Fourth Lake, Chapter 3

Chapter 2 was posted at the end of February.

With Judy riding shotgun, Phil backed their green Fiat 124 Sport Coupe out of the driveway of their four bedroom, split-level house in Little Neck and headed for the Long Island Expressway.  Once there, they would go west to the Whitestone Bridge, which would bring them to the Bronx.  Eventually, they would take the New York State Thruway north past Albany and head into the Adirondack Mountains.  It was a beautiful summer day.  The Sunday traffic getting out of the city was light.

When Judy leaned forward to turn the car radio onto a pop music station, Phil turned toward her.  They exchanged smiles.  Judy remembered the first time they looked at each other.  It was fifteen years before, the summer of 1959.  They were having lunch at Gallagher’s Steak House on the west side of Manhattan, but at separate tables.  After recognizing Phil from the basketball game, she started staring at him.

“I’m sorry.  You don’t know me, but I finally remember where I know you.  You played basketball at Penn, right?  Isn’t your name Phil something?”

“Yes, Phil Black.  Did you see me play?”

“It’s nice to meet you, Phil.  My name is Judy White.  I was a cheerleader at NYU and it must have been about three years ago at your court.  I was so impressed by how well you played that night.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Judy.  Do you remember who won the game?  I don’t.”

“No!  The only thing I remember was the cute guy wearing number 10 for the home team.  By the way, let me introduce you to...”

Judy and Phil exchanged business cards.  Judy worked for a public relations firm on Madison Avenue, not far from Phil’s office.  She graduated from college the year before and had been with her firm for about six months when they met.  On the other hand, Phil graduated from Penn’s Wharton School in 1956 and started working for his CPA firm almost immediately.  He passed all of the requirements to be a CPA within two years.

About two weeks later, after patiently waiting in vain for Phil to call her, Judy called him.

“Hello, Phil.  It’s Judy White.  We met at Gallagher’s a couple of weeks ago.  How are you?”

“Yeah!  Hi, Judy.  I’m fine.  Been a little busy.  How about you?”

“Good!  I’m learning the ropes over here.  Fascinating work, public relations.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Say, Phil, I was wondering if we could have lunch some time, as our offices are so close.  We could discuss your glory days playing basketball or something.”

“No!  I can’t have lunch with you.”

“Oh.”

“No, you don’t understand.  Lunch is always with clients.  But, if you’d like, we could have dinner.  How about this Saturday night?”

“That would be great, Phil.  Let me give you my home address.”

Judy lived with her parents in a modest house in Bayside, Queens.  When Phil arrived in his beat-up Chevy, Judy met him at the door dressed very differently than when he had seen her at the restaurant or when she had seen him at the basketball game.  She was all dolled up, with her long hair flowing off her shoulders.  She had applied an alluring shade of eye shadow, red lipstick, and what smelled like Chanel No. 5.  Judy had on a brightly-colored dress cut so that Phil could notice the very tops of her shapely breasts and the bottoms of her curvaceous legs.  She was beautiful.

Phil took her to his favorite Chinese restaurant, Say Eng Look, on East Broadway in Chinatown.  They shared moo sho pork and chicken with broccoli.  She loved it.  They were the only non-Chinese in the restaurant.

“So, Phil, what made you want to be a CPA?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m a greedy bastard.  Seriously, you can make a very good living at it.  Besides, I wasn’t good enough to play pro ball.  The only problem is the hours.  I have to work a lot.  But, I don’t really mind ‘cause it gives me what I want out of life.  Right now, I’m saving for a brand new Cadillac.  And eventually, I want to buy my own place.”

Phil seemed like a great guy to Judy.  First, he was gorgeous.  He was tall and well-built.  Secondly, he was ambitious, hard-working, and had a good profession.  She was very attracted to him and definitely wanted to pursue a relationship.

Judy was used to going after the things she wanted in life.  At 10, she talked her parents into paying for gymnastics lessons.  Later, at Bayside High School, she aspired to be the Senior Class President.  The faculty advisor told her that girls usually became either the Vice-President or the Secretary.  Judy would hear none of that.  She worked her tail off and was elected as the first female to win the honor in twenty years.  Her father wanted her to attend Queens College and live at home.  Judy wanted to go away to school.  They argued about what a proper young girl should do.  As a compromise, she attended New York University and lived in a dorm on campus.  Her mother wanted her to study to be a teacher, but Judy majored in English Literature and took a lot of business courses.  After graduation, and much to the chagrin of her parents, she bummed around Europe with a girlfriend for six months before settling down.

Judy had never been reticent.  Growing up right behind an older brother had made her competitive and aggressive.  Her role model had been Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind.  When she saw the movie, Judy found a woman she could relate to.  It encouraged her to read the book, which encouraged her to become an avid reader and to study literature in college.  Now she had Phil in her sights.  Judy didn’t see herself as a career woman, but as a housewife and a mother, married to a successful man.

After dinner, Judy and Phil walked around Chinatown, taking in the many sights, sounds, and aromas that are unique to that part of Manhattan.  When they arrived back at her home late that Saturday night, he walked her to the front door.  Without any hesitation, Judy threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. 

“Thanks for a wonderful evening, Phil.  Please call me again.  Good night.”

Being a young CPA working for a large firm was almost a seven day a week job.  You were on call all the time.  You could work every day of the week, even Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays.  It was difficult to have a personal life outside the office.  However, about every couple of weeks, Phil found time to call Judy for a date, usually on a Saturday night. 

Judy was not exactly sitting by the phone waiting for Phil to call her.  As an attractive young woman, she had plenty of admirers who called up for dates.  And she went out with more than one of them and enjoyed herself when she did.  However, Phil was her first choice as a potential mate.  But, she wasn’t taking any chances in case Phil didn’t pan out.  When she and Phil did go out, she let him know how she felt about him.

Phil had now been with his firm for about five years and was working himself up the firm’s ladder of success which eventually led to a partnership.  He realized, for that to happen, he needed more than to just work hard and bring money into the firm.  He needed to make a good impression on the existing partners, both professionally and personally.  Annually, near Christmas, the firm held a party at a country club on Long Island, where all the firm’s employees were invited.  They were expected to bring their spouses or dates in the case of single employees.

It was late December 1961.  JFK was in the White House and the Green Bay Packers were NFL champions for the first time in 17 years.  Phil in a tuxedo and Judy in a pale yellow evening gown were walking through the receiving line at the festive party, greeting all the partners and their wives.  After many handshakes and introductions, they finally reached the partner Phil worked for the most, Malcolm Fitzhugh, Jr.  Everyone had been drinking cocktails and thus everyone was in a good mood. 

“Good evening, Malcolm.  I’d like to introduce my date, Miss Judy White.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Fitzhugh.  It’s a wonderful party.”

“Pleased to meet you, too, Judy.  Call me Malcolm.  You have wonderful taste, Phil.  Judy’s the most beautiful girl here tonight.”

“Thank you very much, Malcolm,” said Judy.

“You know, Phil, if I were single and twenty years younger, I would ask Judy for her phone number.  Maybe I’ll ask her anyway.”

“You’re making me blush, Malcolm,” she responded.

“You have it made, Phil.  You’re one of the brightest young men we have at the firm.  Everyone says so.  And we all like you, too.  That’s important if you want to make partner, Judy.  We don’t make SOBs partners, even if they make us a lot of money.  And now, you show up with virtually your final requirement for partnership, a beautiful girl on your arm.  You better grab her, Phil, before she slips through your fingers.”

“I’ll do my best, Malcolm.  See you later.”

Judy and Phil joined the other couples on the dance floor. 

“What was that all about, Phil?”

“What do you mean?”

“What he said about your final requirement for partnership?”

“Well, there’s kind of an unwritten rule that candidates for partnership have to be married.”

“That’s interesting.  Do you want to be a partner?”

“You know I do.  I’ve told you many times.”

“Do you really think they would hold it against you being single?”

“I’ve been with them almost six years.  Nobody who wasn’t married has made partner.  But, I’ve got a few years to go before I’m eligible.”

“Do you have anybody in mind to be Mrs. Phil Black?”

“Well, this isn’t exactly like a proposal, but I think you’d make a very good candidate.  You’re bright, attractive and you just made a great impression on my boss.”

“Gee, maybe I should try to be the next Mrs. Malcolm Fitzhugh, Jr.?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that perhaps while you’re biding your time checking out all the good candidates who could be your wife, I might be checking out all the good candidates who are worthy enough to be my husband.  By the time your eligibility rolls around, I may be taken.  You’re not the only man I date, you know.”

By the summer of 1962, Judy and Phil were married and they moved into an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan.  In 1963, Kylie was born, just four days before JFK was assassinated.  Less than two years later, they had Megan.  In 1966, Phil made partner.  The following year, the Black family moved to their house in Little Neck.

To be continued next month...

Tale of Two Statues

When I was a little boy, I could look out my bedroom window and marvel at the East Side Park, which was directly across the street.  Besides accommodating a large green area that all the children in the neighborhood could utilize as a playground, it also included a church, a county courthouse, and a county administrative building.  However, the thing about the park that intrigued me the most was the statue that stood at its far end.  It was of a soldier, all in stone white, facing away from my window.  When I was old enough to read, I could see it was dedicated “in honor of the soldiers and sailors of the County of Oswego who nobly defended the Union, 1861-1865.”  It was a little strange the statue was facing the opposite direction from where those who went to war about eighty years before my birth actually went, which was South, across the Mason-Dixon Line.  But, the statue was facing East Bridge Street, the main thoroughfare of Oswego, New York.

In 2007, I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home of the main campus of the state university.  Located near the downtown is lovely McCorkle Place, which is part of the campus.  At the end of this park next to East Franklin Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, is a bronze statue, also of a soldier, known as Silent Sam.  I could see it is dedicated “to the sons of the University who entered the war of 1861-1865 in answer to the call of their country.”  Unlike the other statue, it was facing the right direction, North, from where the boys from New York came.

It is quite a coincidence that the two small cities in America that mean the most to me have these statues with similar images located in predominant parks near main east-side thoroughfares.  They were both constructed by organizations that were passionate about the sacrifice of local young men and wanted to preserve that sacrifice for posterity.  However, they represent opposite sides in the Civil War that tested whether the United States of America “so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”  Happily for us in the Twenty-First Century, our nation has endured.

It is interesting to note that neither statue mentions the real reason for the war, the preservation of slavery.  The war started with the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860.  Within a few months, eleven Southern states voted to secede from the USA.  Why?  Because the president-elect was opposed to slavery where it was and to its expansion in the western territories.  The slavocracy, the rich and powerful five percent of Southern society who owned almost all the slaves, felt threatened by a man who was not even on the ballot in their states.  Without slavery, their civilization would be “Gone with the Wind.”  They also believed their states still had the sovereign right to legally leave a Union they had joined seventy-two years before.

Neither side could convince the masses to fight either to maintain or end slavery.  In the North, Abolition was not a mainstream belief.  It was considered a radical idea.  In the South, as I stated, the vast majority were not slaveholders.  So the leadership of both sides had to couch their reasons for going to war from another perspective.  In the North, it was to defend and preserve the Union.   In the South, it was to defend their new country, the Confederate States of America, against an invasion from the North, to protect their woman from being raped, and to guarantee the non-slaveholding white male majority's superiority to the black race.

I am very happy the rebellion of the eleven Southern states was defeated and today we are still the United States of America.  However, there have been Southerners in the last one hundred fifty years who have wanted to preserve the memory of the so-called “lost cause” by building monuments to those who died fighting for it.  Take note of Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Silent Sam was dedicated in 1913 at a time when The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a public university, was an all-White segregated school.  Thankfully, today it is integrated.  But, how can the University’s administration expect the Black student body, faculty, and staff to tolerate a symbol of a time when White North Carolinians fought to preserve the slavery of their ancestors?  In addition, how can the University’s administration maintain on its campus a symbol of a rebellion against the United States of America?  Do we build statues to Benedict Arnold?  Like Joe Paterno at Penn State, Silent Sam must go.

On the other hand, do we really need or want such statues in the public sphere, even the one in Oswego?  Do they glorify war and thereby encourage it as an option in the future?  Do they serve as an educational tool for the public to better understand the past?  Or both?  However, this is a subject for another discussion.

High Noon

I love movies.  I have always loved movies, ever since my parents and siblings started taking me to movie theaters in the early 1950s when I was too young to go by myself.  I’m also thankful that early television filled a lot of hours with old movies from the 1930s and 1940s.  Thus, I was able to watch and fall in love with films made even before I was born.  And now I can write about these movies, especially the ones I love the most.

I’m going to start with High Noon (1952) because it was my brother Ted’s favorite film and he is not around to write about it himself.  He liked to knitpick films, so I’ll do it in his stead.  It is a Western directed by Fred Zinnemann, who also directed From Here to Eternity (1953).  There were a lot of Western movies in those days, but I think High Noon is one of the best.  It’s on my list of the top three, with Shane (Alan Ladd) and The Searchers (John Wayne).  It’s a simple story of a man who must stand alone and face the threat of being killed by a gang of four notorious gunmen, and on his wedding day to boot. 

“Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’, on this, our weddin’ day.  Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’, wait, wait along.  The noon day train will bring Frank Miller.  If I’m a man I must be brave.  And I must face that deadly killer, or lie a coward, a craven coward, or lie a coward in my grave.”

The film begins with this lovely ballad (which won the Academy Award for best song) written by Dimitri Tiomkin (music) and Ned Washington (lyrics) and sung by the legendary Tex Ritter, an old time Western movie star himself and the father of the actor, John Ritter.  The first image we see in this black and white film is Lee Van Cleef, making his film debut, waiting for two other men while sitting on a rock and smoking a cigarette in the middle of nowhere.  The three finally meet up and together they ride their horses into the little town of Hadleyville, somewhere out in the western United States in the late Nineteenth Century.  They are there to meet Frank Miller, a former local hot-shot, who, five years before had been convicted of murder.  He was sentenced to hang, but a higher court commuted it to life imprisonment.  Now he was pardoned and on his way back to Hadleyville on the noon train.  During his trial, Miller had made a death threat against the local marshall, Will Kane.  Now he’ll join up with his three compatriots to fulfill his threat.

Kane, on the other hand, has just gotten married and resigned his position as town marshall.  The newlyweds will leave by a horse-drawn buckboard to open a store in another town.  The telegraph operator interrupts the post-wedding festivities to deliver the message about Frank Miller to the town mayor, Kane, and the other guests.  What to do?  Everyone tells Kane to take his bride and run away.  At first, he agrees, but out on the trail he changes his mind.

Kane returns to town.  He resumes his position as town marshall, even though no one officially authorizes him to do so.  His Quaker wife doesn’t understand what is happening.  She is totally opposed to violence, which is a way of life to a man such as Kane who has had a long career as a lawman.  Maybe this was not a match made in Heaven.  Kane’s plan, using his status as the town marshall, is to organize a large group of volunteers (a posse) from the town to confront Miller and his gang.  Perhaps outnumbered, Miller will either be killed in a shootout or give up his threats against Kane.

Will Kane is played by the great Gary Cooper, who was 50 years-old when the movie was made.  For this performance, he won his second Academy Award for Best Actor (the first was Sergeant York in 1941).  Grace Kelly, who was all of 21, plays his bride, Amy.  I know that such age differences exist in life, but, in this case, I just don’t buy it.  They don’t look like a couple.  An older woman, at least in her thirties, would have worked much better.  Check out Dorothy McGuire who was 35 years-old at the time.  Kelly looks like Cooper’s daughter.

All of Kane’s efforts to seek aid from the very people he had protected for many years as town marshall fail for one reason or another.  All want him to leave so there won’t be any violence in their peaceful town.  There are a couple of interesting comments made along the way.  First, in a saloon, a customer mentions that Kane has two deputies, a man named Harvey plus a second man.  In the film, there is no second man.  The confusion is explained in the screenplay.  In it, there is a subplot about the second deputy who was out of town bringing back a fugitive from justice.  This subplot was cut from the film, but the line about two deputies, instead of one, was not. 

The second comment was made in the town church.  Someone mentioned that there was personal trouble between Miller and Kane.  Exactly!  It was personal.  Miller did not want to kill the town marshall; he wanted to kill Kane.  The next day, Kane’s replacement as town marshall would arrive.  Miller had no desire to kill him.  Not yet, anyway!  So, Kane was really trying to hide behind his badge as town marshall.  I don’t blame him, but he’s not playing straight with the townspeople.

One more little glitch!  Just before the beginning of the climatic scenes, there is a shot of Kane standing alone in the street, completely isolated.  The camera zooms up higher and higher to emphasize Kane as a lonely figure.  Unfortunately, if you look at the upper right hand corner of the frame, you see Los Angeles, circa 1951.  Not good! 

So Kane stands alone.  Even his wife abandons him as she can’t accept his choice of violence in dealing with his problem.  (In John Wayne’s Angel and the Badman, his Quaker girlfriend insists he not use violence when dealing with men who want to kill him.)  However, Kane will not run away, but will instead face Miller and his bunch.  Miller arrives on the noon train and the four march toward where they believe Kane to be, on the main street of Hadleyville.

I don’t believe that Miller clearly thought out his strategy.  They would go as a group, walking close together, until they found Kane.  I think it would have been better to have split up into at least two groups to try to find and surround Kane.  However, Frank’s brother, Ben (one of the gang), breaks ranks and also a window to steal a ladies’ hat to tie to his gunbelt as a good luck charm.  The noise alerts Kane as to the whereabouts of the killers.  He subsequently comes out from behind the four and kills the stupid brother, after first calling out his name.

Following this, Kane is chased around town by the remaining three until he runs into a stable full of horses.  Not a good idea, since there is no way out except the single way in.  The three have Kane pinned down as they are firing at him from multiple angles.  Then another blunder!  Lee Van Cleef’s character (who has no lines in the film) rushes into the barn with guns blazing.  Kane is well hidden in a loft above the horses and easily kills his adversary who made an excellent target.  Two down, two to go!  Did the Marx brothers plan this affair?  Next, Kane is able to escape the stable while riding out on one of the horses during a fire.

The remaining two gunmen chase Kane back down the main street to where he takes refuge in an empty store.  Again the two have Kane cornered and are firing at him from two different angles.  Good idea!  However, non-violent, Quaker Amy decides she must protect her brand-new husband by shooting one of the two remaining killers in the back, despite her avowed religious beliefs.  It seems definitely out of character for her to do this.  But, somebody has to kill these guys.

Frank Miller is now all alone.  He captures Amy, uses her as a human shield, and threatens to kill her unless Kane comes out of the store and face him in a final confrontation.  It seems as if Miller wants a fair fight, but Kane takes the opportunity to kill Miller when Amy is able to distract him.  Dummy!  Miller should have shot Kane when he first stepped out of the store.  All is fair in love and war.  At the end of the film, with all his enemies dead, Kane and his bride get back on their buckboard and again ride out of town.

I have poked some holes in this movie, but it should not stop you from watching a great Western.  After all, it’s a movie, not real life.  So some of the story was a little wacky, but the bottom line is that it’s very entertaining.  Besides the two Academy Awards mentioned above, it won two others (Best Musical Scoring and Best Editing) and was nominated for three more it did not win (Best Picture won by The Greatest Show on Earth, Best Director won by John Ford for The Quiet Man, and Best Screenplay won by The Bad and The Beautiful), for a total of seven nominations.  Please watch it and remember what I said.  Agree or not, we can talk about it later.      

 

Coach

My son, Bret, made being a coach in youth sports organizations a lot easier for me.  First, because he was on my team, he made the team automatically better, giving me fewer things I had to do.  Second, he was like having an assistant coach out on the baseball field/basketball court.

At first, I didn’t want to be a coach.  It had been too easy with my daughter, Rachel, and her gymnastics.  I only had to drive her to practice, drive her to away meets, and sell bagels and coffee at home competitions.  But then one day while I was minding my own business, I was approached by another father who had been strong-armed into volunteering to be a coach.  He had agreed only if another father (me) would assist him.  I was gently persuaded.

But, then I kind of liked being a coach.  I liked the fact I could give Bret perks such as extra playing time (within the rules) and playing any position he wanted, like catcher.  I liked teaching young kids how to play the game, especially baseball.  Basketball has always been a little foreign to me, especially when it came to strategy.  But, I learned as I went along.  I also liked the cachet of being a coach, even if it was as a volunteer in youth sports.  I was in the inner circle of power, sort of.  I discovered there is an inner circle, and then another more powerful circle inside (sort of like Animal Farm).  I was not invited into the inside circle.

My all-time favorite moment watching a baseball game, at any level, was in fact watching Bret, as the shortstop, catch a towering pop-up to end a game which gave his team the championship.  In my head, I could hear the lyrics to the Queen song, “We are the champions, my friends, and we’ll keep on fighting to the end.”  Before the game, he had asked me to hit him just such fly balls so he could practice catching them.  I remember the time Bret was so feared as a batter that an opposing coach intentionally walked him.  In Little League baseball!  Another time playing third base, the batter hit a ball that bounced high over Bret’s head.  He turned around, ran toward the ball, caught it over his shoulder, spun around counter-clockwise, and then rifled it to the second baseman for the third out of the inning, saving a run from scoring.  It was an instinctive play that I have never seen even a pro duplicate.

Bret objected to wearing a protective cup while playing baseball.  I guess it was uncomfortable.  But, it was required under Little League rules.  However, he discovered that a star major leaguer didn’t wear one either (I think it was Don Mattingly).  How can I argue with that?  At the next game, the umpire announced he would personally check to make sure each player was wearing a cup.  And how will he do this?  By tapping each player’s groin area with a baseball bat, listening for the click of the bat against the metal cup.  This guy was a pervert.  I had a big argument with him.  I insisted he take my word that each of my players was following the rules.  Furthermore, his methodology was inappropriate.  I won the argument and saved my son. 

Once, I was designated to be one of the two coaches at an all-star basketball game.  I was given zero instructions as to how I was to substitute the eleven players I had.  I devised my own system which I thought was fair.  However, the other coach had a different system.  He was making substitutions more rapidly than I was.  Overall both his players and mine would have about the same amount of playing time, which was the point.  However, one league official got very angry, came over screaming at me in front of everyone and demanded that I immediately make substitutions (a la, the other coach) or he would fire and replace me.  My first reaction was to stand up to this guy and defend myself.  However, I looked at Bret, who was sitting on the floor waiting to enter the game.  I did not want to do anything to embarrass him.  I capitulated.  But, I vowed never to volunteer to help that league again.  This is how you treat a volunteer?

At the end of that season, our first-place team had a one-point lead with seconds remaining in a playoff game.  We had the ball and in retrospect, I should have called a time-out and discussed strategy, especially with Bret, who understood basketball better than I did.  Instead, he successfully passed the ball into our tallest player, who, once he had the ball, didn’t know what to do with it.  He was virtually mugged by all five players on the other team.  Their best player ripped the ball from his hands , turned, dribbled a couple of times, and then put up a prayer from just beyond half-court.  It went off the backboard and in.  We lost.  I took it gracefully.  I did not argue with the referee that it appeared the shot was after the final buzzer.  I wanted to show my son that you have to learn to accept defeat.  The disappointment of losing like that was another reason I didn’t want to coach any more.  I had enough.

I must mention the one game I coached without my son.  My all-star baseball team qualified for the Little League tournament, at the local level.  Unfortunately, Bret was underage and could therefore not compete.  However, as soon as the team was eliminated from the tournament, Bret could join the team for another series of games that had been scheduled over the remainder of the summer.  In our first tournament competition, we were losing after four innings, which marks an official game.  In the top of the fifth inning, my team rallied and took the lead.  We were still at bat, and scoring more runs, when a terrific thunderstorm hit the area and the game was stopped.  Everybody ran for cover and waited an hour.  Finally, without any let up in the downpour, the umpires called the game.  I had to explain to my players that we lost a game we were winning.  The other team hadn’t batted in the fifth, so the score would revert to the end of the fourth inning when we were losing.  All the adults were so impressed with my good sportsmanship.  I even received a letter of commendation and a Little League decal as a result.  However, I was really happy we lost so Bret could join the team and we could spend the rest of the summer together. 

      

Noreen

I started dating Bonita in the summer of 1967.  I had just graduated from college and moved to suburban Detroit.  One of my brothers and his wife lived there and I thought it would offer me a good social life.  No sooner than I got there than all Hell broke loose.  A riot erupted in the city and federal troops were called in to restore order.  Was it something I said? 

On a more peaceful note, after a few dates, Bonita invited me to her home for a Sunday brunch and to meet her family:  mother, father, older sister, younger brother, and younger sister.  The youngest member of the family was a fourteen year-old named Noreen. 

I don’t think Noreen liked me in the beginning.  She thought I was a nerd.  Maybe I was.  Anyway, I proved to be useful.  I had a car, a used blue Corvair, and she would beg Bonita to get me to take her and her friends places:  to someone’s house, to a store, or to a mall.  I usually agreed as I was trying to make a good impression on Bonita.  However, Noreen had the annoying habit of giving directions at the last possible moment, as in, “turn here” while I’m driving through an intersection. 

Noreen had a difficult upbringing.  When she was a little girl, her mother became ill with multiple sclerosis (MS), which turned her into an invalid.  Her father had to work a lot, at odd hours, in order to support the family.  Her three older siblings each had their own issues and could not provide the guidance of a mature adult.  Thus, Noreen was on her own a lot. 

As her father was the lone authority figure, he did his best under the circumstances. However, like many parents, he didn’t know the right way to raise a child.  Where do we learn this most important work of our lives?  I remember an incident when Noreen said, I believe, “Shit!  Excuse my French.”  Her father slapped her across the face.  Noreen ran to her room, humiliated. 

I could understand Noreen to some extent because we were both the youngest in our families.  And similar to my situation, she got to spend the most time with her widowed father when all the other siblings had flown the nest.  She developed a real bond with him.  I remember when he died, it was January of 1982 when the Super Bowl came to a freezing suburban Detroit.  At the cemetery, she didn’t want to leave her father because, as she said, he hated being cold.

Sometimes, in spite of a lack of good parental support, children grow up well.  I wonder whether it is the exception or the rule.  Well, in Noreen’s case, she did great.  She pulled herself up by her proverbial bootstraps.  She got herself an education and a profession.  She supported herself, bought a house, and, as a single mom, raised an adorable child, Lauren, to become a successful young woman.  At one time, she owned and operated her own business, a bagel store.  Noreen was loyal and devoted to her family, friends and colleagues.  To me, she was always kind and generous.  I always looked forward to spending time with her and enjoyed her company.

I remember the first time Noreen came to visit us in New York, as a teenager, in the late 1960s, when we lived on West 21st Street.  This was a street in transition from a rundown Puerto Rican neighborhood to one for Yuppies.  After dinner one night, she went outside to sit on the front stoop of our brownstone.  At first she was all alone.  However, within a few minutes, she was surrounded by more than a dozen boys, all Puerto Rican.  I was a little nervous for her at first, but she assured me that everything was cool.  The leader of the group, a boy named Junior, later told me she was the first white girl that had talked to them.         

Another time, now in the 1970’s, Noreen came to our apartment in Queens.  During this period, she was a bit of a hippie.  She brought some “weed” with her.  She asked me if I would like to try some.  As I have never smoked cigarettes, the idea of putting something burning near my face does not appeal to me.  Then she suggested brownies, the kind known as Alice B. Toklas brownies.  How could I say no to a brownie?  Well, I had three of Noreen’s homemade brownies in short order.  Then, my world starting moving back and forth, very rapidly.  I started saying things without any inhibitions.  I was scared and wanted it to stop immediately.  Noreen and Bonita had to help me to walk up the stairs and lie down on my bed and sleep it off.  Noreen assured me I would be fine in the morning.  She was right.

I think it was the summer after my daughter, Rachel, was born and Noreen came to visit.  Someone dreamed up with the idea that we (Noreen, Bonita, and me) should take advantage of having three drivers and drive our Fiat 124 Sport Coupe through the night from New York back to Michigan.  We left at 4 PM and arrived at 6 AM the next day making a minimum of stops.  And everytime we did, Rachel, in her car seat, would wake up.  It was an exhausting, but fun trip for the three of us.  I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anybody other than Noreen. 

For some years, Noreen lived in Washington, D.C. and worked at the George Washington University Hospital.  That was the same hospital President Reagan was brought to after he was shot in March of 1981.  Noreen would have been in the center of that activity at the hospital, if she had been on  duty.  Instead she had kindly agreed to help Bonita and me paint the interior of the new house we had just bought in Queens. 

Noreen was always a cat lover.  I think she had a cat virtually her whole life.  In Washington, she had a beautiful Siamese by the name of Lucy, named after Lucille Ball.  Technically, having a cat was in violation of her apartment lease, but her landlord looked the other way, until one day.  She either had to get rid of the cat or leave.  So Noreen begged us to take Lucy.  I had two dogs in my life and they had not been good experiences.  And a cat?  I’m sure I was a victim of an anti-cat culture (think of them in cartoons).  Well, I agreed on a trial basis.  Thank you, Noreen, for giving us Lucy for five good years.  We missed her when she left us.

I’m a little embarassed about mentioning this last anecdote.  Years ago, Bonita and I were visiting her dad and Noreen, who was then a young woman.  I had dutifully gone out to run an errand and was returning to their two-level apartment.  I could hear Bonita and Noreen talking upstairs in the bedroom we were staying in.  As I was walking up the stairs, they were unaware of my presence.  When I got to a certain point on the stairs, I froze.  The door to our room was open and Noreen was not, as the saying goes, “decent.”  Noreen was not only a beautiful person, but a beautiful woman as well.

Last July, I called Bonita’s older sister, Helaine, when her husband died to express my condolences.  Noreen got on the phone and we talked amiably for some time, sharing some memories of the past and hopes for the future.  She, with her shy laugh, said she would invite me and my new wife, Cristina, to her daughter’s wedding, whenever that was in the future.  I was touched.

Some months ago, Noreen was diagnosed with cancer in both lungs.  The day after last Christmas, I called to wish her the best of luck and to try to boost her spirits.  As usual, she was trying to be optimistic.  Our conversation boosted my spirits as was always the case when I talked to Noreen. 

Noreen died on Monday, March 2, 2015 after the second of the two surgeries on her lungs.  I am among the many who will miss her, but who feel blessed from having known her.  And we will never forget her.  We are born in a chronologic order, but we don’t die in the same chronologic order.  Such is life.  She died much too young.  Farewell, Noreen.                

        

My Little Girl

“December 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy.”  So said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor that began the United States participation in World War II.  The American people will never forget that day.

However, thirty-four years later, December 7, 1975, is a day I will never forget.  It was the day my first child, my daughter, was born.

“My little girl, pink and white as peaches and cream, is she.”

She was born at exactly 12:30 AM that Sunday morning long ago at Long Island Jewish Hospital in New York City.  I remember because I was there when she was born and I looked up at the clock on the wall to check the time.  I basically wanted to know the date of her birth because I wasn’t quite sure if it was still Saturday, the 6th. 

Her mother, Bonita, and I arrived at the hospital ninety minutes earlier at 11:00 PM after waiting at home all day Saturday for her cervix to dilate sufficiently.  Initially, her mother was taken up to Maternity and I was left alone in the lobby to wait.  At that late hour, there was almost nobody else on the floor.  It was like a museum after hours.  Nobody!  I hate waiting.  The minutes dragged by.  I paced.  What was happening?  I wanted to know.  Finally, I was invited to come up to Maternity and join her mother. 

When I arrived, I was given special clothing to wear for the labor room.  I put it on.  Then, someone said, that because things were going so fast, I should instead put on different clothing suitable for the delivery room.  I went to see Bonita, who was alone in a labor room.  It was an understatement to say she was not doing well.  She was in terrible agony.  She said she thought she was going to die.  We had been through weeks of natural childbirth classes together where we learned breathing techniques to cope with the pain of childbirth.  Unfortunately, the techniques weren’t working.

After some minutes, Bonita was taken into the delivery room, a large bright room filled with a lot of people.  I went, too.  Her OB-GYN had just arrived.  Before then, we thought a hospital resident was going to deliver our baby.  Everybody seemed to have something important to do, except me.  I was like a spectator, nothing to do except watch.  And watch I did.  It didn’t take long.  Out came our baby, head first, with a kind of a wild-eyed expression on its face.  Welcome to the world.

I was about to find the answer to a question that had been nagging us for months, ever since we found out about the pregnancy.  What will we have, a boy or a girl?  I discovered during our natural childbirth classes that most of the first-time dads wanted sons.  I was the exception.  I wanted a daughter.  Why?  I grew up in a house devoid of girls.  I didn’t have a sister.  I was curious.  What would it be like to watch a little girl grow up before my eyes? 

Back in the delivery room, I leaned in closer to get a better view.  I guess I was in a rush to judgement.  I remember calling out, “It’s a boy.”  Luckily, I don’t think anybody heard me.  A few seconds later, somebody who knew what they were talking about announced that it was a baby girl.  I was very happy.

So, who was she?  Bonita and I had put a lot of thought into the choice of a name.  My first choice was Rachel.  Why?  I thought it the most beautiful name.  I remembered the Bible story of Rachel at the well and how she eventually married Jacob.  I also remembered a Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman movie collaboration called Rachel, Rachel.  Her mother preferred a different name.  So, we compromised.  Both of our second choices were Jessica.  So, if it was a girl, she was going to be Jessica.  However, with only weeks before the due date, her mother changed her mind.  She no longer liked Jessica and agreed with my first choice for a name.

Rachel was a mess.  When she first arrived, she was covered with blood and mucus, but no hair.  I didn’t mind at all.  She looked beautiful to me.  Then something happened that scared me.  A woman picked up my daughter, wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out of the delivery room.  Who was she and what was she doing with my daughter?  I followed her.  I did not want to let Rachel out of my sight.  I had heard stories of babies being switched or worse, kidnapped, in the hospital.  I was going to protect my defenseless daughter.  The woman walked down the hall and turned left.  Finally, she entered a room on the right, with me in hot pursuit.  She unwrapped Rachel and put her under an upside-down U-shaped faucet and cleaned off all of the blood and mucus.  Then she re-wrapped Rachel and brought her back to her mother, all cleaned up.

 After another hour, it was suggested I go home and rest.  Rachel and Bonita were both doing fine.  I first went to a payphone on the floor (no cell phones available) and emptied my pockets of all the loose change I had collected for this purpose.  I called my parents and some others to let them know about the latest addition to the family.  When I arrived home, our downstairs neighbors, Mike and Lucy Salem, were having a late night party and invited me in to celebrate the birth of our baby.

After the sun came up, I was back at the hospital to see my daughter again.  She hadn’t changed much in the few hours I had been away.  Then I drove back home to get something to eat.  I remember as I approached home, I was thinking about my daughter and not much else.  When I pulled into the driveway, I realized that I had just gone through a red light, a half a block away.  I was scared and extremely thankful that nothing bad had happened.  I promised myself that I must be much more careful in the future because I had something very important ahead of me.  I had to be a father to my daughter.   

I would like to thank Oscar Hammerstein II for the words below.  When I first saw the film version of Carousel as an eleven year-old, I started thinking of one day having my own little girl.            

 Wait a minute!
Could it be?
What the hell!
What if he is a girl?

What would I do with her?
What could I do for her?
A bum with no money!
You can have fun with a son
But you gotta be a father to a girl

She mightn't be so bad at that
A kid with ribbons in her hair!
A kind o' sweet and petite
Little tin-type of her mother!
What a pair!

My little girl
Pink and white
As peaches and cream is she
My little girl
Is half again as bright
As girls are meant to be!

Dozens of boys pursue her
Many a likely lad does what he can to woo her
From her faithful dad
She has a few
Pink and white young fellers of two or three
But my little girl
Gets hungry every night and she comes home to me!

I gotta get ready before she comes!
I gotta make certain that she
Won't be dragged up in slums
With a lot of bums like me
She's got to be sheltered
And fed and dressed
In the best that money can buy
I never knew how to get money,
But, I'll try, I'll try! I'll try!
I'll go out and make it or steal it
Or take it or die!