last contact with him, as he was gone nine days later.

I was glad to know that Daryl was back in PA, and I was looking forward to seeing him for the first time in five years on my annual July visit back to the area. Well, I am now back here sooner than expected, and while Daryl is indeed here today (in ashes and) in spirit, I still expect him to come walking through the door any minute in typical Daryl Katz fashion – late for his own memorial!

Daryl – as is obvious by the amount of people here today and the stories that you will hear – touched the lives of many over the course of his all-too-short lifetime. He was a big part of my life in my formative years, I considered him one of my closest friends, and I always enjoyed seeing him on my visits east. It is still hard to believe that he is now gone.

But one thing is for certain: my life has been forever enriched for having had Daryl as a lifelong friend.

Rest in peace, Daryl Jennings Williams Katz…

 So goodbye my friend

I know I'll never see you again

But the time together through all the years         

Will take away these tears

It's okay now, goodbye my friend

You can go now, goodbye my friend

 From “Goodbye My Friend,” by Karla Bonoff

Daryl Katz (June 7, 1953 – January 10, 2018)

Eileen Katz (August 27, 1925 – October 19, 2016)

Jennings Williams (1900-1956)

Seymour Katz (February 14, 1923 – March 6, 2016)

Michelle Katz (1955 – mid 1980s)