When my best friend, Dan Fuller, died in 2007, I suffered deep grief and even guilt for not having been in closer contact in recent years.  He keeled over from a brain tumor while working in his yard.  I visited him when he was being kept alive on a post-operative respirator.  He still looked as strong as an ox.  But his fertile mind had shut down.  His ever-giving nature was on the sidelines, never to be enjoyed again — except in memory.

Dan had made his way to the Madison campus in 1969 because he wanted to work with the Wisconsin Draft Resistance Union.  He had been deeply affected by the war and by the expulsion of the 94 Black students at Oshkosh that year.  We began a long friendship.  He took off work from his conscientious objector service in one of the Madison hospitals to attend my trial for battery to a police officer.  He visited me when I was in the penitentiary.  He was later a roommate for a while.  I was the best man at his wedding.

I remember a few hundred dollars that he borrowed from me after his divorce.  Why had I not just given him that cash– after all the things he had done for me?  I even felt compelled to send checks to his son Nate and his daughter Rosalyn because I wanted still to return his favors.

Dan was the real thing.  He came from Pembine, a town in the impoverished northeastern part of the state.  His dad worked in a quarry.  The family made extra money working in the woods, peeling popple.  He went to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade where he was one of the top cane cutters.  He lost some front teeth to a swinging crane hook when working at J.I. Case in Racine.  Dan’s older brother, Len, had died of cancer caused by exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange when he was in the Special Forces in Vietnam.

Image-makers proclaimed the 1980s to be a time for “Stayin Alive”.  It was a time for a dancer wearing a white suit to leave the working class for some illusory shot at a rich life in Manhattan.   Dan retreated not.  He became a strong, visible spokesperson for the Jesse Jackson campaign.  He was active in the Milwaukee County Labor Council.   He was a voracious reader.  At Dan’s wake, a crew of his work mates gathered, shared sadness.  They told of pending layoffs even for 30 year employees like themselves.

In his loyalty, his sense of decency, and his ever-willingness to help out, he embodied the common man virtues that we recognized as unique to the working class.  Yet Dan resisted being idealized.  He just wanted to be part of the mix.  He didn’t want crazy expectations of what a working class hero should be.  So he joked about his rural past, telling outrageous stories about eccentric friends and neighbors up in Pembine.  I always appreciated his banter.  But I did not like the way others would pile on and make fun of him.

The dynamic of our friendship was just right.  When I lacked good judgment, he could usually make me see reason.  When I came up with something new and interesting, he’d consider it and often get on board.  I never considered this till now, but this pattern is, after all, at the heart of any social progress.  There must be consideration of an idea — and that idea must be based on a reality that is possible.