JFK again

Early in September 1960, I was with my family in a Boston hotel lobby when U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Candidate for President of the United States, walked through it on his way out.  

On October 30, 1963, I was in the upper level of Convention Hall in Philadelphia to hear a speech given by President John F. Kennedy to a group of local members of the Democratic Party at a fund raising dinner.  I remember all the invited guests on the lower level of the Hall wore tuxedos.  The public sat up above and had to provide their own food and drink.

A little before 2 PM on Friday, November 22, 1963 (sixty-two years ago yesterday), I walked into my freshman English class in College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.  Before the professor arrived to begin the class, one of my fellow students walked in with a transistor radio which was broadcasting the news.  He proclaimed that Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  I remember my crazy first reaction was “What was he doing in Dallas?”  

We all, now including the professor, sat glued to our seats until we heard the official notification from the radio announcer that the President was dead.  The professor then cancelled class and left.  I returned to my freshman dorm and a weekend all Americans alive at the time will never forget.

The thing I remember most about JFK, besides the Cuban Missle Crisis, was his sense of humor, which was excellent.  He was the first president to have live regularly scheduled news conferences which I occasionally got to watch on TV.  There were 64 of them during his presidency which lasted 1,037 days, an average of one every 16 days.  JFK was glib and, whenever he could, he would elicit some laughter from the assembled journalists, usually of the self-deprecating kind.

As I did not have easy access to a TV, most of my recollections from those tragic days in November of 1963 were from radio and newspapers.  I didn’t see Lee Harvey Oswald, the arrested and accused assassin, shot to death by Jack Ruby in the Dallas police station, live on television.  

We Americans, after having been punched in the stomach, were all in a sort of trance, sleepwalking from moment to moment, incredulous of what had happened to us as a nation.  How would we get past this?  Many of my colleagues didn’t know much about who was the new president (Lyndon Baines Johnson) and few had any confidence in him. 

The thing that sticks most in my mind from that weekend was going to Franklin Field on my college campus to watch the home town Eagles play a football game against the Washington NFL franchise, the two worst teams in its Eastern Conference.  Unlike every other sporting event that weekend, the NFL decided not to cancel its games that Sunday, two days after President Kennedy had been assassinated.  

It was an extremely controversial decision.  As I had previously purchased a ticket and did not want to lose my investment, I along with 60,670 others entered the stadium to witness a meaningless game.  In a gesture to attempt to satisfy their critics, the NFL decided not to telecast any of its games as was normally the case.  Besides, most Americans were too busy watching the continuous news coverage of the assassination.

While I was waiting for the game to begin, I heard some of my fellow football fans in the stadium talk about the assassination of Oswald.  Years later, I would be able to watch a vídeo of this second killing for myself.  Before the game started, someone sang the Star Spangled Banner and virtually the entire assembled mass joined in.  It was a very moving experience.  Oh, by the way, the Eagles lost the game.  

Burgess Meredith

Burgess Meredith was born November 16, 1907 (118 years ago today) in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was the same year as John Wayne and my mother.

Burgess Meredith's stage performances on Broadway in New York City attracted the attention of several Hollywood film producers. Unlike most other movie actors, Meredith never signed a long-term contract with a single studio, preferring to work on individual film projects.

In 1939, Meredith portrayed George in the film Of Mice and Men.  To save his friend Lennie from a lynch mob, George kills him.

In 1941, Meredith is Harry in the Ginger Rogers romantic comedy, Tom, Dick and Harry.  With a last minute kiss, he wins the girl. 

In 1945, Meredith acted as Ernie Pyle, a real life journalist, in the drama, The Story of G.I. Joe.  Pyle is allowed to accompany C Company, 18th Infantry of the US Army all the way to the front lines against Germany during World War II.

In 1966, Meredith portrayed the villainous Penguin in that year's film version of Batman.

In 1976, Meredith won the part of Mickey, Rocky Balboa's trainer, in the box office hit, Rocky.  He had some great lines, such as "you're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder" plus "women weaken legs."  

Before he became famous, Rocky worked as a collector for a loan shark.  But it is not until Mickey calls him out for it that he truly sees he needs to change.

Mickey dismisses Rocky as someone with talent who became a "leg breaker" instead. When Rocky insists it is a way to make a living, Mickey spits back "It's a waste of life."  That is one of my favorite movie lines.

Meredith's last film role was Grandpa, near the end of his life, in Grumpier Old Men (1995), as Jack Lemmon's father.  "You realize that pretty soon you'll be gone and that all you'll have is the experiences...that's all there is."

Burgess Meredith died September 9, 1997.        

    

  

Phillies Karen

I love baseball.  And I love going to baseball games...at any level, Little League, high school, college and professional, both Major and Minor League.

The ultimate baseball game souvenir is a baseball batted into the stands.  Of course, a home run ball is preferable to a foul ball.  In all the times I went to a baseball game, I never caught a ball, neither a home run nor a foul.

In early this September, a Philadelphia Phillies fan, who now lives in south Florida, attended a Phillies-Miami Marlins baseball game at LoanDepot Park in Miami with his family.  

In the fourth inning, a Phillie hit a home run into the left field stands near where the fan was sitting.  He went to where the ball landed and grabbed it and returned to where his family was sitting and gave the ball to his young son.  

Soon, a woman, wearing a Phillies jersey, approached the fan and berated him for entering her space and "stealing" the souvenir that was rightfully hers.  She demanded the ball.  Normally, in such situations, possession is what counts.

The media named her Phillies Karen (a pejorative slang term used to describe a middle-class, often middle-aged, white woman who is perceived as entitled, demanding, and who uses her privilege to get her way, often at the expense of others).

"She just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, super loud,”  said the fan. “I jumped out of my skin and I was like, you know, like ‘Why are you here?’ You know, ‘Go away.’”  

After a brief, tense exchange, the fan took the ball from his son’s mitt and gave it to her, and she walked away.  “I had a fork in the road: either do something I was probably going to regret or be a dad and show my son how to deescalate the situation.”

This reminded me of a similar event when my son Bret was young and playing basketball for MQ-FM.  I was asked to be one of two coaches at the annual all-star game.

I had 11 players on my team, including my son.  11 is an awkward number for a sport in which 5 players can be on the court at a time.

I was given no advice nor information as to how to substitute my players.  The other coach was substituting his players rapidly, almost every minute.  I had devised a different system which I thought was fair.  

Because the two teams were substituting differently, some spectators became frustrated.  One of the league directors approached me shouting angrily.  He demanded I start substituting like the other coach or he would replace me.  I tried to explain my alternative strategy, but he wouldn't listen.  

My immediate idea was to tell him to go f__k himself, but then I looked at my son sitting on the floor.  I didn't want to do anything to embarrass him or me.  I did what the director wanted me to do.  I de-escalated the situation.  And that was the last time I volunteered to help MQ-FM. 

The Parent Trap

The Parent Trap is a 1961 American romantic comedy film.  It stars Hayley Mills in a dual role as a pair of teenage identical twins who switch places with each other in order to reunite their divorced parents, played by Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith.

Teenagers Sharon McKendrick (Mills) and Susan Evers (Mills) meet at a girls summer camp. Their identical appearance causes jealousy, resentment, and a rivalry in which they continually get each other into trouble and disrupt camp activities. As punishment, they must spend the remainder of the camp season rooming and dining together in isolation. 

Sharon and Susan overcome their mutual dislike when they realize they are identical twin sisters, whom their parents, Mitch (Keith) and Maggie (O'Hara), separated upon divorcing shortly after their birth. Eager to meet the parents from whom they were separated, they decide to cut their hair identically, coach each other on their lives, and switch places.

Hayley Mills was born April 18, 1946 (8 months after me) in London, England.  Both of her parents were actors. In 1959, she was cast in a film (Tiger Bay) in which her father (Sir John Mills) co-starred.

Mills was given the lead role in Pollyanna (1960).  The role of the orphaned "glad girl" who moves in with her aunt catapulted her to stardom in the United States and earned her a special Academy Award of Juvenile Oscar, the last person to win the accolade. 

In the summer of 1961, The Parent Trap was featured at the Oswego Theater.  I must have seen it at least a half a dozen times.  Why?

I developed a crush on Hayley Mills.  I even fantasized about how I would go to Hollywood where we would meet and become boyfriend/girlfriend.  It never happened.

Strangely, I never saw her in any of her other movies.  It was as if I fell in love with her characters in The Parent Trap and didn't want to mess up my mind with her being something different.

Occasionally, I hear in the media about Hayley Mills and am glad she is alive and well.  I am then reminded about that wonderful summer of 1961.