Lamar (Mike) Hammer Our Boyhood Friend

Lamar got a job at the La Mode, in his senior year of high school. The La Mode was a downtown clothing store, owned and operated by father and son. Sammy Kopelov, the father, was little man, a first generation Russian immigrant with a pleasant round bespectacled face, grey hair and a charming accent. I thought he fit the classic model of the sweet elder Jew from the old country. His son, Jerry, a combat Veteran of WWII was tall, athletic, and animated.

Don and I frequently stopped to visit, and got to know Sammy, Jerry, and Mr. Raab, who owned the shoe department at the back of the store. Lamar started wearing suits, sport coats, dress shirts and ties - understandable considering where he worked, but he also seemed to like fashion, and the chance to “dress-up”.

Don and Lamar graduated high school in 1956, and Lamar joined the Air Force at the beginning of that summer. I remember walking with him after school the day he went to enlist. On the way back he remarked that he didn’t care to live past forty. I can’t recall how that came up, or the explanation he provided, something about life wouldn’t be any fun after that. I didn’t say anything, but planned to remind him of his statement twenty years hence, but never got around to it.

Don went to Purdue University that fall. Our trio broke up for good, and I was forced to find other social outlets. A few years later Don and I started attending Indiana University in Bloomington. That was in the fall of 1960, so several years passed in which we didn’t see a whole lot of Lamar - five or six. Friends in the Air Force renamed him “Mike” Hammer, and that stuck for the rest of his life. But he was always “Lamar” to us.

After discharge he worked in Peru and later at the Kokomo Chrysler plant. He had a television show in the mid-70’s called, ”Hook, Line, and Sinker“. I had a brief claim-to-fame when I appeared on it to tell about my adventures at caribou hunting in Alaska.

Don married in June of 1962. Lamar attended, and the two of us played basketball in our tuxedos at the in-laws house after the wedding. Six months later we had a riotous holiday celebration that lasted from Christmas Eve through New Years Eve - the last time the two of us spent an extended time together.

Lamar married a young woman, Bonnie Maish, in 1964 and adopted her young sons, Scott and Todd. I left for Alaska in 1967, and they moved to Minnesota in 1976. I guess he wanted to extend that fishing trip of so many years before. My wife, Mary and I, visited them in Minnesota in 1983. We met again in April of 2002, a week after brother Don died. Don and Lamar were nearly the same age; Don being 27 days older. Lamar returned to Minnesota and died eighteen days after Don. They were both about two months past their 64th birthday. Don died first, but lived nine days longer than Lamar.