{"id":5312,"date":"2013-04-03T13:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T18:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=5312"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:21:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:21:29","slug":"friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=5312","title":{"rendered":"Of special friendships, from childhood to beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Holly
Holly (left) and Kim watching their beloved Tar Heels play basketball at Top of the Hill on Franklin Street. (photo courtesy of Chapelboro.com).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ll never forget when I first asked my best friend Holly (whom I had just met in sixth grade) to my house for a sleepover.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom,\u201d Holly yelled excitedly as she held the phone away from her ear for a moment. \u201cKaren wants me to come to a slumber party!\u201d<\/p>\n

My name is Kim, not Karen. But thus began a special friendship that would take us through the awkward junior and high school years in a small North Carolina town, to college at UNC, then weddings, births of babies and beyond.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a friendship that very much reminded me of the one 1988 Carolina alums Susan Spencer-Wendel and Nancy Maas Kinnally share in Susan\u2019s compelling memoir, Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living with Joy <\/i>(HarperCollins). The book chronicles Susan\u2019s journey with Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease. Carolina is a big university, but a small community, too, for it was a fellow Tar Heel who first told me about Susan’s book.<\/p>\n

Just as Nancy was drawn to Susan\u2019s sense of humor and joie de vivre<\/i>, I was drawn to my best friend\u2019s crazy, fun outlook on life. (Holly, remember when you used to stick spit balls in my hair in French class?)<\/p>\n

We are both Scorpios, with November birthdays just three days apart. And 1988 was our special UNC year, too.<\/p>\n

Holly and I have shared some sad times together \u2014 the death of her father, the miscarriage of my first child \u2014 but through it all, we\u2019ve managed to find the laughter, too.<\/p>\n

To this day, whenever we get together for lunch on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, we are often doubled over, giggling at some silly memory or a fresh story about raising teenagers. She is one of the few people I can tell anything, and I know she\u2019ll understand.<\/p>\n

Susan Spencer-Wendel writes in her book that she keeps a list on her iPhone of the little things that she loves, something everyone should do.<\/p>\n

Two of those things are: A chilled fine white wine, and a friend to share it with.<\/p>\n

I am ever more grateful that I have such a friend.<\/p>\n

[ By Kim Weaver Spurr \u201988 ]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll never forget when I first asked my best friend Holly (whom I had just met in sixth grade) to my house for a sleepover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[24,2720,36,39,40,2721],"class_list":["post-5312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-programs","tag-carolina","tag-susan-spencer-wendel","tag-unc","tag-unc-chapel-hill","tag-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill","tag-until-i-say-goodbye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5312"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45883,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312\/revisions\/45883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}