Waking up to an in memoriam piece on a friend's social media page always brings with it a tinge of sadness, if not for the life that was lost, at least for the grief that person's friends and family must be feeling. Discovering that the person who had died was someone you once knew, is quite a different sensation. It brings with it -- at least in this case -- a flurry of memories and emotions, angst, shock and despair. Finally, there is a certain numbness. There have been too many of these premature deaths over the years. I knew Jared Hoke primarily during the mid-late 1990s. He was attending college here in C-U and, if the memory doesn't cheat, he was studying to be a pharmacist. He was smart, he had a good sense of humor and he was cute, in a nerdy sort of way. Not going to lie: I had an attraction toward Jared, though it wasn't mutual (at least, not in a romantic sense). We were friends, for a time, and he made a lasting impression. No doubt he did the same w...