Dave---

  Dave was never a fighter. During his youth, if the need for a physical encounter developed. he would turn it over to Don, a more willing combatant, and a loyal brother.

   But Dave, uncharacteristically, told me this story: He was in the army, maybe in training or in actual service. He was really thin then, standing almost  5'11" and weighing about 135 lbs. or maybe less. I know when we met, a few years later, that he told me he weighed 138 lbs., but I saw from his pre-marriage physical that  his weight was actually 128 lbs. His explanation was that he didn't want his weight to be less than mine.

    Anyway, in the army, he encountered a typical bully, as was common back then, though not labeled as such. Because Dave was so slender, and thus presumably weak, the guy nicknamed him "Shoulders," a play on the name Schroder. One day, leaving the dining hall, the guy was behind him and shoved him, saying, "Out of my way, Shoulders,"  Dave turned around and punched him once in the face, hard. The blood flowed, the nose was broken. 

    That ended the encounters with that guy. Nothing more came of it. The guy couldn't have known that back then, Dave had muscles of iron. For party games, he could lift his body straight up from a chair just by holding his hands on the arms of the chair. He used to jump straight up from a standing position, as with 2 people holding high a broomstick. He could drive  a golf ball the full length of the fairway, acing  more than one hole-in-one.  And he is the only one I ever knew in person who could walk on his hands. He did so in Ma's house, much to her amusement and astonishment at the sight of him walking from the kitchen to the living room on his hands. And so it goes.