Another Hail and Farewell

Well, with the possible exception of the world ending in these next few days, we’ve made it through 2011.  Unlike 2010, this past year held some fairly exciting, and tragic moments with most of them taking place far across the globe.  Vying for the top story was the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Japans triple devastation at the hands of Mother Nature, Mr. Gadhaffi’s trip to the meat locker, and perhaps what has become known as “The Arab Spring” which is fast turning into a Muslim winter. In looking back, the Wall Street occupiers or the Congressional showdowns we have witnessed in this hemisphere, just don’t  match up to the kind of history making moments that have unfolded across the planet.

As I always do, this past week I caught the segment “Hail and Farewell” on CBS Sunday Morning.  It annually uses the last broadcast of the year to help remember, in pictures and in words, those who have left us a bit poorer for their passing.  All the notables were there including Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Ford, and James Arness, but I wondered who else we might have had the opportunity to remember if only the segment lasted more than just the 13 minutes CBS gave it.

Tony Geiss left us this year, Children all over world would be humming a different tune had he not given us the score from The Land Before Time, Spielberg’s An American Tail, and nearly half of the  Sesame Street songbook.  Fred Steiner wrote a bit as well.  As a conductor, composer and arranger, scores of shows and movies like The Color Purple, Perry Mason, and Hogan’s Heroes to The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Twilight Zone, and Return of the Jedi would not have sounded the same.  Fred was 88 years young.

Leo Kahn got tired of having to shop in a catalog every time he needed supplies for his office, as the founder of Staples; he solved that problem for all of us.  For his second act, Leo gave us Whole Foods Market.  Murray Handwerker was also an American businessman who toiled with his Father at their small food stand in Coney Island.  Needing to expand the business to feed two families, Murray took over and renovated “The Roadside Rest” in Oceanside, New York.  After a few struggling years, Murray reintroduced his Fathers menu and renamed the place after him, Nathan’s. The rest is hot dog history.  Murray was just shy of 90 at his passing.

Some called him “The Silver Fox” but to most of us he will always be remembered as “The Duke of Flatbush”.  Edwin Donald “Duke” Snyder was a world class center fielder who played briefly for the Mets and the San Francisco Giants but will always be remembered for his 15 seasons with those Bums, the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Ruth Roberts used her Julliard education to write for the likes of the Beatles and Buddy Holly, but she will most be remembered for her connection to baseball as well for in 1963, she penned the fight song “Meet the Mets” for that brand new N.Y. franchise.

Speaking of Buddy Holly, Carl Bunch was invited to play the drums for him at the 1959 “Winter Dance Party” in Clear Lake, Iowa.  The temperature was well below zero that frigid February morning and the tour bus heater failed causing Bunch to come down with a case of frostbite.  The drummer went to the hospital while Ritchie Valens, “The Big Bopper”, and Buddy Holly boarded that fateful flight.  Carl rejoined the band this past March.

George Charles Ballas was an American Entrepreneur.  While the Father of a famous ballroom dancer, and Grandfather to Mark Ballas of Dancing with the Stars, he will probably be best remembered not for cutting a rug, but for trimming the lawn.  He gave us the Weed Eater in 1971.  Alan Haberman took a chance on a quirky idea when on a summer morning in 1974, someone brought him a small paper square filled with lines and told him it would revolutionize his supermarket.  At 8:01AM on June 26th of that year, a 10 pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum slid down the conveyor belt, passing an optical scanner, and rang up .67 cents. The inventor of the bar code died in Newton Mass. on June 12th.

John W. Herivel lived most of his life in obscurity; it came with the job he accepted over 71 years ago.  Herivel was a code breaker, but not just any code breaker.  Herivel discovered the “Herival Tip” while working at Bletchley Park outside of London from 1940 through 1945.  This “Tip” allowed Allied cryptanalysts to determine which German radio operator was sending a signal, saving time in translation and thereby saving countless thousands of American and British pilots from ambush.  One of those planes likely saved over the English Channel was carrying 1st Lt. Richard “Dick” Winters.  Winters, who would be a Major by the VE Day, commanded Company “E”, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101 Airborne Division.  It would take too long to highlight for you his war time accomplishments; after all, it took HBO ten weeks and over 700 minutes of air time to tell the story of his “Band of Brothers” Major Winters was the last of the Easy Company commanders to pass away.

Americans lost some true pioneers in the year that was, Virginia Shanta Klinekole, born in 1924 was a Politician from New Mexico.  She was also a full blooded Apache, and the first woman to be named “Chief” of that tribe when she was elected as the President of the Mescalero Apache Council.  Violet “Vi” Cowden was a trailblazer in her own right.  Cowden was the first of only 114 Woman’s Airforce Service Pilots, (WASP”S) to fly for the United States Army Air Corp during World War Two.  Ferrying military planes from the factories to their bases for deployment, Cowden flew P-47’s, P-39’s, P-63 Kingcobra’s and her favorite, the P-51 Mustang.  Violet hung up her chute at 95 this year.

Charles LeRoy Gittens served this country’s military proudly, but he will always be remembered as the first African American Secret Service Agent.  Dorothy Edwards Brunson was a broadcaster.  She spent many working years in the 70’s working for many of New York’s top stations, but she left all that in 1979 to start WEBB in Baltimore, making her the first African American woman to own a radio station.  Not satisfied, she sold her holdings in 1990 to establish WGTW in a Philadelphia suburb making her the first African American woman to own a television station as well.

John Carroll Dye who played “Andrew” in that wonderful series was truly “Touched by an Angel” when he stepped into the light one last time this past January.  You might have thought that given her profession, Dorothy Lena Young might have escaped the final curtain, but even Harry Houdini’s stage assistant could not unlock the last mystery.  I give her an “A” for effort though; she was 103 when she disappeared.

The list goes on, there is Charles Huron Kaman who not only pioneered the gas turbine helicopter with Igor Sikorsky, but used his love of music to create the Ovation Guitar.  Dr. Alfred Mordecai Freedman who in 1973 used his painstaking research to have the American Psychiatric Foundation remove Homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses.  Clarise Taylor, whose ground breaking work started with the American Negro Theatre and led her to roles with Otto Preminger, Clint Eastwood, and her most memorable casting as Anna Huxtable on The Bill Cosby Show, and we even lost Ralph Lomma, who along with his brother Al have given us nearly 60 years of putting a golf ball past a windmill or through a clowns head as the inventor of Miniature golf played his last hole in September.

Perhaps the one loss that I would have expected to see on CBS was noticeably absent.  Albert “Doc” Brown was a dentist.  In 1937 his principal claim to fame was that he was the godson of Buffalo Bill, and the cousin of actor Henry Fonda.  In 1937, Brown entered the military and was promptly shipped to the Philippines.  Brown, along with thousands of American and Filipino troops was captured in 1942 when the Japanese invaded.  The enemy troops forced 78,000 Allied prisoners of war to march 65 miles from Bataan to a POW camp without food, water, or medical attention.  Nearly 11,000 prisoners died during the march.  Brown recorded the events he witnessed using a secret writing tablet hidden in the lining of his medical bag.
Brown would endure three more years of imprisonment during which he ate nothing but rice, became infected with more than 12 diseases, suffered a broken neck and back, and went nearly blind from malnutrition.  He had lost over 80 pounds, and was told by his doctors that because of his severe condition, he would not live to see 50 years of age.  He was 40 when he was rescued.  This year, at the unbelievable age of 105, Doctor Albert Brown, DMD, had the last laugh on his captors, and apparently, his doctors!
The late Andy Rooney, whom we also lost this year, used to say that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.  I am fairly certain that no one reading this can say that this time of year is easy.  We all remember that last New Year’s kiss with a Parent no longer with us, or holiday memories of our children who have grown and gone.  I for one am a firm believer that love, not time, heals all wounds, so this New Years Eve, dance like you would if nobody was looking, sing like you don’t need the money, and laugh and love till the sun comes up.  It’s times like this that require a really bold and brave running start if 2012 is going to be a good one.
Happy New Year to you all.

A Jewish Perspective on Christmas

I’ve come to believe that as a practicing Jew, I probably have more in common with my Catholic and Christian friends who attend Church, than I do with un-observant Jews.  I believe it is likely that if they were to think about it, those same friends would find more in common with me, than they would with the non-practicing of their own faith as well.  I have also come to believe, that the word “believe” is at the root of that commonality.

The rich, the poor, the strong, the frail, and even the lucky all have their stories of how these seemingly never ending difficult times have “tried their souls”.  Some of us have lost livelihoods in this economic cesspool that once was the American engine of success.  Some have seen their families dissolve as the monies that maintained their materialism vanished, and the wounds of a loveless marriage could no longer be concealed.  And still others have lost forever the warmth and the grace of ones they have loved. 

The way I’ve come to tell the difference between my “believers” and the “non’s” has been in how they have handled their adversity.  Those that have continued to be charitable to others, love their neighbors, spend time with their children, and keep G-d in their lives, seem to be doing better than their circumstances should allow.  So why is that?

One can almost feel the palpable proof that the weeks leading up to the 25^th of December bring a special sparkle to everything that moves.  Maybe it’s just the season, after all even if the church has had some difficulty keeping their parishioners  attention, Macy’s, Hallmark, Toys R’ Us, and Hollywood have certainly done great work of keeping us in the spirit.  Or maybe there is something more?

If all Christmas boiled down to was extended shopping lists, over-eating, and thousands of dollars spent on outdoor decorations, why do so many of our “enlightened left” spend so much of their time fighting the very mention of the day?  It’s because there is something more!

Christmas is that chance for all to say thank you, to say I’m sorry, to say I miss you, or to say I love and appreciate you, all under the cover of G-d.  It is a season when the most hardened of us can cry of love lost, forgive another for transgression, or allow those estranged from us back into our hearts.

I refuse to believe that goodness and kindness occur in a vacuum. From before written words were shared, mankind has always had some little spark of innate kindness in him.  As a person of faith, I am comfortable in my belief that G-d is that spark, and while it might not thrill some to admit that they may not be entirely in control of their own destiny, for most of us, this season brings a comforting reminder that a force greater than us all, is watching and guiding us on a path that is good.

Truth be told, the Christmas season has its dark side.  Shoppers lined up for hours to buy gifts for relatives not seen since last Christmas, cooking, cleaning, wrapping, decorating, and then back to cooking again, and traffic jams that can be seen from space.  But Christmas also has a way of bringing out the best in those of us who have kept that golden glow trapped inside while the more mundane months of the year creak by. 

While I will always share a philosophical difference with my non-Jewish friends over the religious aspects of the Christmas holiday, I share wholeheartedly the need, if not the reason, for the season.