An interesting character was Chris Cossey.  Extremely likeable. A talker. An artist. A hard worker.  A divorced and devoted dad with a cute little girl. I hired Chris as a part-time employee while I was the Director of the Center for Distance Learning in the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas.  I remember one day Chris came to work all bruised. When I asked what happened he said he’d been riding a new bike and wrecked. A few days later, one of my student workers and a friend of Chris, Phil, told me that Chris really had been beaten by his ex-wife when he went to pick-up his daughter.  This apparently had happened on other occasions, as well. Chris, being the nice guy he was, didn’t ever fight back.
A local coffeehouse once had a showing of Chris’ artwork.  Dale and I went to take a look. A few of the paintings looked interesting to my untrained eye.  Generally, I labeled it, “Needs to keep working at it.”

I also discovered that Chris had a drinking problem.
Part of Chris’ crazy life was this girl who was living with him for a time.  “Girlfriend” would be a stretch in describing her. According to Chris, she had been raped by a local policeman and was deathly afraid of it happening again.  She also didn’t think she had a chance of people believing her if she reported it. Probably because of that trauma she was a sleepwalker. Often in the middle of the night, she would get up and go into the kitchen.  There, she would get food out of the refrigerator, or utensils—including knives—out of the drawers. There were also times she would drive her car while “sleepwalking”.

The last time I saw Chris was when I was having a farewell lunch with a friend at a restaurant just off Dickson Street.  Shortly after we had ordered I saw Chris sit down at a booth about halfway between us and the door. With him was a young girl who I assumed was the same one who had been staying with him.  It didn’t take long for me to tell that Chris was drunk—eyes half closed, a stupid grin. We finished our meal and as we made our way to the exit I stopped at Chris’ booth and said “Hi”. “Hey, Bob!  Good to see you,” Chris said in a rather boisterous voice. He looked over at his companion and said, “This is my boss.” “Oh, you’re the guy Chris talks about all the time,” she said.