{"id":279,"date":"2014-06-04T15:44:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T11:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=279"},"modified":"2014-06-04T15:44:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T11:44:07","slug":"saying-goodbye-to-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"Saying goodbye to a friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend my hometown of Binghamton, New York, lost a legend. Vincent Holmes was only 37, but had touched an incredible number of lives in his time, including mine. Vinny was a few years older than I was, one of the cool older guys who showed me adulthood when I had known little previously. Yeah, he probably made a few bad choices over the years, but we all did, and that was part of growing up.<\/p>\n<p>I never met anyone who made friends as easily as Vinny. Quite simply, you wanted to be his friend. That can&#8217;t be taught. It&#8217;s trite to say, but Vinny really care what color you were, or whether you were a millionaire or a bum. He would be your friend just the same. And that meant that<em> you<\/em> became friends with millionaires and bums too, because Vinny rolled with them both.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry we didn&#8217;t get to hang out as much in recent years, Vinny. Funny because it wasn&#8217;t that long ago we hung out every weekend. Different times. Different times. But some day, I promise, we&#8217;ll hang out again.<\/p>\n<p>Peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend my hometown of Binghamton, New York, lost a legend. Vincent Holmes was only 37, but had touched an incredible number of lives in his time, including mine. Vinny was a few years older than I was, one &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=279\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}