Friend memories.

Daniel Popovski, 1986 Ohrid, Republic of North Macedonia (was Yugoslavia then).

I was in Madrid in summer of 1986 and wanted to visit Daniel in Yugoslavia thinking it was close. It wasn’t, but JAT Airlines (Jugoslovenski Aerotransport) got me over there for little money.

Daniel and I were pen pals before we met for real in Ohrid. He was a strange one, but the visit went OK. He was obsessed with the USA, and his dream was to travel to the USA one day.

Fall of 2003, after not having heard from him in many years, he calls me out of the blue. He is on a bus in Charlotte heading to New York City. He gets off in Greensboro for a few hours. He was realizing his dream of being in the USA I only had little over an hour to get off work and meet him at the station downtown after not having seen him in seventeen years.

He visited some friends in NYC, then later ended up spending part of a year in Los Angeles.

He wasn’t sounding that good when he called sometimes from Los Angeles. The calls stopped and e-mails began bouncing months later. I never heard from him again and can find no traces on the Internet.

I have no idea what happened. I think he must have died in LA.

Anyway, Daniel Popovski, photos 1986.