I like talking about Mark. He had a major positive effect on me and I think everyone had the same feeling after hanging with Mark. When I think of words to describe him I find many of them, trustworthy, modest, agile, loyal, appreciative, honest, are words that apply to all the Rileys. I have been lucky to spend a lot of time with John and Dale and Mark and they, like David and Peggy, all share the quiet principles of hard work and honesty.
Mark always called a spade a spade. If you’d screw up, he might be reluctant to call you on it, but he would, and he‘d pad the blow in a way that made you laugh at yourself; and you could always benefit from his perspective.
He also was one of the funniest people ever. He could make Jeanne Gladden giggle like a schoolgirl; even strangers would get swept into his distinctive kind of humor. Once we were in the van and passed a boy on a bike when Mark hollers, “Get out of the street!” The kid about fell off his bike and looked up at Mark and just started cracking up. Part of the humor came from the fact that Mark looked like a hard guy, you expected his gruff grunts to be intimidating, but he was just funny. He once said people thought he was tough because he always squinted, then explained he always squinted because he needed glasses.
Although most of our time together was playing, I can’t talk about Mark without including work. He was always willing to work. I don’t think I did anything without him volunteering to help. We’d wax the floors at the VFW almost every week just because he had the time and tools to do it, and because he’d do anything for Rojo. We had a lot of opportunities to work together and he always made it fun, or least more tolerable, with his laborer lingo and biting comments about your skills while keeping his head down and working his tail off.
He had this great talent for imitating people. Within a few minutes he would recognize the speech or posture or gesture that made someone unique and he’d capture it perfectly. He could mimic anyone, even from movies or TV.
Once Mark, Dale and I were out watching Monday night football and afterward a crew came in to set up for a roving dance contest. Several “ringers” appeared and the organizers were taking entries from the locals. Now, I don’t know if it took courage or if it was a long-time burning desire to enter a dance contest, but Mark signs up. Dale and I were blown away. I’d seen Mark in a lot of different situations, but never on a dance floor. Soon enough he and this partner, someone we’d never seen, were announced; the music starts and he takes the Travolta pose (the one with a hand by his hip and finger pointed in the air).
Dale and I were cracking up on the inside, just staring on the outside. And then he danced. He mimicked every move from Saturday Night Fever with timing and dignity. It was one of the most amazing performances of anything I have ever seen. You’d swear he’d been practicing for years. Incredibly enough, they went to the second round, the semis, then, exhausted, to the finals where one of the ringer couples won. The crowd booed “fix!” as it was clear to everyone that Mark and the stranger were clearly the top performers. Afterwards he was drained and thirsty and insisted that news of this night not leave the room (later he said I could tell the story).
Carleen helped him learn to enjoy travel, often with some sort of gambling as bait, and they found new people to laugh with wherever they went. He was usually quiet and not a big grinner, but always the guy people wanted to hang around with.
Once I was going to L.A. with Kusudo to see this poetry professor who was going to read his one-man play about Ludwig, the mad King of Bavaria and Mark came along. So it’s this little storefront theater with little bleachers filled with college students and poetry buffs. The professor, playing the king, comes out in this long purple cape and a gold crown. He starts his reading and everyone is silently riveted to every word.
And then Mark starts to crack up. A bit later he starts laughing again. All evening he has these bursts of laughter that came and went quickly, but it was only him laughing. Everyone else was hushed the whole time, hanging on every word of the reader; a few seemed annoyed at the laughter, like somebody talking too loud at the movies. Afterwards we went out with the professor for a couple drinks. People came up and told him what a great piece of work it was, praised him and left, and soon it was just us sitting there when the professor says, “I heard one person laughing”. Before anyone could think of a response the guy says “Don’t you think anybody else got it?”
Mark was always exactly who he was, never pretentious, always well-grounded and made good decisions. One of those was to marry Carleen who has been a loving and caring wife and mother to Joe. There’ some old video of Mark feeding his six-day old son. On the tape it says “You look like you know what your doing” he looked down at Joe, puts a bottle to his mouth and says “I’m a good actor”.
He was a model on how to be a friend. He always cared, even if he didn’t like to say it, and always stood by your side, offering to help any way he could. It was hard to rattle him because he had this uncanny ability to know why people did things the strange things they do. He knew more about people than anyone I know.
For the first time I know what people mean when they say “a part of me went with him”. There are parts of my life that only Mark recognized and he never betrayed the trust. On the other hand, part of Mark will never die. Carleen, Joe, his brothers and sister; all of us continue to carry of big part of him with us. The world is a better place and all of our lives improved because we had the good luck to know Mark. When I die, and if I go to heaven and the old bastard asks me what I did while on the earth I'll tell him, "I hung out with Mark Riley."
from Mark's funeral March 2012
