The fight against youth violence: Friend’s Halloween party death reminds us to walk away

You see people at their worst working the police beat.
Going through the weekly police reports, I’m submerged in a world of drunk driving, drugs, domestic abuse and disorderly conducts. And just like every other community, Manistee has its share of violent offenders.
Sometimes they are young people drinking and fighting. Blowing off steam, you say. No big deal, you think. A bar fight’s just a bar fight. Not worthy of our attention.
Well, let me introduce you to my childhood friend, Jay Buck, who died at a Halloween party in Atlanta in 2000 after getting into just such a fight.
I can’t help but think of him with sadness this time of year.
Jay was a slightly-crazed prankster and troublemaker who had been a semi-pro skateboarder since the age of 10. He had moved down to Atlanta from the suburban Detroit neighborhood we’d grown up in when we were in our early 20s so he could skate year-round.
We’d been close friends since we were 9 years old, when I moved two blocks away from him.
He was punk in elementary school, wearing black combat boots that came up to his knees, ripped up T-shirts and a jean jacket with the sleeves torn off and band names like DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles), Minor Threat and The Misfits hand-scrawled on it. He had a tiny, buzzed head and huge ears and rode a skateboard to school every day. For an art project, he even made a life-sized punk rock Gumby complete with a Mohawk who sat perched in his bedroom for years afterward.
I was moving to L-Town (or Livonia) from Bay City, where I was born, and I had never met someone like Jay. He didn’t seem to have many friends at school because of his non-traditional appearance. But I was intrigued.
I was the new kid in the fourth grade and Jay was the first friend I made. We could be alienated together.
Over the next decade, we went through all the rites of passages friends go through in boyhood: first cigarettes, first kisses with girls and first cars.
Admittedly, we got into trouble together more than a few times, but making mistakes is part of boyhood, too.
Though we were friends, I got into my first, and one of my only, fights with Jay, though we were back to being pals a week later.
It was on the playground at recess, arising over a dispute in a kickball game. I told him he needed to take off his combat boots, that they were unfair because he could crank the red, rubber ball father than the rest of us with them. He disagreed. So there we were, ‘rassling, punching and kicking under a tree that served as second base until a lunch lady broke us up.
I didn’t know it then, but I was fighting someone who would die fighting.
I was still in college in Detroit when Jay moved to Atlanta. I got the phone call that Halloween just like many others got the call. Over the years, Jay’s frantic wildness had earned him legendary status at skate parks, parties and punk rock shows all over Michigan.
“Jay Buck was in a fight,” was what we all heard. “He’s on life support.”
The swelling around his brain was just too much; his family had to pull the plug a few days later. The next week, a motley pierced and tattooed bunch filled an L-Town church for his funeral. I was a pallbearer. He was 22 years old. It was a closed casket.
What had happened was this: Jay and his buddies in Atlanta had gone to a costume party for Halloween. Jay was dressed as Dirk Diggler from the then-popular movie “Boogie Nights.” One of his friends had been hit by a car a few weeks before and his head was still bandaged up.
Some fellow named Jimmy Skaggs started making fun of Jay’s friend’s bandages. Unlike me, Jay was no stranger to brawls in the years after our petty skirmish on the playground.
He stood up for his friend. Words were said; a fight ensued.
It only took one roundhouse kick to the head from Skaggs to send Jay to the ground, where the force of the impact to his head rendered him unconscious.
He never woke up.
Skaggs is still in prison, but I can’t blame just him. We have a culture where men think fighting one another is a display of courage and bravery. It is not. It can only lead to a preventable death, not an honorable one.
Now, I can’t help but think about Jay when I look through the police logs and see reports of teens and young men and women fighting here in Manistee. It makes me cringe.
I hope and pray I don’t have to look through the reports after this Halloween and see anything remotely resembling what happened to my buddy Jay Buck.
Or after Christmas, or after New Years.
So, this Halloween, have fun, but be safe. Be brave enough to walk away.
One love.