RB…A Special Breed of Cat

“He’s not my RB…he’s not your RB…he’s our RB!” Beth Burr Dossantos
at the St. Lawrence Inn 1995.

I am spending the winter of 2025 in what I call Casa RB, a very attractive condo in the Bouchelle Island complex on the Indian River. It is owned by Russell B. Lawrence III, who is one special breed of cat and near if not at the top of my list of best friends.

RB and I go back quite a way and became friends in the last 20 or so years. We are part of a group with Jim Leonard and Dave Demarest who are all around the same age and met often at the St. Lawrence Inn, a Canton institution which unfortunately gave way to a bank several years ago. RB is a big fan of St. Lawrence hockey and he has enticed me to play in a number of Saint hockey-related golf tournaments. In fact, the last rounds of golf I played this year were with RB, Sam Lammachia and Don Woods at the Friends of SLU Hockey tournament in September. RB, Sam and Don make up at least part of a Rat Pack which resembles in some remote way the old Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis Rat Pack.

Sam has taken over from Don Petty and Rick Ahlfeld as the guy who will referee anything. Don and I first met at SLU track meets and he is now an excellent cameraman on SLU hockey broadcasts, both men and women, on ESPN+.

RB is a lot of things: funeral director, coroner ,ambulance company owner, pilot, penalty box official, snowmobiler, boater and fan of hi-tech stuff. He has taken me flying, to get aerial photos of the St. Lawrence University athletic facilities, and boating on the St. Lawrence River in New York and the Indian River in Florida. We also hit the Atlantic ocean on one of those Florida treks as we went from New Smyrna Beach to Titusville for lunch, which is quite a haul.

RB invited me to New Smyrna Beach in April of 2017, my first year of full retirement, to play golf for a week. It turned very interesting very quickly. I flew out of Burlington to Daytona via Atlanta. I started feeling some kidney discomfort on the flight out of Burlington, and when I arrived in Atlanta I had a full-blown kidney stone movement going. Fortunately the pain was not too bad and by the time I arrived in New Smyrna, I was feeling somewhat better. We played golf the day after arrival at Hidden Lakes, and around hole 14 or 15 I started feeling pretty dizzy and weak. I skipped a couple of holes, played a couple and then we finished up. When we got back to RB’s I curled up on the couch and conked out. RB called a medical professional who was a mutual friend, and the advice was to get me to the ER. Off we went and as it turned out, I not only had a kidney stone, but also an E-coli infection, most likely from water at home in Canton. I spent four of the eight days I was in  New Smyrna in Advent Hospital and didn’t even have a view of a palm tree! I will be spending plenty of time in Advent again this time around as they will pick up my leukemia treatments from the gang at the UVM Medical Center. From initial contacts to get things set up, I am sure they will be just as efficient and friendly as the Burlington gang!

RB, having grown up in Canton, is a life-long Saint hockey fan. He sponsored a hole sign celebrating my retirement at the Saint Hockey Tournament at Nee Seabury on Cape Cod and he and I played in the tournament at least four times. The last time it was on the Cape, he asked me to program his new Apple watch on the way down. As I was working on it, and not helping with the navigation, Don Woods who was driving, missed Route 128…the best way to the Cape avoiding city traffic. So we went through the “Big Dig”, me still working on the watch, and tacked about 1:30 onto our trip. It wasn’t the first time RB (who was supposed to be the navigator at the time) missed a very large highway.

Saint hockey coach Joe Marsh, RB and myself went to the Cape…again at New Seabury…to play in a ECAC Hockey golf tournament. We had fun, but Joe was really frustrated with his golf game and delivered a very eloquent, if somewhat colorful, rant on how he was quitting golf. I must have dozed off in the back seat, because when I woke up we were around Lowell, RB having missed the eight-lane I90 which was the quickest way home. We continued North to catch I89. Joe decided that we should stop at a large sporting goods store run by the son of former Dartmouth Athletic Director Seaver Peters. He walked out with a 9 degree driver just an hour or so after vows to never play the game again. The driver did not last long…he sent it back a week or so after its acquisition…but at least he was back on the golf course.

RB and I were partners in the Monday Night Golf League at the St. Lawrence Golf and Country Club and we were a pretty consistent contender for prize money. My game can be a little sporadic, but I was a 12 handicap from the senior tees playing six or seven days a week. RB plays less, but is probably just a little higher in handicap. He hits it very well…particularly his seven wood…and is a pretty good putter. We were pretty successful in the nine-hole match-play format of the Monday League (more on the league in a future post on golf) and have played a lot of rounds in various four-man scramble teams, usually with Don Woods and Sam LaMacchia.

RB also liked my cooking…automatically putting him at the top of my friends list. I have catered Veal Marsella meals at least four times both in Florida and New York. My have meals will travel plan involves me using someone else’s kitchen to cook either Veal Marsella, brisket, or other meals on request. I will purchase the ingredients or we can split the costs and the host does the cleanup, although I am not above helping out. I do enjoy cooking at home, although it is a little difficult to cook for a solo lifestyle without a lot of wasted food, but in the past haven’t been able to do a lot of home entertaining because of the size of my abode. Apartments in Canton and eventually the Tin Mahal, which is what I called the mobile home I rented after my house melted on the Stiles Road (again, more in another post), simply didn’t lend themselves to gatherings of more than two.

Anyway, I am pleased and proud to have RB Lawrence III at the top of my friends list. I know he has my back and I am looking forward to many more adventures with him.