Approximately one mile north of the hamlet of New Paltz the music was crashing out of the amplifiers. The summer of 1978 had officially started only a few days prior. Orleans, a Woodstock, NY-bred rock band, who had recorded their share of top ten singles, was playing to a full house. For an 18 year old, small town jock, working his first night behind the bar, this was as good as it gets. It was sometime during the final set that I heard her voice over the crowd, “I’ll have a Stoli and soda.” I knew immediately who it was. Almost six feet tall with long blond tresses that fell halfway down her back, with a figure to rival any model on the catwalk; she made an impression that stayed with you. Making every effort to play it straight, I delivered her libation simply stating, “That’s a buck twenty five.” She handed me two George Washington’s and coolly posed the question that kept my attention for years to come. “Are you Rich Siegel?”
By the time she turned 16, Chris Casper had the kind of looks that made any man’s neck swivel. I was playing basketball for New Paltz High School when I first saw her. We were visiting Onteora High in Boiceville, NY when I felt a tap on my shoulder. My teammate Todd Krieg leaned his eyes to the left, “Hey Richie, check it out.” I turned towards the home team’s locker room and let the basketball slip from my hands so it would find its way into the vicinity of Todd’s sighting. The stray hoop was right at her feet as I reached down and straightened myself to be face to face for my forced introduction. It turned out to be more of a face to neck meeting. My six foot frame was about a head below my new acquaintance, who’d had her hands filled with a rack of water bottles. The manager for Onteora’s basketball team had high heels on and was drop dead stunning. “Hi, do you know who I am?” was the best I could stutter. Chris Casper looked at me blankly and continued on her way.
From out of the throngs of drunk teens that summer night in Speakers, she was standing in front of me once more. Only this time she acknowledged knowing who I was. “Yes, I am Richie Siegel, I kind of introduced myself to you this winter.’’ Miss Casper smiled and we shared some small talk about why she was visiting my hometown. I was unaware at the time that one of her friends snapped a polaroid of the two of us during our brief exchange. As it turned out, Chris was in Speakers club that evening to watch her boyfriend Lance Hoppen who was a guitar player for Orleans. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Twice our paths had crossed in close up settings and yet I was unable to make a lasting connection.
I would never see Chris Casper again; still I never got her face out of my mind. Over the years I continued to wonder what could have become of that radiant girl that flashed through my life. I was pretty sure she married Mick Jagger, or maybe Michael Jordan. The girl from Woodstock with the looks of a movie star certainly was destined to live a large life. Maybe she married a rich Sheik, had six kids, and lived in a Saudi Arabian palace. I always wondered about people who grow up fast. Eventually all of us have to run out of time and youth.
I knew where the road began for Chris Casper, I had an idea of where the trail led, but not a clue as to where she would end up. I hadn’t thought much about it in recent years, so when a Facebook friend request came in, it took me a second to grasp who it was. The girl who had been only a vision to me in my youth, was now looking at me in a photograph some 40 years later. Chasing a good story has developed into a passion for me, and I was sure Chris had some stories to tell about the decades that had passed. I wanted to know what she recalled about our brief passing moments. I wanted to hear the highlights of her journey between then and now.
The returned messages came from all the way across the great divide, from the little town of Laguna Hills in California. Today, Chris Casper is a California girl through and through. It turns out her life on the periphery of the rock world was fleeting. She lived with rockers Kane Roberts and Alice Cooper for several years, and owned a private investigator business. At 41, she married a high school football coach, and the two have enjoyed a fulfilled and content life together.
Like all of us, Chris Casper has no choice but to live with the decisions she made along the way. We can never turn back, we can only move forward powered by the past. All those years ago Chris Casper was a barely heard whisper in my ear. She was there, and then she was gone. To hear her story today causes both a smile and a tear. I had always envisioned that bigger-than-life young girl was enamored by my achievements on the basketball court. That she was so star struck, she picked me out in a bar that led to a few blissful rendez- vous’. Her version differs slightly.
Okay, maybe more than slightly. She contends we met one night at a club, snapped a picture together never to see each other again. She did not recall me scoring 50 points against the team for which she was the student manager. She has no recollection of the two of us looking for love under the dashboard lights. It is painfully humbling for me to think her memory of how it all happened may be better than mine. I have come to understand my past gets more out of focus as I put more and more years behind me.
In the big scheme of things we are here for a flash of time. During our brief moment we have so many choices, so many decisions to make. I am not aware of one person who is here after a dress rehearsal. We, succeed, we fail. We win, we lose. We build, we tear down. For sure, we only go around once. On an individual level when our time on this earth is over, nothing much matters. But while we live everything matters. Chris Casper is all of us. Her journey still has some avenues left. It is human to look back and second guess, to reach into one’s soul and see victory and to see defeat, to see fulfillment and to see emptiness.
One soft summer night, nearly half a century ago Chris Casper and I shared a wink, for just a moment in time. It was inevitable that we headed down the road in opposite directions. Catching up to her in the present is unlikely. Our points of view on our meeting in Speakers are totally opposite. To me, it was some sort of validation of who I was at the time. To Chris Casper, it was a photograph with a cute guy in a bar while her rocker boyfriend preformed on stage. Still, we share an uncommon bond. Sometimes in my quiet moments, I turn around sensing something sneaking up behind me. When I look back what I see is too blurry to make out any details. What is my reality and what is just my imagination running away from me? Chris Casper convinced me…it really doesn’t matter.
Lance Hoppen and Orleans
