I cannot help it. Every time I walk through the doors at Warren Central, I recall the days when I was a student at the school. Obviously, there have been a few changes, but for the most part, it is still the same school as when I was there almost 40 years ago.

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of attending a performance by Total Sound. Many people may not know it, but Barbara Sizemore, the WCHS drama teacher when I was a student there, started Total Sound in 1975.

My sophomore yearbook from that same year lists 11 students to the newly formed performance group with one of its original members being a very close friend of mine, Larry Cave.

Larry was brilliant. I have always told people, “If it weren’t for Larry, I would never have passed Mrs. Kinzer’s human physiology class.” Larry was my lab partner and for half of my junior year, we spent dissecting a fetal pig.

Yes, Larry was different from most of us in high school. While we were busy talking on the phone and trying to snag a boyfriend or girlfriend, he was reading poetry by T.S. Eliot.

Larry was also my partner on the debate team. Oh, how he must have loathed being partnered with someone that was just average, but he never showed it.

Even with all of his academic gifts, he was patient, kind and loving towards me, never belittling my deficits.

I will never forget a church choir trip that my youth group took the summer of 1976. Larry and a few others including me hung together like a band of merry men.

We had amassed a ton of inside jokes and spread our silliness to all that crossed our paths.

Like me, most of the group was average in intelligence and talent, but Larry never acted superior or haughty with us.

Maybe it was a relief for him to step outside his box and see what it was like to be ordinary, but Larry was not ordinary.

Along with Larry’s superior achievements in the classroom, he was also a talented musician. In fact, not only was he a performer in Total Sound, he also played the piano for the group and directed and arranged a lot of their music.

After graduating from Warren Central, he moved to Ohio to attend the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he received his bachelor’s degree in music composition in 1981.

Larry continued his studies, and in 1986, he earned both a master’s degree in music and Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University.

After graduating from Harvard, Larry moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and from 1986 to 1994, he held the position of tutor at St. John’s College and was a choral director and lecturer for the Sante Fe Opera.

That is pretty darn impressive for a person who grew up in Mississippi and attended public school!

So, maybe you are wondering why I shared this little piece of my high school history with you. It is because the anniversary of my friend’s death was just two days before the 2015 Total Sound concert that I attended this week.

Lawrence Harold Cave III, died of AIDS on April 12, 1996.

It was serendipitous for me to attend a Total Sound concert and to listen to a group that Larry had so influenced while they sang “Pompeii.”

“… Gray clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above

But if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like
You’ve been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?”

Wistfully, my optimism emanates from Larry’s favorite poem his sister recently posted on Facebook.

It is entitled “Desiderata.” I encourage you to read it in its entirety, but I will end will its last verses.

“Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

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Terri Cowart Frazier is a reporter and can be reached by email at terri.cowart@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.