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CLASS NOTES
The Last Word When Winged Beavers Lifted Me Up BY BRENDAN FAULKNER ’91
W
hen I came to Avon Old Farms as a sophomore boarder in 1989, I was told to observe two important rules: “No boarding students in the day boy room” and “Never get into a car driven by a day boy.” Who were these lucky “day boy” classmates who seemed to have the best of both worlds? The answer, it turns out, is that they are some of my closest lifelong friends. Two years ago, Damian Fox ’91, P’23 appeared at Hartford Hospital, where I was fighting for my life. Over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in 2020, I thought I had the flu. It turned out to be endocarditis that led to five cardiac surgeries. I was on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for a week and had my left leg and half of my right foot amputated. My wife, Holly, had never met Damian before he walked down the ICU corridor that January day wearing a burly jacket and a Yankees cap and cradling something that seemed at once illicit and precious. He drew closer,
