Roland met my brother Dirk Hettrick in high school in early 1970s and became great friends - several years later Roland asked Dirk to be his Best Man in 1975 (our father Richard Hettrick officiated - I think it was a package deal discount for the two of them haha; newspaper clipping of wedding announcement hopefully attached).

For a couple summers after they graduated in 1972, Roland and Dirk (and others, including Steve Robinson) worked a kinda dirty and tiring factory job at Butler Manufacturing on the east side of Kansas City - usually the late shift and sometimes the graveyard shift.

In 2017 Roland shared with me a memory of Dirk, who died of cancer at age 24 in 1978. Roland recalled Dirk driving the two of them home from Butler at 4:00 a.m. after working a double shift. "We were coming home on Truman Road and Dirk got pulled over for speeding. When the cop asked if he had any weapons in the car, Dirk said, 'No, just those two hand grenades in the glove box.' The cop was not amused, had us standing in the road and frisked us. It turns out that Dirk had let the plates expire, and was taken to jail in cuffs. I had to drive the Dodge home and get into his mad money to go and bail him out."

Roland also played softball (usually catcher) on Dirk's East Side team in Kansas City and at the RLDS "campus" league in Independence.

A couple years later Roland, Dirk, Brad Voelker, and Steve Robinson made a black-and-white silent Super 8 film, a comedy Western.

Our family really enjoyed Roland and stayed connected for years after Dirk died and Roland moved away.

My friend Randy Reeves and I invited Roland in 1981 to come be interviewed on our local cable TV show called Someday Cinema to discuss that film (photo attached) - Roland was terrific on camera and shared some amusing anecdotes.

Roland also continued to play softball on Dirk's team, which was renamed Dirk's Gang in his honor. In 1982 Roland hit .318 and was given an award for traveling the most miles each week to play and practice.

We sure miss the sweet, gentle, funny good guy that was Roland.