Lee Edwards

Is anyone still close to their best friend from childhood?

I had a few best friends growing up, one of them was Lee Edwards.I met Lee when I was seven years old, he was a year younger than I. His mother was my mine and my brothers babysitter. I only knew a few people who lived with both their mom and dad and he was one of them. Most of my friends lived with their grandmother as I did. Evidently we hit it off when we first met because we remained best friends until after our stints in the military. We always played together, he would do whatever i wanted. Weather it was play ball or army which was my two favorite things to do. Our first and only argument was when I was seventeen and it was a short one.

Lee was smaller than I, wirery as they say, but same height. When we were around ten years old he taught me how to fish. His father had taught him and now he was teaching me. We spent many days fishing on Rocky Creek a little creek in my hometown. It was nothing for us to spend all day fishing.

I would say years past where a day didn't go by that we didn't see each other. His house was less then a quarter mile from mine and he stopped by every morning. My brother Lee and me walked to school every morning till eight grade. There was no shortage of kids in Penalton Homes but Lee was the best of them. When we reach our teens we began to drink and do drugs together as well. We experimented with all the drugs and thought this was the thing to do. A lot of time was spent watching TV at my house smoking. We also used to play two handed spades and eventually got almost unbeatable as a team.


After I got married and joined the Army he did too. We were stationed in Germany and he spent most holidays with my wife and I. He got out of the Army a year after I did and moved back home. His mother who had divorced when Lee was ten was slightly mental and still treated him like a child.We continue to go fishing but eventually this stopped.

I was no longer into drugs and he kept them at a minimum to start with, but eventually hanging with the same old crowd got him using heavy again. He had also gotten married to a lady he met in California.

The last time we were hanging out my son and I were fishing at seven Bridges with him. We had a blast laughing at my son getting his line caught in the trees. There is a art to fishing creeks with all the bushes and limbs. Lee was doing drugs heavily and I only saw him once more after this day and we just talk for a few minutes because I was on my way to school. He called me once to offer to help me build my house after my mom had told him my hose burned down. He would need a ride to get there though.

I never went to pick him up or spoke to him again. He was strung out and I couldn't help him.

I had just spent a week on Tybee island when my mother called and told me he was dead. He was just 38.

He had moved to California to get off drugs. I hoped he accomplished this but in the end it was alcohol that did him him. He was found intoxicated on the street choking on his own vomit. He was dead by the time he reach the hospital.

He died in 2003, i had not seen him since 1996 and that was only time since 1992. I hate the way things turned out with him. I don't fish anymore.

I miss my fishing buddy.

lee edwards, macon georgia