Ronnie Hurt
June 20, 1963 – December 17, 2025
I’m not really sure how I became friends with Ronnie Hurt and his twin brother Donnie that first year of high school. We never took a single class together. We didn’t really have any mutual friends (mainly because I had few friends in general), and I never went to the football games or did any of the things they liked to do. Yet somehow we connected, and I may not have survived Apopka High School without them.
I suspect we met in the library, because it became our regular morning routine to hang out in Ms. O’Neal’s office before first period. There was a rotating cast of misfits who would gravitate there, but me, Ronnie and Donnie were the OG’s. That library, that office, those friends… They were my safe place. It was the one time in the school day when I felt accepted and included. Those mornings were often the reason I could face the rest of the day, when I would often be bullied and feel like an outcast.
I’d sometimes cross paths with them later in the day, but only briefly. It always felt like I was coming up for air. Even when they’d do crazy things like stuff me in a trash can (and then take me out almost instantly) I still felt like it was affectionate teasing rather than being picked on. And I knew they’d have my back if I needed them. (They would never let anyone else stuff me in a trash can!) After school, we’d sometimes talk on the phone for hours, but we rarely socialized.
Ronnie and Donnie are identical twins, but of course they are individuals. And my friendship with each of them was very different. They were pretty much joined at the hip in school. But this is about Ronnie.
As outcasts tend to do, I became an observer, and I’d sometimes look at Ronnie with awe, because he was such a kind, generous, and loving person, and he wanted nothing more than to be loved in equal measure. I don’t think he understood that it’s really rare to find a person with as big a heart as he had. I worried that in searching in vain for that person, his own heart would become cynical and cruel. But it never did. Sad sometimes, maybe, but never cynical or cruel. And he never, ever gave up. I always admired that about him.
Also, he could have become a bitter, resentful person because he had so many health challenges, and was often in pain. Donnie, thank goodness, did not suffer the same fate. But I always wondered if Ronnie ever looked at his twin and imagined what his healthy self would have been like. I never asked, and he never said anything of the sort. But a lesser man might have taken that and become angry at God and taken it out on the world.
Not Ronnie. He was loving kindness. He would do anything in his power for the people that he loved. He put everyone ahead of himself. His generous nature was like nothing I’ve ever seen before or since.
After high school, I didn’t stay in Apopka for long. But while I was there, he’d often stop by the convenience store where I worked if I was on night shift, so I could feel safe cashing out the register and locking up. That meant a lot to me.
Our lives went in different directions, but we kept in touch. He’d sometimes visit me in Jacksonville, and I’d sometimes visit him in Apopka.
Every once in a while, one of us would call the other. When he’d call me, he didn’t even have to identify himself, because the conversation would always start like this:
“Hey, girl, when you gonna get married?”
I’d roll my eyes and say, “Ronnie, you know that the only people I wanted to marry didn’t want to marry me, and the ones that wanted to marry me were ones I didn’t want to marry. I’m waiting for someone who will love me for me. Until I find that, I’m just fine on my own.” (And in fact, I didn’t get married until I was 53.)
“Well, you just need a man from LA. Lower Apopka. Like me!”
And I’d laugh and say, “Oh, George…”
I had taken to calling him George because he reminded me of George Bailey, from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. The man who set aside all his hopes and dreams in order to run the Bailey Building and Loan Association after his father died, so that the people of Bedford Falls could afford to have homes and small businesses of their own. The man who did things for others his entire life and never realized how much his acts of kindness truly mattered.
Ronnie would say, “I’m no angel!” and I’d reply, “Clarence was the angel. George was the guy with the big ol’ heart. That’s you.”
“Nah…”
Then he’d go on to brag about his daughters (whom he absolutely adored), or lament his love life, or tell me what Donnie was up to these days, and I’d tell him what was going on with me. And when we’d hang up, I’d have this vague feeling of being thrust back out into the cruel world again, as if I were heading off to first period, but grateful that I was doing so with a little bit of support to see me through. I felt that even more keenly when I moved to Seattle and suspected (correctly, as it turns out) that we’d never see each other again.
Ronnie, your death was so unexpected, I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. If I had, I’d have also said thank you for so much more than you know. I’m a better person for having had you in my life. Clarence’s final message to George in the movie couldn’t be more appropriate: “Remember: no man is a failure who has friends.” So you were a success, indeed.
Every time a bell rings, I’ll think of my old friend. But then, he had his wings all along.
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