Happy Sadie Hawkins Day to everyone here in the Northern Hemisphere delighted at the prospect of "more February"! I presume such a person exists. I know for certain that person is not the middle-aged grump who stares back at me in the bathroom mirror as I brush my teeth. If he was, I would punch him in the throat until he came to his senses, or passed out...whichever came first.
Hang in there. March begins tomorrow. And who knows, by the time Sadie Hawkins Day next appears on the calendar in 2024, enough irrevocable damage might have been wrought on our planet that February 29 will be a beach day...
February 26 has now attained status as one of my favorite days of the year. It shall remain on its lofty perch for the rest of my life.
Wednesday night, Ryan and Suzanne welcomed their third child into our family. A little girl upon whom they bestowed a simply beautiful name, Rylan Joan. I suspect that somewhere the great grandmother whose acquaintance she never had the chance to make smiled at the mere saying of that name. She shall grow up knowing that her Pop Pop did - and will. She completes the Aldrich quintet so if you are looking to mix it up in a pick-up game of hoops (say in 2032 or so), give my daughter and son-in-law a call.
My newest granddaughter is my favorite type of newborn, which is healthy. Upon her realization of what a terrific, loving family into which she has been born, she will be damn happy too. May that happiness never leave her soul.
I have not yet met her. Still, I know that the happiness at knowing she is here shall never leave mine. The world's greatest gig has managed to improve yet again. Babies, toddlers, and children of all ages are remarkable teachers. I cannot wait to learn all that Rylan Joan has to teach her Pop Pop. She will find him to be an eager - if not particularly gifted - student.
For most of my life - really as long as I can remember - I have prided myself on my memory. It turns out, as is the case with many things I fear, it is not what it once was.
Three years in a row, from 2015 through 2017, I ran in the New York City Marathon. The final two times I did it, I participated on behalf of a Monmouth County-based cancer charity, Stomp the Monster.
Each of those three years, I had entered my name in the lottery for a spot in the field. My name was among the names picked in 2015. Just my luck, right? I have never gotten a sniff in the Mega Millions or in the Powerball lottery. The New York City Marathon lottery? A winner on my very first try.
2020 is the 50th Anniversary of the New York City Marathon. Although when I crossed the finish line in Central Park in 2017, I was content with the knowledge that had run nine marathons, in the almost three years since, the idea of tackling number ten has crept now and again into the forefront of my mind. Apparently it did so enough this year that when the lottery opened for the 2020 NYC Marathon, I entered it.
I say "apparently" because I have no recollection of having done so. At or about 3:00 pm on February 26, 2020, I received an e-mail from the NYC Marathon regarding my lottery entry.
The good news is that although I had forgotten that I had entered the NYC Marathon Lottery, I did remember to wear pants yesterday. Today too. Two in a row - at least!
It is nice to take time to savor the little victories. The trick is remembering what the hell they were as time goes by.
Perhaps it could not have happened on a night other than the fortieth anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. It might have taken nothing less than the celebration of such a monumental accomplishment to align the stars as they were aligned on Saturday night in Toronto.
The Carolina Hurricanes were in town playing the home-standing Maple Leafs. During the game, first Carolina's starting goalie and, then, Carolina's backup goalie sustained game-ending injuries. Thus, into the fray was thrust Toronto's own David Ayres, fifteen-plus years removed from receiving the gift of a transplanted kidney from his mother. Mr. Ayres, the operations manager at the facility formerly known as Maple Leaf Gardens, was in attendance on Saturday night as an emergency goalie.
I have watched hockey for most of my life. I had no idea that the NHL had such a rule. The fun thing about the rule is that Mr. Ayres was not designated to be the emergency goalie for one of the two teams but, instead, to play in an emergency for either team. It was Carolina who needed him. So it was Carolina for whom he played.
He entered the game late in the second period with the Canes ahead 3-1. Carolina quickly added a goal to pad their lead before Toronto put the first two shots Ayres faced past him, cutting Carolina's lead to 4-3 at the end of two periods.
In the third period, David Ayres made like Ken Dryden, stopping all eight shots he faced. Carolina scored twice and won 6-3.
I have no idea how David Ayres spent his Sunday this past weekend and I wonder whether one year from now he, himself, shall remember. But I wager that he shall never forget how he spent this past Saturday night.
For the third time in the past sixteen months, the young men who are the student-athletes representing the University of Colorado Buffaloes learned yesterday the new name of the adult in charge to whom they shall report. At a press conference at the Champions Center on the Boulder campus, Athletic Director Rick George introduced Karl Dorrell. Coach Dorrell replaces Mel Tucker, who just about two weeks ago made a middle-of-the-night departure worthy of Bob Irsay or Art Modell and skedaddled from Boulder in favor of the greener (to the tune of $2 Million per year) pastures on the campus at Michigan State University.
Things change in a hurry. Less than four weeks ago, our then-Head Coach was touting the well-regarded class he and his staff - led by the Buffs' master recruiter, Assistant Head Coach Darrin Chiaverini- recruited to play for the Buffs beginning in 2020. Now, Coach Tucker is gone. He took three of his assistant coaches with him to Michigan State. It is an open question in Boulder how many of the kids who signed their binding National Letter of Intent to play at CU under Coach Tucker shall seek to extricate themselves from their commitment to the program.
Karl Dorrell has his hands full. I wish him well. May his homecoming be a happy one. For him, his family, his players, and those of us all over the map who root, root, root for the home team.
Margaret and I saw Ed Harris as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill A Mockingbird on Saturday. If you have the opportunity to see it, then please do so. It is simply extraordinary.
Whether you have read Harper Lee’s book and/or seen Gregory Peck’s film portrayal matters not. Familiarity with the story is not a condition precedent to being mesmerized by the play. The performances are uniformly excellent. And there are not many better ways to pass a couple of hours than watching talented actors give voice to Aaron Sorkin’s words. If you have ever watched A Few Good Men or an episode from the first several seasons of The West Wing or Newsroom then you know what I mean.
In case you missed it, just the other night at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the weaponization of ignorance in these United States continued. Once again, and unsurprisingly, its proponent was none other than the Weaponizer-in-Chief:
In the event you have not seen the Academy Award-winning film, which I have not, this was its first official trailer:
Spoiler Alert: This film contains sub-titles,
which allow people who neither speak nor understand
Whether I ever see this film, which is decidedly unlikely given how few films I see, I applaud the willingness of the company that distributed it to call DJT out on his own bullshit. I just hope they realize that neither the W-I-C nor those assembled in Colorado Springs the other night were or ever will be shamed - or even embarrassed - by the remarks or the loud, spirited reaction to them. That is the most dangerous of all about ignorance. Once weaponized, it is very, very hard to neutralize.
I offer a helpful first step in the neutralization process:
Forty years ago, the 22nd of February (a/k/a "George Washington's Birthday") fell on a Friday. It was the final Friday of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. That afternoon, the greatest ice hockey team in the world faced off against a ragtag bunch of college kids and their cranky old coach in the medal round, which the aforementioned greatest team in the world had annihilated, 10-3, at Madison Square Garden thirteen days earlier in each team's final pre-Olympics tune up.
Way back when, Jim McKay hosted every Olympics, which aired on ABC. When against all odds, Coach Herb Brooks and his American ragamuffins advanced to the medal round, for which they were rewarded with a rematch against Coach Victor Tikhonov's Soviet juggernaut, ABC wanted to broadcast the game in prime-time. The Soviets refused. Given that shortly before the Winter Olympics began, President Carter announced that American athletes would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow as a form of protest over the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviets' lack of cooperation was disappointing but not surprising.
If you are younger than a certain age and belong to the "I must know everything at the moment it happens" generation, then the idea of an event of this magnitude not being shown live AND the idea that rather than killing ourselves to learn its result as soon as the game went final, millions of us simply gathered in front of our television sets (at 7:00 pm eastern time if memory serves) to watch the tape-delayed broadcast as if it was live is an anathema. Yet, it is exactly what we did.
He also appreciated the significance of Tikhonov, whose team rarely trailed and never lost, never pulling his goaltender in favor of an extra attacker in the game's final minutes with the American team clinging to a 4-3 lead, courtesy of team captain Mike Eruzione's goal at the halfway point of the third period.
I remember my father's reaction to the question Al Michaels famously asked as the game's final seconds counted down. And I remember my own...
Tomorrow the Missus and I are doing something she does regularly and I do rarely. We are going to see a Broadway show. Excepting "Springsteen on Broadway", which I saw twice, I cannot recall when I last saw a live theatrical Broadway performance. Once upon a lifetime ago, Margaret and I saw "Phantom of the Opera". Also in a galaxy located in the general neighborhood of far, far away, I was a chaperone on Rob's 8th grade class trip, which included a performance of "Footloose". If there was even one trip between those two musicals and my two pilgrimages to see the Poet Laureate of Freehold, the memory of same is lost forever.
I have never seen a Broadway play. My maiden shall break tomorrow. For Christmas, Margaret bought me tickets to see Aaron Sorkin's "To Kill A Mockingbird". Harper Lee's book is one that I have always enjoyed and Gregory Peck's performance at Atticus Finch in the film adaptation was, to me, whatever exists in the realm beyond extraordinary. As a person who loves Sorkin's work ("Newsroom", "A Few Good Men", "West Wing", and the underappreciated "Sports Night", to name a few), I am interested to see his interpretation of Lee's story.
This production currently stars Ed Harris as Atticus Finch. Candidly, I know so little about how things work in the world of Broadway productions that I do not know whether Harris performs in the Saturday matinee. Playbill identifies Chrisopher Innvar as Mr. Harris's understudy. I suppose, therefore, Margaret and I may see Mr. Innvar playing the part of Atticus Finch in tomorrow's performance.
One thing is certain, while I do not know whether the part of Atticus Finch shall be played by Mr. Harris or by Mr. Innvar, I know by whom it shall not be played.
The juxtaposition between irony and coincidence often confuses me. So, I do not know whether it is ironic or coincidental that the 2020 season, during which Mr. Miller shall take his rightful place among the game's immortal figures, very well could be the one that tears the MLBPA asunder.
It is not an overstatement to say that many members of the MLBPA - who do not presently play for the Houston Astros - are seriously pissed off at those members of the union who play for the Astros and, even more so, who played for the Astros when they won the franchise's first World Series in 2017. Players in the American League and the National League, including those directly impacted by the Astros' relentless cheating, such as members of the Yankees (losers of the 2017 ALCS) and the Dodgers (losers of the 2017 World Series), have responded harshly to the Commissioner's decision to punish the franchise for cheating but to not punish the players who cheated.
Nick Markakis of the Atlanta Braves has always been a favorite of mine, despite the fact that he wore out the Yankees during his years patrolling the outfield for the Baltimore Orioles. Markakis is a no-bullshit guy who, when MLB and the MLBPA announced the policy disciplining players who test positive for using performance-enhancing drugs, espoused the decidedly minority opinion among his brethren, which was that the policy was too lenient. Markakis favored a zero-tolerance/get caught one time and get banned from the game forever punishment.
Since he - much like Dr. Seuss's Horton (another favorite of mine) - means what he says and says what he means, his comments the other day got my attention:
The current Collective Bargaining Agreement between the 30 Major League Clubs and the MLBPA expires in 2021. Way back when, in February 2019, players were already talking about a possible strike upon this CBA's expiration - as a negotiating tactic. Ah, February 2019, those halcyon days before the players for the other 28 Major League Clubs learned what die-hard cheaters their colleagues on the 2017 Astros and the 2018 Red Sox were. If you think Nick Markakis is angry now (Spoiler Alert: HE IS!), then wait until Commissioner Manfred releases the report of his investigation into the 2018 Red Sox. Not for anything but Shoeless Joe Jackson and several of his teammates on the 1919 Chicago White Sox were banned from the big leagues for life for helping fix the '19 World Series. Other than taking deliberate action to influence the result in their favor as opposed to in their opponent's favor, just how different were the actions of the '17 Astros and the '18 Red Sox from those of the '19 White Sox?
History teaches us that fighting a war on two fronts is a losing proposition. As Opening Day 2020 approaches, Executive Director Tony Clark and the men and women who run the MLBPA might find themselves being forced to do it. Perhaps Mr. Clark and his colleagues can prevail upon membership to follow the example of a certain Springfield, Illinois townballer:
It is because of my own acknowledged limitations that I surprised myself several months ago - after I purchased my new (to me) car by paying for a Sirius XM satellite radio subscription. I may not die with the first dollar I ever earned still on my person but it is a safe bet that at least one of his linear descendants will accompany me to my subterranean, very hot eternal resting place.
Yesterday, I cancelled the subscription. For $21 a month I paid not only to have the service in my vehicle, which I loved, but also on my laptop, my desktop, and my iPhone. Unfortunately, the customer service end of the Sirius operation wore me out. Approximately thirty days ago, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, I was somehow knocked out of my account on my desktop computer at work. For all I know, the Firm had some sort of internal power issue. I presumed reconnecting would be a simple process. I was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Long and boring story short, my efforts at reconnecting my on-line service resulted in me being caught in the same endless loop. Someone would ask me to provide them with the e-mail address on my account so that they could send me the prompts needed to cure my ills. However, when I provided them with my e-mail address - the one at which I receive promotional e-mails from Sirius and the one identified on the "My Account" page for my account - I was told that Sirius had no such e-mail address in its system.
Having paid for something I did not receive for the past thirty days, yesterday I called Sirius to cancel. I spoke to a very pleasant young woman on the phone who apologized repeatedly and profusely for their inability to properly service my account. She even tried, enthusiastically but not obnoxiously, to coax me into sticking around by offering me a deeply discounted deal, which deal I politely declined.
The Firm was closed yesterday - in honor of President's Day - as it has been every year since I have worked there. Initially, I planned to spend President's Day as I usually do - in the office. But then, I had a change of heart. Perhaps, I simply responded to all that has transpired these past few months and decided, "Fuck it."
Whatever motivated me to work from home yesterday, I am glad that I did. Ryan had to work so Margaret went up to Suzanne and Ryan's to help Suzanne with Maggie and Cal. However, instead of simply spending the morning with them at Suzanne's, Nana put them in the car and brought them back to our house. I spent the morning laughing, playing, and simply being in the company of two of the people I love most of all.
It was the best President's Day I have spent in years. Maybe ever.
In case you wonder where the notion of the Participation Trophy came from, consider that once upon a lifetime ago President’s Day did not exist. When I was a boy, February was the month when we honored George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Now? We have created a long weekend to acknowledge every occupant of the Oval Office, irrespective of his accomplishments or utter absence thereof.
It’s quite a course we charted. First, we opened up the holiday to everyone. Then we opened up the job as well.
Unless you are an alum/fan of the University of Colorado Buffaloes football team, then this declaration and everything that came after it this week probably went unnoticed:
Mel Tucker is an Ohioan, born and raised. Michigan State University, where he apparently began his coaching career, backed up the Brinks truck for him. His annual salary at MSU shall be more than twice what it was at CU. In spite of only having a single year's experience as a head coach - the 2019 season at CU - in which he coached the Buffs to a 5-7 record, MSU signed him to a contract that shall make him one of the fifteen highest-paid coaches in college football. They made him an offer he simply could not refuse.
Once upon a lifetime ago, WPK, Sr. taught me that a man's word was his bond. He taught me that you under-promise and over-deliver. Whether Mel Tucker was raised with those same lessons I know not. I know only that over the course of the past week-plus, he breached them.
Yours truly and several hundred other runners, including many of the usual suspects I know and love (well, like quite a lot, let's not get carried away), shall toe the line this morning in the frozen tundra of Manasquan, New Jersey.
Today is the annual Mid-Winter Beach Run. The good news is that gun time for this morning's sprint along street and sand is 11:00 o'clock. The bad news? The high temperature today in Manasquan is forecast to be 32 degrees with wind blowing off the ocean at eight to ten miles per hour. At least it is a dry absence of heat.
Two weeks from today, the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials will take place in Atlanta, Georgia. The top three male finishers and the top three female finishers will represent the United States as the 2020 Summer Olympics. Among the men competing for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team is Jim Walmsley of Flagstaff, Arizona. The Olympic Trials shall be his first attempt at this distance.
Walmsley's chances shall not rise and fall on his ability to cover the distance but, instead, whether he can do so at a speed comparable to the favorites in the field. You see, Jim Walmsley is an ultra-marathoner. In June, 2019, he set a new record in winning the Western States, a 100-mile trail race in California, in 14 hours, 9 minutes, and 28 seconds, which is a per mile pace of roughly eight and one-half minutes.
My wife did not simply save my life when we first got together almost thirty years ago. She has saved it every day since.
I am too dumb to have yet figured out exactly what is in this for her. I am just smart enough to have learned to not ask. At some point, the eternally-airborne shoe shall drop. She shall awaken to realize the error of her ways. I will become nothing but an ever-shrinking object in her rear-view mirror until I completely disappear from view.
Until that day, however, I shall continue to count my lucky stars...
Renee Seman was a hero. Not simply to her daughter. Not simply to her husband. Not simply to those who knew her and loved her. Not even simply to herself.
She was a hero to all of us. Whether we knew her...
Abraham Lincoln, this nation's 16th President, was born on this date two hundred and eleven years ago. Lincoln was elected President in November, 1860. Within one hundred and twenty days of his election, and prior to his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven southern states seceded from the Union. Roughly forty-five days following his inauguration, the War Between the States (a/k/a "the Civil War"), began with the bombardment of the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
President Lincoln guided the United States into and through the Civil War. In November, 1864, he was re-elected to the Presidency. On March 4, 1865, in his Second Inaugural Address, which he gave in the waning days of the war with the Confederacy on its knees, Lincoln could have boasted about the Confederacy's destruction. He could have sworn vengeance on the inhabitants of this nation's southern states. A lesser man would have. Hell, a lesser man who is the current tenant in Lincoln's former Pennsylvania Avenue address does so now in response to any slight, be it real, perceived, or self-inflicted.
Of course, Mr. Lincoln did neither:
With malice toward none, with charity for all,
with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on
to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation's wounds,
to care for him
who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan,
to do all
which may achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with
all nations.
If you listened closely enough, then perhaps on Sunday, above the joyful noise of the standing ovation offered by those in attendance, you might have heard the unmistakable noise of a glass ceiling being shattered in Belmar, New Jersey.
Sunday, February 9, 2020, with her son, Nathan, by her side, Tina Scott ascended to the rank of Chief in the Belmar, New Jersey Police Department. Chief Scott has served the people of Belmar for almost two decades, rising up through the department from Special Officer to Patrol Officer to Detective to Sergeant to Lieutenant to Captain and, now, to Chief. She is the first female Chief in the history of the Belmar, New Jersey Police Department. She is one of just fourteen female Chiefs in the State of New Jersey and the only one in Monmouth County.
Kudos to whoever it was in Belmar's governing body who is a good enough student of history to have scheduled Chief Scott's swearing-in ceremony for February 9, 2020. Sunday was the 100th anniversary of New Jersey's ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which amendment extended the right to vote to women. Well done, indeed.
Congratulations to Chief Scott and best wishes for continuing safety and success to her and to the men and women under her command.
Margaret and I spent Saturday night with two of my favorite people, Maggie and Cal. We played the part of babysitters while Maggie and Cal's parents went out for the evening. Considering that old Pop Pop normally only sees them on Sundays, getting to spend a couple of hours with them on Saturday was a treat indeed.
My grandchildren are remarkable. Maggie will be three in May. Cal will turn two in July. Each of them is a sponge, soaking up all that goes on around them, processing it, and learning how to act in response to it. Simply watching them as they go about their day-to-day is an educational experience. And it is one that warms me. Spending time in their presence reminds me of why, sometimes against all apparent logic and reason, I shall never stop believing in the future...
Among my failings as a person, of which there are many, is my resistance to embrace change. Knowing I must embrace it and doing it are two different things. In my experience, they are markedly different ones.
Recently, however, I have climbed on board the "embrace the change" train. As it turns out, it was not flexibility I needed. It was courage.
As it turns out, I have more of that than I realized.
It has been said - although not by anyone who earns a living in a profession that produces written documents called briefs (sometimes euphemistically) - that a picture is worth a thousand words. On Super Bowl Sunday, we celebrated my birthday a day early. I hope that Mom looked down upon our house, smiling at the irony of her son - whose arrival on Groundhog Day she simply refused to countenance - celebrating his birthday on Groundhog Day. If she did, I am confident that she loved what she saw.
just like the songs and stories told And when she built you, brother,
she broke the mold...
"Terry's Song"
(Bruce Springsteen)
This past weekend, courtesy of information that my long-time friend, Dave Joy (who joined Club 53 yesterday), had posted on Facebook, which post Margaret saw, I learned the sad news that one of the finest men who it has ever been my privilege to know had died. Dave's father, Stanley A. Joy, Jr., was simply extraordinary.
I have had the great fortune of knowing Dave since we were little. Well, full disclosure demands that I note no historical record of Dave Joy being "little" has ever been unearthed. He was young once, for sure. Little? No sir. Rumor has it that he was born six feet tall and simply grew taller from there.
Semantics aside, Dave and I have known one another since high school, which is at least a lifetime or two ago. We played basketball and soccer together. We remained great friends after graduation. So much so in fact that when he married his beautiful bride, Christine, in July, 1992, it was my honor to stand next to him as his best man. Eleven months later, when my beautiful bride, Margaret, did me the great favor of marrying me, Dave stood next to me as my best man.
A lifetime ago, when we were in college, Dave and I seemed to go on an endless series of adventures, accompanied by the third member of our holy trinity, Andy McElroy. Andy is the youngest brother of Dave's brother-in-law, John, to whom Dave's sister Linda is married. Although I have a few years on him (Andy shall not join Club 53 for several years), we had quite a lot in common. Andy and I both were raised by strong, brave Irish moms following the far-too-early deaths of our fathers.
Dave's parents, Stan and Mary, became a second set of parents for me - and for Andy too. The three of us used to test their patience regularly, usually by wandering home to Dave's house at some point after 2:00 am but before sunrise following a summer night's drinking and late-night/early-morning dining at the Scotchwood Diner. Occasionally, when our enthusiasm outpaced our common sense and we arrived later than usual or after having imbibed more heavily than we should have (having made it home in one piece courtesy of the world's largest Designated Driver, the great Stu Solomon), Mr. and Mrs. Joy made us aware of their displeasure.
Never though, to my memory, did Mr. Joy ever have to yell at any of the three of us to command our attention. I remember still him telling us following an evening when we beat the sunrise home by mere minutes how disappointed he was in our decision-making. Not angry. Not sad. Disappointed. It cut me to my core. Among the people on the planet who I least wanted to disappoint were Stan and Mary Joy.
Dave's mom died back in 2012. Sadly, he has now joined the ranks of the "Over-50 Orphans Club". I hope though - at least a little - that he, Linda, Leslie, and the rest of the Joys take more than a little comfort from two things.
First, their dad did indeed live a most wonderful life and one in which he made an indelible impression on countless others. Not all of us who pass through this world leave it a better place than we found it by making those around us aware of how much they are loved. Stan Joy did.
Second, while he has bade them farewell, he is now back in the company of his best girl, Mary, walking with her arm in arm and grinning that unmistakable grin. That, undoubtedly, is a good thing. Maybe even the best thing.
Safe journey, Mr. Joy, and thank you again for every kindness you ever showed me.
I have found myself thinking about my father quite a lot recently. Given that I rarely - if ever - think about him, even a small amount of time devoted to him daily would represent a substantial uptick. Recently, he has occupied considerably more than a small amount of time in my day-to-day.
The older I get, the closer I inch towards the age at which he died. I turned fifty-three this week. My father was roughly five-and-one-half months past his fifty-seventh birthday when he died. He had a massive heart attack while he slept. It was May 31, 1981. He died less than one week before Kara's high school graduation. He died ten days before his and Mom's anniversary. He died fourteen days before Mom's birthday. He died fifty-five days before Kara's eighteenth birthday. Jill was sixteen. I was fourteen.
During the 1979-1980 school year, the long-time Headmaster of the Wardlaw-Hartridge School, (a/k/a "Dad's boss") announced he would retire at the end of the 1980-1981 school year. The school formed a Search Committee to find his successor. Dad should have known that qualifications notwithstanding he had zero chance of winning the Search Committee's beauty contest. All these years later, I am confident that he did. He was simply too fucking smart to not know. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of that knowledge, he applied for the position.
Ironically, given the years of his life he dedicated to the education of young men and women in college preparatory schools, and the immense talent he brought to his calling, Dad was not cut from the cloth that old, moneyed prep schoolers valued most. He neither came from money nor pretended that he did. My old man was a lot of things. An effete douche bag afraid to dirty his hands or worse yet to see a callous form on one was not one of them.
As I approach my mid-fifties, I realize that my father knew that he would never be permitted to break the glass ceiling through which lesser men with more favorable genealogies peered down at him from a rung, or two, above him on the ladder of his profession. He knew that because he had not been educated at Eastern prep schools, Wardlaw-Hartridge was perpetually comfortable making him the "Associate" Head of its Lower School (and the person who ran the joint) but was equally uncomfortable with the thought of ever making him its Headmaster. Had he been a blue-blooded WASP, they would have embraced him. He was a green-blooded Catholic Mick, so they simply used him instead.
Several months before Dad's death, Wardlaw-Hartridge named the Headmaster's successor, a properly-pedigreed empty suit who proved to be utterly overwhelmed by the job. Even though Dad knew that rejection was coming even before he formally tossed his hat into the ring, it struck in his craw when the new Headmaster was formally announced. Meeting the new guy, which my father did for the first time a month or so before he died, did little to tamp down his anger.
Following Dad's death, we had a wake/viewing for two nights at the Hillsborough Funeral Home. I do not recall on which of the two nights the soon-to-be-retired Headmaster made an appearance, although I suspect he came on the first night. How better to show your support for the widow and the family of your trusted lieutenant than show up to dispense hugs and hold hands opening night, right?
I was standing less than two feet from Mom on the receiving line when he approached her. Rather than offer condolences to her, he used that evening as an opportunity to offload some of the guilt he had apparently been carrying since having done nothing to support Dad's quest to be Headmaster. Leaning into my mother, he reminded her of how lucky it was - for Wardlaw-Hartridge - that he had not supported Dad. Had he done so, he told her, Dad would have gotten the job and now, rather than simply losing its much-loved Associate Headmaster of the Lower School, Wardlaw-Hartridge would be trying, in early June 1981, to hire a Headmaster for the 1981-1982 school year.
To her credit, Mom did not tell that preening asshole to go fuck himself. To my surprise, neither did I. I cannot speak for Mom but to my memory, it took more than a few minutes to fully appreciate the king-sized portion of unmitigated gall he had served her.
Mom had retired and relocated to Florida several months prior to this old fool's death. He died in January, 1998. If memory serves me correctly, he died during a terrible storm of some sort that had left him stranded in a cottage he and his wife owned in New Hampshire. Wardlaw-Hartridge apparently organized some type of on-campus memorial service for him.
At the time, I was quite friendly with the woman who ran the school's Alumni Relations Department. Having not been connected with W-H while my father was there, she knew nothing of his statement to Mom at Dad's wake. Unaware, she telephoned me and invited me to participate in it. I declined after telling her that I presumed saying something to the effect of, "I hope it fucking hurt", when speaking of the faux great man's death did not match the hoped-for tenor of the event.
To the surprise of no one, including me, a January 1998 nor'easter did not deprive this planet of its very last effete douche bag. I must confess, however, to having been surprised rather recently by the presence of a heretofore undetected glass ceiling in my own professional life. Having discovered it, I am constrained to admit that its presence does not simply anger me or sadden me. It disappoints me. More than that, it has enlightened me.
In the past several months, I have developed a far more keen sense of the frustration that my old man tamped down every day, torn between his love of what it was he did, and the actions of at least certain of those in whose company he did it. Having resolved to live past fifty-seven, and having seen up close what a lifetime of abusing alcohol did to my father and to all who shared space with him, I have not taken up his pitcher-a-night Manhattan habit. To each his own, right? I had not known that applies to coping mechanisms. Now I do.
You certainly cannot outrun yourself. You can, however, always change the direction of your life. Plot a new course.
If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then what follows here today just might be the single-most sincere thing I have ever done or written. I wrote this on this very sad anniversary last year, which was the tenth anniversary of the tragic death of the gentle giant, Stuart Solomon.
If a sentiment
expressed by a fictional character in a scene from a twenty-year-old homage
to/ripoff of Jaws offends your sensibilities - and seeing as
we live in the era of Faux Outrage it just might, then consider it this
way. It was ten years ago today that Stuart Solomon, forty-one-years
young, died. Whether for you this past decade passed in an eye blink or
in an eternity, one truth remains inviolate. Stu died before these past
ten years happened. He did not experience a single moment of it. Not
one.
I had just begun what
proved to be an ill-considered and (mercifully) brief adventure plying my trade
somewhere other than the Firm when Bowinkle called me to tell me the terribly sad news about
Stu. It was a Thursday morning. Mark and I have been
friends for as long as I can remember - and likely longer than he wishes he
could remember - during which time we have conducted a total of a couple of
hundred phone conversations in an aggregate time of less than ten
minutes. Our conversation that morning might have been the longest one we
have ever had - not because of what we said to one another but because of the
prolonged silences that filled the void between the staccato bursts of conversation.
As a kid, certainly
through high school and most likely through college, I believed fervently in my
own immortality. Survive a single-car accident with nary an injury (no
broken bones, no lost limbs, and no cuts that required stitches) in which the car
you are/were/had been driving bounces nose-first into a drainage ditch, rolls
over (side-to-side) two times, and comes to rest upside down on the side of a
deserted country road at shortly after midnight and tell me just how high you
would crank your "I AM BULLETPROOF"dial. To a
lesser degree, albeit only slightly lesser, I believed in the immortality of my
friends too. We were too young to die, a rule whose exception was proven
tragically by Brian Clare, a gentle soul to whom the world - if it operated on
the premise of fundamental fairness - owed a significantly better fate than
that which he received.
Being an
anti-sentimentalist, when people who had spent five-plus days a week together
for anywhere from four to ten years outgrew the sobriquet "Classmates",
I reasonably anticipated that growth for each of us would be both upward and
outward and that the farther removed we were from our status as the "Class
of '85", so too would we be farther and farther removed from each other.
Speaking for myself that is indeed what happened. With a couple of
notable exceptions, I had little contact with any of my high school classmates
once high school was in the rear-view mirror.
Stu was one of the
notable exceptions, at least through college and a year or two
thereafter. Once I started dating Margaret in June, 1991, and thereafter
started law school in September, 1991, my life's trajectory had reoriented
itself in a very specific and particular way. I wrote those words just
now with the same amount of regret I felt when I lived through those days
almost thirty years ago, which is to say none at all. Life is a
forward-moving exercise.
I cannot recall when I
had last seen Stu but I do remember where it was I last saw him. He and
his father, Roger, had opened a sports bar, neither the name of which nor the
location of which I ever committed to my memory. On its opening weekend,
I joined Mark and several of Stu's long-time friends there to wish Stu luck on
his new venture, about which he was justifiably excited. Leaving that
night, I remember telling him that I would be back.
I never made a second visit.
Not too terribly long after it opened, the bar was gutted in a fire that raged
through the strip mall in which it was located, a fire that started in one of
the strip mall's other tenants. To my knowledge, Stu and his dad never
attempted to reopen it, either in its original location or elsewhere.
Forty-one is too damn
young to die. Yet, it was at precisely that age that Stu died.
Proof again of the inherently inequitable nature of Life. Proof, also, of
the fact that time neither flies nor crawls. It simply marches on,
grinding its way through its day-to-day. Through ours as well. Reminding
us that immortality is a child's dream, the gossamer-like nature of which is
revealed to each of us in the stark light of adulthood...
...but in which there
is no harm in visiting upon every now and again if for no reason other than to
remind us how to dream. Perhaps, to remind us also that it is OK to do
so.
