During a New Mexico high school track meet in the late ’50s, Farmington High miler Harold Tso ’61 sat near the grandstands, resting after the mile run. Walking by was the mile run winner, Barry Koops ’61 from Rehoboth Christian High. Koops stopped and near Tso. They got acquainted.
They talked about the race and then about other things, such as college plans. To their surprise, they were both headed to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Thus began a friendship that has lasted over many decades and many miles.
Tso and Koops did attend Calvin at the same time and were teammates on the cross country team. Tso was manager/trainer and Koops was a swift runner who was named an All-American in 1960 along with another teammate, James De Bie—Calvin’s first-ever All-Americans in any sport.
“Harold used to call me ‘Jadi’ [pronounced Jah-di], which is Navajo for ‘Antelope,’” said Koops.
Tso enjoyed being a part of the cross team and lived with the rest of the runners on campus and then off campus in a house near the Franklin campus.
“We all became good friends,” Tso said. “I appreciated them all, especially Barry, for his Christian example. He said that the Bible calls us to a friendship that endures.”
Koops remembers Tso as having “smart hands” and being an expert trainer as a student “before the days of paid professional trainers.”
The two parted ways after Calvin: Tso back to New Mexico and into a career as a chemist in Albuquerque and as an environmental official in the Navajo Nation, and Koops as a school administrator, primarily in the Boston area.
They crossed paths on rare occasions.
But, more than 50 years later, the two classmates and teammates had three special days together in San Francisco that neither will ever forget.
Koops was slated for open heart surgery. Now in retirement living in a community north of San Francisco, he and wife Delianne were up early the morning of the operation, getting ready to head into the city.
His phone rang at 4 a.m. It was Harold Tso, with the message “We’re praying for you.” Tso ended the conversation with the question, “And where are you now?” which puzzled Koops and caused him to comment to Delianne, “I wouldn’t put it past him to be there in person.”
And so he was. When Barry and Delianne arrived at the hospital in the still-early morning, Tso opened the front door for them.
“We were astonished that he actually made the trip from New Mexico,” said Koops. “He followed me every step of the way through the surgery preparation with prayers, stories and a lot of humor.”
“He was not only entertaining us, he was making the morning enjoyable for doctors, nurses and other patients, too,” added Delianne. “At one point a nurse asked, ‘Can you stay? We’d like to hire you.’”
Tso and his wife, Mary, had traveled from Albuquerque and booked a hotel for three days near the hospital. They stayed with Delianne while Barry was in surgery and afterwards, sharing prayers and encouragement until Barry was clearly in a recovery stage.
“I had been praying for Barry’s upcoming surgery and sending him e-mails with scripture included,” said Tso. “The idea just came to me that I could do more. I remembered him so well from Calvin days and I know how to cheer him up.”
Tso admits that it was only the few hours before surgery that he could really talk with Koops, since the days afterward found him obviously worn out and on medication.
“He was very tired after the procedure,” Tso said, “but we had a good time before he went under.”
Koops, now well along in his recovery, still expresses amazement as he thinks about his friend making such an effort to come so far to comfort and encourage.
Tso, however, calls it “repayment” for still-special college years of friendship as teammates and housemates.
“I think we’re called as Christian brothers and sisters to remember one another and visit one another,” he said. “Like we read in our Bible, ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.’ We were trying to fulfill Christ’s commandment of ‘love one another.’”
