Derek Gregory hasn’t been in the same state, let alone in the same room, as his best friend Ringo in nearly two decades. Their relationship dates back to the early 1980s, when Gregory and Ringo met as teens in high school, bonding over a shared taste in music and similar haircuts. With Ringo, there was always something to talk about.
“He was big and expressive and larger than life and fell in love with things and people and ideas and music and whatever it was that he was into at the time,” Gregory says, “and could communicate that passion in a way that is hard to ignore.”
After graduating, Gregory moved away from Southern California, where he and Ringo grew up, but they’ve kept up their long-distance relationship ever since. Now 56, Gregory, a content creator in Denver, still maintains daily conversations with Ringo, despite the fact that the latter currently lives in Australia. They’ll send each other voice notes while sitting in traffic, bits of music they’re working on, the minutiae of their days. Ringo’s lust for life, his “spark” as Gregory puts it, their ability to make one another laugh, to cheer one another on during their best days and to support each other on their worst, is the tether connecting the two men across continents and time zones.
