Sometimes news travels slowly to Kentucky. We're too busy pickin' banjos with our feet, you know. Anyway, I just found out that a former co-worker and friend from my Indianapolis days has disappeared from the face of the Earth. Not only did he unexpectedly stop showing up at work two months ago, but his wife and kids are also missing, and there is a For Sale sign out in front of his house.

Jay Hamlet was a wild and crazy guy who got along with almost everybody. He and I were part of a lunch bunch at the Indiana University Medical Center campus for a few years there in the mid-1990's, along with Doug, Robin, Tom, and especially Terri, with whom he liked to flirt. I don't know exactly where you draw the line between friend and merely a co-worker that you like, but since we went out many, many times after work and on weekends with the rest of the group, I think it's safe to say we were all friends for at least a while there. It became evident later that we weren't going to have a long distance friendship like I still do with others from my Indy days, but we had fun while it lasted.

Random things I remember about Jay: His favorite radio station was X-103 which (at least back then) played "alternative" music, although one time he was kind enough to accompany another friend and me to see KC & the Sunshine Band at Circle Centre... He and Terri once set me up on a blind date with Julie Lyons (what ever happened to her?)... Our lunch bunch once piled into a van and drove over to Kings Island for the day (if I can find my photo of him with Terri, Robin, and Hong Kong Phooey, I'll post it above); Jay was the only one in our group brave enough to go on the bungee jumping ride... One time he and Terri and I looked up everybody's publicly listed salary at the IUPUI school library (I still have the coded follow-up e-mail he sent with the details)... I'll always remember the wild time he had dancing the Macarena with Mark Fangman at Mark's going away dinner... Our business trip to Boston was my favorite one ever.... One time he got scolded by prim and proper Jayme Smith after pictures from his wild trip to New Orleans made the rounds at the office...

In some ways, Jay seemed to be a man with secrets known by too many people. But after I left him in Indy, he continued to make good for himself, escalating to a hotshot director's position there in the Clarian Health IT department. Sometimes people change the more powerful they become. I wonder if this has anything to do with his disappearance.

Well, I don't really have any idea what happened to Jay Hamlet or where he is now. My imagination runs wild, but those musings I will keep to myself. I just hope he and his family are okay, and survive to live a long, happy life.