Best of Intentions, Chapter 15

In the week after Pearl Harbor, Ben's nephew, Harry Johnson, enlists in the United States Army near his home in Syracuse.

A week later, Secretary of State Cordell Hull arrives at the White House for a meeting with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  

Hull opens the meeting with "The American people suffered a terrible shock on December seventh, Mr. President, and they couldn't tolerate another.  Therefore, my staff and I put together a report as to where another such sneak attack could come from in order to crush it before it happens."

"I'm not sure I follow you.  We know who our enemies are."

"Yes, of course, but our enemies could have allies lying in wait.  I want you to think about...Mexico."

"Don't be ridiculous."  

"Let's look at the facts, Mr. President.  1836: Americans living in northern Mexico revolt and form the independent Republic of Texas.  1845: Texas joins the Union, we invade Mexico and seize New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah.  1914: We invade Mexico and occupy the City of Vera Cruz for six months. 1916: Again, we invade Mexico, this time looking for Pancho Villa. 1917: Germany offers Mexico its assistance in retrieving its lost territories if it enters the Great War on Germany's side.  Recently, former President Cardenas maintained cordial relations with Nazi Germany.  And now Mexico has a growing trade relationship with Germany.  Isn't this enough for us to beware of Mexico?"

"I'm not convinced.  Tell me something about Mexico I don't know."

Hull takes some papers out of his briefcase and places them in front of the president.

"This report was passed to me by the Secretary of War, which he received from reliable sources in the Department of the Army. There's a scientist in Mexico named Julius Karchevsky who's doing some hush-hush research on a new type of bomb.  He's a Soviet emigre who went there with Trotsky in '37 and is now working for the Mexican government.  Years before he was a colleague of Einstein.  Now why would the Mexicans be doing this?  They have no enemies.  No need to develop super bombs.  There can be only one explanation: they're in league with the Japanese and/or the Germans.  We don't need a sneak attack from across the Rio Grande, Mr. President."

"This is preposterous.  Unbelievable.  However, I will study your report, but I want independent confirmation.  I want new people to check out this Karchevsky.  Make it a high priority.  If it's true, we need to act fast."

"Very well, Mr. President."

After Hull leaves his office, Roosevelt opens his desk drawer and takes out a letter in an envelope with the return address showing the name Albert Einstein.  He starts to re-read the letter dated August 2, 1939.

Meanwhile, Ben and Maria are lying in their bed in Mexico City.

"My country's at war," says Ben, "and I'm not there.  Dave told me they need able-bodied men at his factory.  Maybe I should go there for a while and help out."

"Don't say that, Ben.  I couldn't bear for you to leave me.  I'd be afraid something would happen and you wouldn't come back."

"Don't be silly.  Nothing would happen to me."

"Factories are targets.  You could be killed."

"We're too far away for the Japs and Krauts to bomb us.  I'd be okay."

"Anything could happen in a war, like sabotage.  In Mexico, we're safe.  Maybe you could do something here, perhaps at the American Embassy. Please don't go, my love.  Please don't go."

She puts her arms around him and smothers him with kisses.   

Willie Pep

A form of entertainment that was able to fill numerous time slots in the new medium of television in the 1950s was boxing. During that era, it was one of the three most popular spectator sports, along with Major League Baseball and college football. Better than the other two, boxing is shorter in duration (a ten round bout lasts under an hour), has frequent breaks for commercials (every three minutes), and matches can be scheduled very quickly to accommodate public demand.

On Friday nights, the Gillette (maker of shaving products) Cavalcade of Sports offered a weekly boxing show (Friday Night Fights) which my mother allowed me to stay up (past my 9:00 PM bedtime) and watch (no school the next day). I remember the first time, February 26, 1954 (I was eight years-old), when the former Featherweight (limit of 126 lbs. or 57 kg.) champion, Willie Pep, fought the up and coming young boxer Lulu Perez at Madison Square Garden in New York City.  Little did I know this was not to be an ordinary fight. 

Guglielmo Papaleo (Willie Pep) was born in Middletown, Connecticut on September 19, 1922 (31 years-old the night of the fight).  He had been boxing professionally for fourteen years.  Pep's record was 183 wins, 5 losses, and 1 draw.  In 1942, he first became champion when he won a 15 round decision over the defending champion, Chalky Wright.  However, Pep lost his title in 1948 when he was knocked out by Sandy Saddler.  He beat Saddler in 1949 to regain his championship.  But, in 1950, Pep again lost the championship to Saddler as a result of a shoulder injury during the fight (which he was winning).  In 1951, the two fought for the last time and Pep suffered a technical knockout as a result of a badly cut right eye (even though he was again winning the fight).
        
Lulu Perez was born in New York City on April 25, 1933.  He started boxing professionally in 1951.  By the night of the fight (20 years-old), his record was 28 wins and 2 losses. Obviously, Pep was the more experienced fighter, which is good. However, Perez had youth on his side.  Pep was the favorite and I usually sided with favorites because favorites usually win.

Pep wore black trunks, Perez wore white.  Nothing much happened in round 1.  However, I was enjoying the show. Then, about 20 seconds into round 2, Perez shockingly floored Pep with a right cross. He got up and seemed to have weathered the storm for almost a full minute when Perez knocked Pep down again, again with a right hand punch.  Another twenty seconds, another knockdown from the right hand of Perez.  Under New York State rules, three knockdowns in one round constitutes a technical knockout.  The fight was over in less than five minutes of boxing. Time to go to bed.  I had hoped for more.

It turns out this was the highlight of Perez's career.  In the next four years, he had 10 wins, 13 losses, and 2 draws before retiring.  Pep went on to fight into his 40s, winning another 46 fights, while losing only 5 more times.  He never fought for the championship again and there was no rematch with Perez.

Unbeknownst to me, there were suspicions about the validity of the Pep-Perez fight.  According to the New York Daily News, "(Bert) Sugar (a noted boxing journalist) said Pep's behavior in the bout raised suspicion.  Pep was listless.  He was hit often.  It just smelled.  The fight was taken off the board at the last minute.  There were no bets allowed on the fight."  

Years later, Pep sued Newsweek Magazine (553 F. Supp. 1000, S.D.N.Y. 1983) for $75 Million for libel for alleging he had taken a dive in his fight against Perez.  "The jury deliberated for only 15 minutes and found in favor of Newsweek."

A video of the second round of the Pep-Perez fight is available on the Internet.  After watching it again, it seems to me as if Pep, known by some as the greatest defensive boxer of all time, was too easy a target for the right hand of Perez, who was no Sandy Saddler.  What do you think?            

    

Working Girl

Similar to Breakfast at Tiffany's (see blog post), the opening sequence of the 1988 film, Working Girl, features an Academy Award winning song, Let The River Run, written and sung by Carly Simon.  After the camera shows you all sides of the Statue of Liberty from an aerial view of the New York harbor, it pans down to a Staten Island Ferry carrying passengers from that borough to the southern tip of Manhattan.  

Working Girl was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Melanie Griffith (whose mother, Tippi Hedron portrayed the character Melanie Daniels in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film, The Birds), Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, and Olympia Dukakis.  Besides the above Academy Award, it received five other nominations: Best Picture (lost to Rain Man), Best Director (Nichols lost to Barry Levinson, Rain Man), Best Actress (Griffith lost to Jodie Foster in The Accused), and Best Supporting Actress (both Weaver and Cusack lost to Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist).

In the above ferry is Tess McGill (Griffith), a secretary from an Irish working class background who is employed by a large investment company in the World Trade Center.  She has a "fire in her belly" to rise to the executive level in her career, but is held back by the lack of a proper formal education.  When her boss (Weaver) suffers a skiing accident and will be out of the office for an extended period of time, Tess takes advantage of the situation by attempting, with the help of Jack Trainer (Ford), an executive at another firm and her boss's boyfriend, to set up a merger between two companies that will catapult her career.  The merger is a success and McGill and Trainer fall in love.

There is some very good dialogue in the film, such as:

Tess:  I have a head for business and a bod for sin.  Is there anything wrong with that?

Jack:  Uh, no, no.
_____

Mick (Tess's former boyfriend): Will you marry me?

Tess:  Maybe.

Mick:  You call that an answer?  

Tess:  You want another answer, ask another girl.
_____

Cynthia (Tess's friend):  Whaddya need speech class for?  Ya talk fine.
_____

Tess:  I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life working my ass off and getting nowhere just because I followed rules that I had nothing to do with setting up. 
_____  

Since 9/11, I have had mixed emotions watching Working Girl, especially that opening sequence when you can see the ferry approaching the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan, the way they were back in 1988.  Many of the people represented in the film were killed when the Twin Towers were attacked and went down, including the spouse of a colleague of mine at Seagram's.

On Friday, September 7, 2001, the 100th birthday of my father (who died twenty years earlier), my son, Bret, and I were at the U.S. Tennis Open in Flushing, Queens, New York, watching Venus (21) and Serena Williams (19) win their respective semi-final singles matches.  

Four days later, I was at my desk at the Anti-Defamation League office on the east side of Manhattan near the United Nations when a colleague told me that an airplane had hit one of the Twin Towers. My immediate reaction was that it was an accident. Such a thing happened to the Empire State Building during WWII.   However, when a second airplane hit the second tower, I knew it was no accident. My city and my country were under attack.

What I remember most about that day was how I got home, a mere 14 miles or 22.6 kilometers. Normally I took public transportation, a subway and a bus. However, because of the attack, all such transportation was shut down.  I was 56 years-old and in good aerobic condition as a former runner who had continued exercising. So, I started walking.  There was no alternative.

I, along with thousands of others, headed uptown to the foot of the Queensboro (or 59th Street) Bridge.  The eastbound side of the bridge was closed off to vehicular traffic allowing it to be used only by pedestrians returning to the Borough of Queens.  The first half of the bridge is uphill and the second half downhill.  At about the midpoint of the bridge I looked south and saw the eerie black cloud of smoke from what was left of the Twin Towers floating across the East River toward Brooklyn.  That made the news reports of the attack more real.

Once over the bridge, I walked and walked and walked along Northern Boulevard with hundreds of others for as long as I could, at least two hours.  Some of my fellow travelers shouted that our country was at war. Then, I called my ex-wife, Bonita, to please come and pick me up. It normally should have taken her no more than 30 minutes to get where I was. However, because of the cancelled public transportation, it took her two hours.  It was a very long commute that day, one all New Yorkers will never forget.

As an American who remembers 9/11, I took special satisfaction when, on May 2, 2011, in Abottabad, Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, the man who boasted of being responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers, was killed by United States Special Forces. As the great American boxer, Joe Louis, once said, "You can run, but you can't hide."      



         

Wake Up The Echos

Yesterday, September 2, was for most the opening of the 2017 college football season.  A multitude of games were played across the USA, some of the results of which I have listed.  The University of Michigan Wolverines were victorious over the University of Florida Gators by a score of 33-17. The University of California Golden Bears defeated the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, 35-30. The University of Maryland Terrapins beat the University of Texas Longhorns, 51-41. 

When I was growing up in the 1950s, college football was one of the three most popular spectator sports, along with Major League Baseball and boxing. The NFL and the NBA, very popular today, were not significant then.

The first college football game I saw in person was at the Orange Bowl in Miami on Christmas day 1952.  I went with my brother, Paul, to see the North-South Shrine All-Star game.  It ended in a 21-21 tie.  

In the 1950s, there was only one college football game televised nationally every Saturday afternoon in the fall. Today, virtually every game is televised.  Other games back then were available on the radio in local or regional markets.  I remember listening to broadcasts of Syracuse University football games from my home, 40 miles from the campus.  

In 1959, Syracuse won the National Championship of college football with an 11-0 record with victories over Kansas, Maryland, Navy, Holy Cross, West Virginia, Pitt, Penn State, Colgate, Boston University, UCLA (on national TV from the LA Coliseum), and Texas at the Cotton Bowl (also on national TV) in Dallas on January 1, 1960.  Before 1959 and for many years after, the national championship was chosen by the vote of sportswriters. It is now won in a four team end of season tournament. 

Besides the local broadcasts, I remember listening to games in other regions of the USA on radio networks (NBC, CBS, etc.) with local affiliates.  One Saturday in 1953, I heard Navy crush Princeton by a score of 65-7.  A good memory!

In the East, most of the top college football teams (Syracuse, Penn State, Pitt, Boston College, Army, and Navy) were not affiliated with any league.  In 1956, the Ivy League, which had been an informal grouping of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale, became official.  

Most of the rest of the country was divided into various conferences: the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Southeast Conference, the Southwest Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 7, and the Pacific Coast Conference.  Over the years, there have been many changes to this landscape.  Penn State moved to the Big Ten. Syracuse moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference.  Maryland moved from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big Ten. Arkansas and Texas A&M moved from the Southwest Conference to the Southeast Conference.  The Southwest Conference merged with the Big 7 to become the Big 12.

The popularity of college football begins with the enthusiasm of the students.  Later, this translates to a loyal group of alumni.  I have been a fan of Penn since 1963.  I have also been a fan of Michigan since my daughter, Rachel, matriculated in 1993 and a fan of Maryland since my son, Bret, went there in 2003.  Finally, I have been a fan of North Carolina since I started working there in 2008.

Besides the students and the alumni, many other fans are drawn to the sport because of the enthusiasm of the players, who play, not because of money, but for the love of the game.

Last year, the Tennessee-Virginia Tech game at Bristol (TN) Motor Speedway drew over 150,000 spectators, which broke the old record (for largest attendance at a game) of more than 120,000 for the Notre Dame-Southern California game at Soldier's Field in Chicago in 1927.  Michigan, Penn State, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Ohio State, Southern California, Louisiana State, Texas, and Alabama have stadiums that can seat more that 100,000 fans for a football game, and usually do.

No story about college football would be complete without a reference to the University of Notre Dame (ND) located just outside South Bend, Indiana.  Before college football, ND was a small, little known mid-western Catholic university.  

"In 1913, Notre Dame burst into the national consciousness and helped transform the game in a single contest.  In an effort to gain respect, Notre Dame scheduled a game at national powerhouse Army.  On November 1, Notre Dame stunned Army 35-13, with    an attacking offense that featured long and accurate downfield forward passes from quarterback Gus Dorais to Knute Rockne in stride, which changed the forward pass from a seldom-used play into the dominant ball-moving strategy that it is today."

In 1918, Rockne became the Notre Dame head football coach.  In his 13 years, The Fighting Irish (nickname) won 105 games, losing only 12 times.  Rockne's 1924 team, which won the national championship, featured a backfield called the Four Horsemen (Jim Crowley, Elmer Layden, Don Miller, and Harry Stuhldreher) by the famous sports writer, Grantland Rice.  Rockne's 1929 and 1930 teams went undefeated and again won national championships.

Another legendary coach, Frank Leahy, took over The Fighting Irish in 1941. In his 11 years, his teams won 87 and lost only 11. This included a stretch of 39 games without a loss, 4 national championships and 6 undefeated seasons.  His last season, 1953, featured Heisman Trophy winner, Johnny Lattner.

In 1957, Notre Dame went to Norman, Oklahoma to play the heavily favored Sooners who had won 47 games in a row, still a record. Sports Illustrated ran a story that week as to why Oklahoma couldn't lose.  ND won, 7-0.  I watched the game on national TV.

In 1964, Ara Parseghian, who recently passed away, became the new Notre Dame head coach.  In his 11 seasons, The Irish won 95 games and lost 17, winning 2 national championships, had 2 undefeated seasons, and 3 major bowl game victories.  On his team was the great defensive lineman, Alan Page, who was born the same day I was.  

Hollywood benefited from Notre Dame's national popularity with two movies, Knute Rockne All-American (1940), which starred Pat O'Brien (Rockne) and future US President, Ronald Reagan (star running back George Gipp), and Rudy (1993), about "the life of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, who harbored dreams of playing football at Notre Dame despite significant obstacles."

Since 1991, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) has exclusively broadcast all of Notre Dame's home football games (including yesterday's win over Temple).  No other school has their own deal with a broadcast TV network. This speaks volumes about ND's national popularity.  On the other hand, there is a large group of Notre Dame haters.  I used to be one until I visited its beautiful campus last year.  

Finally, although Penn (Fight on, Pennsylvania) and Michigan (Hail to the Victors) have great fight songs, I believe Notre Dame's is the best.

Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame, 

Wake up the echoes cheering her name, 
Send a volley cheer on high, 
Shake down the thunder from the sky! 
What though the odds be great or small, 
Old Notre Dame will win over all, 
While her loyal sons are marching 
Onward to victory!