On April 25th, I stood up at Western Reserve Academy and said goodbye to my closest friend, Chris “Flash” Burner. I’m sharing it here because he deserves to be known — and because I am so grateful to have had him in my life. Friendship is everything. Flash was proof of that.

— ✦ —

Thank you to the Burner family for the opportunity to say a few words about my friend Chris, in this place — Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, Ohio — that was so foundational to who he was, to his life, and to his family. Susan, I know how hard it was for you to make that call to me on Tuesday morning, March 3rd.

“Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me, and be my friend.”

That’s a favorite quote of mine — one I’ve returned to often, about friendship and about leadership. I tried to find who wrote it. Nobody knows for certain — it’s been attributed to Albert Camus, to a Native American proverb, to others. No one can agree. Flash would have appreciated that. He had no patience for people who needed credit.

Chris was both, to many people in this room. A friend and a leader. And he understood, better than most, that the best leaders and the best friends are often doing the same thing — just walking beside you.

— ✦ —

Franklin & Marshall College sits right between Marion, Massachusetts, where I’m from, and Hudson, Ohio, where Chris is from. We arrived from the edges and found each other in the middle. We never really moved from there.

My first introduction to Chris, forty three and a half years ago, was a slash to my shins — pretty far from where my stick was. Welcome to college lacrosse. He was a defenseman. I was an attackman. He was an established junior. I was a new freshman who didn’t know anyone. And as tough as he was on the field, he didn’t waste any time inviting me over to his apartment on Pine Street to hang out. He didn’t have to do that. 

He had one of the best record collections I’d ever seen. Van Morrison, The Stones, Creedence, Skynyrd — lots of Skynyrd — and Warren Zevon. I can still see him dropping the needle on Caravan, turning around with that big smile. 

We hung out and talked the way you do when you’re young and the night has no defined end. Same instincts. Same sense of humor. Same wariness of people who thought too highly of themselves. Something clicked into place, and it never clicked back out.

— ✦ —

Now — about that nickname. Let me get that properly sorted for you. Sophomore year, Chris was driving a van full of teammates back to Lancaster from the fall tournament at Penn State. Minutes after departing, a Pennsylvania State Trooper pulled him over on Route 22 east, enthusiastically ticketing him for speeding. Coach Sachs happened to drive past during that little project. And at the next practice, Coach — grinning — started calling him Flash. And of course, it stuck.

The irony is not lost on me. Some people found Chris to be shy, quiet, reserved — and he was those things, genuinely. Maybe that’s even why Coach asked him to drive? After all, he was only a sophomore at the time. But for those of us who knew him well, he was also not those things at all. He was open, hilarious, observational, and highly intelligent. He just didn’t hand that version of himself to everyone. You had to earn it.

We earned it.

— ✦ —

When spring break came and our friends went to Fort Lauderdale, we stayed. Doug Overby and I moved in with Flash. Meatball subs in sweatpants. Lacrosse. No school. Together, 24-7, unhurried and unbothered. Better than Fort Lauderdale. (Not so sure about that . . . ) We had all we needed. (Sure about that.)

We also worked something out on the field. In lacrosse, clearing the ball from the defensive end to the offensive end can be difficult — the other team wants it back. Normally, teams are coached to make several safe short passes up the field. But we had a play. He’d get the ball on the wing, look upfield, and the moment I saw him look, I’d break to the sideline, fifty or sixty yards downfield. One long hard pass to a spot. One pass, no words. Done. We practiced it until it lived as just reflex. Just trust.

That’s how it was between us for forty-three and a half years. Reflex and trust.

We walked nearly a mile to and from that practice field — Baker Campus — and we often walked beside each other. Not talking about practice. Talking about life. School. Girls. Music. What mattered. I didn’t know it then, but that’s where it was built.

— ✦ —

He was the best man at my wedding. That tells you everything about where he stood with me.

— ✦ —

I want to tell you about a Ford Mustang. Stick shift. Fast. Strong. Not quite perfect, not too pretty — but it just got it done. That car was him. He wore it. We grew up in a time when cars had character and personality, and that Mustang had both. It suited him perfectly — a little ballsy, a little worn at the edges, and absolutely reliable when it mattered. We loved that car.

— ✦ —

We both became school guys, which is partly why our lives ran so parallel. Chris always aspired to lead — and he did, first at Western Reserve Academy, then at Nichols School. A master’s from Harvard, then another from Dartmouth, picked up along the way. He put his heart and soul into those places, and they were better for it.

He loathed pretension and could sniff it out across a room. His humble roots had no time for those people. “Every Mother’s Son” — to quote his favorite song — however grand his pedigree or fat his wallet — “will rise and fall someday.” What mattered was how you carried yourself during life’s falls. Chris knew this. He lived it.

He had an amazing sense of humor. You could see it forming — that twinkle. The slight pause, the intake of breath, the dry one-liner delivered completely straight. And occasionally, at peak Flash, he’d refer to himself in the third person. Always Flash. Never Chris. He left me a voice mail: “Biddy – Flash is about to meet with some angry parents and they don’t understand that he’s going to be thinking mostly about fishing.” Deadpan. Perfectly timed. He was also the undisputed master of the Irish exit — you’d look up and he’d simply be gone . . .  A man who led two distinguished schools, with two Ivy League Masters’ degrees and never once took himself too seriously. That is not a small thing. It’s actually a huge thing.

 — ✦ —

Grantland Rice wrote a poem called “A Man’s Prayer” that I keep returning to. Here’s part of it: 

“Won sometimes, but did no crowing, lost sometimes, but did not wail, took his beating, but kept going, never let his courage fail. 

He was fallible and human, therefore loved and understood.”

I cannot think of a more honest portrait of him.

— ✦ —

I could talk about his progression from a culinary perspective, I could tell you that he went from eating frozen pizza straight out of the box, to becoming a master of the Traeger grill, but I won’t. Not now.

— ✦ —

 What I do need to tell you about, is grief — and how it moved between us like a tide.

In 2013, my wife Molly was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma. Thirteen months of hope and setback, ended with her passing in April of 2014. Through all of it, Chris was by my side, literally and figuratively. He didn’t arrive with speeches or plans. He arrived with presence. With the willingness to simply sit in it alongside me.

Then the tide turned.

Four and a half years later, Chris called from Gettysburg College. It was Parents Weekend. Ali was dizzy and ill. He was nervous. Pretty quickly they understood how serious it was. Now it was my turn. We talked. We cried. My last memory of that chapter was sitting with him on a golf cart in the trees late at night during a reunion here in 2019, just trying to be beside him now. Knowing he was heading to a new house that Ali had picked out, and knowing exactly how it would feel to walk into it without her.

 — ✦ —

He loved Matt and Abi with everything he had. Not always in words — words weren’t really his instrument — but in presence, in consistency, in the stubborn fact of being there. Matt and Abi — your dad was one of the best men I’ve ever known. Not because he was perfect. Because he was real, and loyal, and he never stopped trying. You were his greatest pride. He talked to me about you all the time. And Matt and Abi, I know you know this, but you’ll always have the love and support of every person in this room.

— ✦ —

We fished together. The Keys, Chatham, Monomoy, Joppa Flats, Buzzards Bay — and out west, the Bitterroot, the Missouri, and others. Often joined by Doug, Matt Carberry, Papa Dave, Abi and Matt, Mike Farrell, and others who understood the point was never really the fish.

We’d stop at the tackle shop, buy more lures and flies, as if buying more reasons to be optimistic. We’d decide to set out at dawn. Then the morning would come and we’d be groggy from staying up too late and talking. Which is ultimately what mattered. The staying up late and talking. So we’d have coffee and eggs and head out whenever it felt right.

A fishing trip, like a game, like a life well lived — is never about the outcome. It’s always about the process. The being together. The showing up. The Practice. We often didn’t catch much, and I wouldn’t trade a single moment of it.

Van Morrison on low, swordfish on the grill, and the luxury of not having to fill the quiet. That is a rare gift — a friend with whom silence is enough.

 — ✦ —

You know what it’s like to walk through your house in the dark — your hand finds the banister automatically. These days, I feel like I’m reaching for it, and it isn’t there. The daily calls. The texts. The laughs. The rhythm of us that had its own pulse. Now it’s dark, and I’m stumbling along.

Heartbreak doesn’t close you. If you let it, it opens you — cracks you wider than you thought you could go. Those cracks let the light in. Every loss I’ve carried has made more room in me, more light. Flash realized this too. He lived it. And now, in losing him, I feel it again — that terrible yet reliable expansion of the heart.

Grief – is like a tide — it comes in and pulls back, comes in again, and you learn to stand in it.

But a current is something else entirely. It runs in the depths beneath the surface, constant, silent, moving through you whether you feel it or not. It doesn’t leave with the tide. Chris is that current now.

We’re building toward the full moon, the “Flower Moon” next Friday. The flood tide. A full moon tide comes in higher, stronger, runs further up the shore, and stays longer than usual. It has to do with gravity. I think that’s what we’re feeling this weekend. The fullness of him. The gravity of him. Pushed in closer than usual. Staying longer than we expected.

 — ✦ —

Before I close — Rose, so bubbly and full of life, so kind to me across all these years. Sorry about the tear in the mosquito netting around the pool at Ocean Reef. But we had to practice our flycasting somewhere. Julie and Susan, he loved being your big brother. Matt and Abi — the 2 apples of his eyes, his greatest pride. And Papa Dave — he revered you. Those years fishing together out west meant everything to him. In those rivers I think he found something beyond the fish. He found his dad, over and over again. And Amanda — you gave him a new chapter, a new home, and happiness in Buffalo. He was lucky to have you beside him.

As a son, a father, a brother, a husband — he loved you all. And your love shaped him.

 — ✦ —

To close, I’ll share this:

I exported our text history from the last two and a half years. Over a thousand messages. Barely a day went by . . . 

Here are a few:

July 18th, 2025, 4:46 PM: one of his first outings on his new boat on Lake Ontario — “Forecast for winds to drop. Winds did not drop. Very rough. Tangled lines, hard work, no fish. But . . . you’ll never hear me complain in any way about a day on the water.”

August 13th, 2025, 3:12 PM: referring to his colonoscopy — “The staff was laughing as I woke up….they said I was yelling….’let’s go guys, everyone on the boat’… as I was going under. At least I gave them a laugh.”

November 27th, 2025 Thanksgiving Day, 4:10 PM: “Important to remember. We’ve each been thru a lot, unexpected. And yet we’re lucky and happy guys. We’ve landed on our feet. It’s not easy . . . outlook, optimism, self-reflection . . . a lot. But, to be where we are is rewarding and impressive. Just my thought.”

And then this one. March 3rd, 2026. 1:10 in the afternoon. 

“Love you my brother”

Marked delivered. And he’s been replying:

A Skynyrd song on shuffle when I least expect it. A lacrosse team and a player wearing # 17. A stunning sunset over the bay. An Osprey on a dock piling. A note from a Head of School. Teachers, just doing their good work.

And a long hard pass to the wing — fifty yards downfield. Throw it Flash.

I’m here.

— Pete Bidstrup | April 25, 2026

Notes arrive on Sundays and some Wednesdays

•

About me, and Practice Notes → here 
About Integrative Coaching → here 
About my book, The Why of Sports → here