Best Man, Jerry Filla

 My Best Man, Jerry Filla,

We knew each other as friends through four years of high school at Cretin. Jerry was our president for four years. I was a lesser class officer one of those years. However, it was while we were in college and graduate school that we deepened our bond of friendship. While we went to different colleges distant from each other, we did a lot together during our summer vacations. On evenings and weekends away from our menial jobs we began to spend serious-playful time together. Then, while Jerry studied law at the University of Minnesota Law School, I came back to study architecture across campus. That gave us time together to wonder and wander—at least until I abandoned architecture and St. Paul, got married in New Jersey and left for two years of Peace Corps in Guatemala. Our girl friends, wives to be, had met briefly; they too bonded. Those bonds have rewarded us again and again over the past six decades. Seldom did Marney and I come back to Minnesota and not find time to spend with Debbie and Jerry—often we begged and received a bed from the Fillas on our way into or out of The Cities.

One such time, we were on bicycles—not cycling from Colorado, but from my sister's home west of Minneapolis to the headwaters of the Mississippi. As we looped back and prepared to cycle across St. Paul and Minneapolis to our point of origin, our second to last overnight was with the Fillas near the St. Croix. Our arrival day was beautiful coming down from a cousin's home on Forest Lake, passing the home on Big Marine Lake where my parents had lived their final decades. We arrived in high spirits at, or rather “near”, the Fillas' home. But, damn, where is the Fillas' home? We had been there before but did not remember the secret to finding it. We had the street address, but there was no home with such address on the street—only a deep stand of evergreen trees where a driveway and mailbox should be. We asked people we assumed to be neighbors as they tended to their yards and gardens, but they were as confused as we. After climbing repeatedly back onto our bikes to follow friendly-but-unrewarding suggestions, we reverted to that now forgotten plea: “Can we use your phone?”--when phones were still in-home appliances. Debbie answered and told us that the correct street was really the incorrect street—thanks to Jerry. She told us to turn onto the incorrect street; she'd be standing at the head of their driveway. It worked! Apparently, Jerry, in his proven wisdom and foresight, had seen that building a driveway where it was supposed to go would require much more snow shoveling and mini-plowing than even a Minnesotan should endure. Instead, he decided to direct the driveway from their lovely new home out to the side street. This arrangement also enhanced opportunities for his avocation as master gardener. Frequent visitors and the post office folk soon learned the secret; no problem; no need for a redirect-sign where their mailbox should have been; no clueless cyclists from Colorado were anticipated. Jerry had given us yet another reason for laughter and yet another reason to relish a friendship. We had given Debbie another story for her collection.

This is but one story among many, but I will recount no more here and now. Jerry was a good, generous, intelligent, competent man. He had a great sense of humor (though he never learned to type). These are facts we all know. For me there is a most important fact: Jerry Filla was my best man--the only one I ever had. The saga of the journey that took us to that ceremony is itself full with wonderful little stories. However,

Jerry Filla is my best man. Indeed he was. Indeed he will forever be.

Bob Komives, March, 2026

 

 

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins