Reflections of a Baby Boomer

 

I Dream of ……

By Steven P. Marini

 

Have you ever met a movie star before the person was a movie star?

  A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I was a thirty-year old married man taking a one-year leave of absence from work to complete a Masters in Educational Technology from Boston University. That’s a small clue. Have you guessed the star yet?

  I was given a Graduate Assistantship, which is a form of financial aid. I had to work fifteen hours a week in the Educational Technology Department along with several grad and undergrad students. Among them was my future movie star.

  She was very tall (six feet, I believe) and strikingly beautiful of face and figure, including great big……..dimples. Hey, what did you think I was going to say? Clean it up.  Her style of dress might be labeled a cross between Early Fidel Castro and Disneyland. A typical day might find her in baggy green fatigue pants, a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and different colored socks. Now you’ve got the gender. Have you got her name yet?

  Although I never had a personal conversation with her, there was usually talk among the few students on duty at any time. A memorable group talk was dominated by this young lady about the movie Carrie. What struck me was the depth of her interest in the movie. She spoke of Carrie, the character, as if she was a real person. I guess that for a future movie star, you must really have to be able to get into it like that.

  A few years after my B.U. experience, I ran into a former colleague named Mary. We talked about the people we remembered and she mentioned a girl named ……… who had become a model in New York. I wasn’t surprised because of her beauty and height.

  Several years later, I was attending a conference in Colorado Springs. As it turned out, it was Oscar night, the presenting of the Academy Awards. That’s something I have little interest in, but I decided to leave it running on the hotel room TV while I nursed a drink and directed my attention to something else. Something happened, however, that caught my attention. A young woman was announced as the winner for the Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Accidental Tourist and, as she made her acceptance speech, I focused on the TV and this striking young lady. I couldn’t place her, but I think you know where I am going.

  The sound of her voice stunned me. It was the same voice I had heard many years ago talking about Carrie. Surely some of you have identified her by now. When I studied her face closely on the TV, it all came together for me. It was Geena Davis. She had gone from a college kid in fatigue pants to a glamorous movie star.  I was dumfounded when I learned that she had also been in The Fly and Beetlejuice, both of which I had seen and had not recognized her.

  I also learned of another coincidence with Geena. My alma mater is a very small school in New Hampshire called New England College. I graduated in 1973. Geena Davis attended NEC in 1974 and 1975, and we met up at Boston University in 1976 working financial aid in the same department. I told my wife, “She must be chasing me.”

 

 

The “Greatest Generation” in Retrospect

By Steven P. Marini

 

When Tom Brokaw’s book called The Greatest Generation came out, I thought the title sounded ridiculous. I still do.

For one thing, I hate the notion that generations are being labeled. I am called a “baby boomer” because I was born in 1946. Where does that leave my three older siblings, born in 1940, 1942 and 1945? Aren’t we all in the same generation from our parents?

I also hate the idea of comparing generations. Is it a competition? We have no say into which generation we are born. Can we ask to be traded? Does every member of a labeled generation think, act, and feel the same about everything?

I think not.

Over the recent Memorial Day Weekend, I watched a documentary entitled Vietnam in HD. It was about the story of the Vietnam War as seen through film shot by soldiers and journalists. Much of the film was archived footage. Soldiers of the war were shown in the old film, and they were interviewed in current time, as well.

One man interviewed was Joe Galloway, a journalist. He was a twenty-three-year-old writer for the United Press in 1964. As the war was heating up at that time, he knew he had to go cover it. He begged his superiors to send him. Joe didn’t want to use the “box score” style of writing. He wanted to write like Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent from World War Two. That meant being imbedded where there was actual fighting, getting to know the soldiers by name, learning about them. He made it personal.

At that time, the U.S. developed a tactic called insertion fighting. There were no classical lines of battle in this war. Soldiers were transported by helicopter and “inserted” into the fighting. It wasn’t about winning and occupying territory. It was about killing the enemy. On one such excursion, Joe Galloway went with them.

They were trying to insert over four hundred troops but that took days to land helicopters in a small landing area with six to eight men on board. The U.S. troops thought they had the superior numbers but later learned by interrogating a prisoner that the Vietnamese had enough fighters hiding in the near-bye mountains to give them an eight-to-one advantage.

Broken Arrow was the code word that Joe Galloway heard being sent over radio. It was the call to divert every fighter plane and bomber in the area to this fight. Napalm bombs were dropped and some of them resulted in fires hitting the Americans. Joe was ordered to grab a man’s feet to help carry him to the collection of wounded. As he did so, the fabric of the man’s boots and his burnt flesh peeled away, and Joe tells of feeling the man’s ankle bones in his hands. He shed tears as he told the story.

Was Joe Galloway’s courage and dedication any less than that of his counter parts in WWII?

I think not.

What about the soldiers in Vietnam? By January of 1967, there were nearly four-hundred thousand troops in Vietnam. About one-third were volunteers. Was their bravery any less of the men in 1944?

I think not.

Another man who comes to mind when I think of the Vietnam War. He is Frank Scotton. a civilian, like Joe Galloway. After college, he began working in the U.S. Foreign Service. At the age of twenty-four he was sent to Vietnam by the United States Information Service. It was 1962. He learned as much as possible about the people, the language, and the culture of Vietnam. His job was to help organize and train the South Vietnamese in their fight against the Vietnamese Communists. As we later learned, these people were known as “advisors.”

But Frank Scotton did not have a white-collar job. In 1964 I was surprised to see an article about him in the Boston Globe which described him and his activities in Asia. You see, I knew Frank Scotton. He was about eight years older than me, and his family lived about a block away from my family in the Boston suburb of Needham. The article said that he wore military fatigues and carried a rifle, which he occasionally had to use.

I discovered recently that he authored a book about the war, based on his knowledge and experience. The book is a text for students preparing for work in the field of National Security. From it, entitled Uphill Battle, I learned that  from 1962 to 1975, he spent part of every year in Viet Nam.

One reviewer of the book said he was the Lawrence of Arabia in Viet Nam. Another called him a legend. According to the Globe article, the Communists put a price on his head. Was Frank Scotton’s courage and dedication to duty any less than the soldiers who fought and died in WWII, including his own father?

I think not.

Also of note is a woman who studied for a master’s degree in International Affairs. She planned to work in the State Department. But the Iraq War changed her career path. She went into the Army where she became a fighter helicopter pilot. On one mission, an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) burst through her windshield, landed on her lap, and then exploded. Her legs were blown off and she suffered extensive internal injuries, but somehow, she survived, thanks in part to her co-pilot. To this day she suffers from occasional phantom pain.

Tammy Duckworth rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel and in 2017 she became a United States Senator from Illinois. Was her bravery and continued service to her country any less than the fighters of WWII.

I think you know my answer to that.

 

Why I liked John Madden,

By Steven P. Marini.

 

It was a strange irony that John Madden passed away a couple of days after a documentary paying tribute to the man aired on FS 1. Although he was eighty-five years old, there was no mention after his passing that he was in ill health, nothing to suggest that he was near his last days, so you’d better produce a tribute show while he can still participate in it, as he did. So, despite his years, when death came it was a shock.

There are two reasons, in my opinion, why Madden was so successful as a football analyst. One, he was very entertaining about a game that other analysts take way too seriously. Two, he was highly credible because he played college football and he was a standout head coach in the NFL, giving him a knowledge of the game at a high level.

To me, the most important factor was my first reason. Today, the broadcasters are a bunch of deadpanned lunks who love to hear themselves talk. They take the game much too seriously and are woefully lacking in the ability to entertain viewers. They are not even close to John Madden.

The reason for Madden’s success as an entertainer was his ability to use figurative language. What’s that, you say? Figurative language is not literal. It uses metaphors, similes and allusions to create an image in the mind of the listener. Madden also used sounds like “Boom,” and “Wham,” that added to the image.

My favorite example of Madden’s use of figurative language came in a TV broadcast many years ago. He was talking about a player whose name escapes me, but it doesn’t matter. He described the guy as “Just a big, ol’ lineman.” That’s it. That’s all you need to know about the guy. Every football fan can picture that player from his simple description.

John Madden wasn’t just describing a player. He was talking about himself. He was an old school football man. He believed football was a tough game where players made hard contact and knocked other guys to the ground. They got their uniforms dirty.

At heart, John Madden was just a big o’l lineman and a mighty entertaining one at that.

 

 

This Competition is Criminal.

Scribes love to write about competitors, especially in sports. Pitchers versus pitchers (Koufax vs Clemens). Hitters versus hitters (Williams versus DiMaggio). Quarterbacks (Brady versus Manning). Basketball (Russell versus Chamberlain).

But there is competition in other fields as well. Concert pianists compete. Actors and musicians compete (Oscar  Awards, Grammy Awards). Scientists compete (Noble Prize). Journalists compete (Pulitzer Prize). But here’s a field that you never hear about as being competitive.

Crime.

So I’m going to propose a competition for, “Outstanding Performance By an Individual in a High Stakes Robbery.” No supporting players in this contest, so no gangs are in the running. Let someone else write up that one.

Here are my nominees, in chronological order based on the year of the heist.

1.      Thomas Randele, Cleveland, OH. 1969.

2.      D.B. Cooper, Portland, OR. 1971.

 

Here are their stories.

#1: Randele’s real name was Ted Conrad who was a young teller at a bank in Cleveland. On July 11, 1969, after his 20th birthday, he finished his shift and walked out with a paper bag containing $215,000 (more than $1.6 million today) and was never seen again. When he failed to show up for work Monday morning the bank manager realized the money was missing. He stayed missing for fifty-two years.

According to an investigator, Thomas Randele, was a good family man, good father, good husband, good friend, pro golfer – he seemed to be well-liked by everybody, It appears that he lived the perfect life of a fugitive on the run.

The key to his success was that Conrad took on a new identity and a new life, staying a jump head of law enforcement for fifty-two years. The case was even featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries,” but he remained elusive.

His success continued until his death in May 2021, approximately seventy-one years old when he died of cancer.

He had been the assistant golf pro at the Pembroke Country Club in Massachusetts, playing on the professional winter tour in Florida in the offseason and became the full-time manager of the country club in Pembroke. Eventually he began a successful career in luxury automotive sales for close to 40 years. He also became an excellent self-taught cook. He and his family lived in a small, three-bedroom Cape styled house.

Investigators found connections between Ted Conrad’s background and items stated in his newspaper death notice. For example, they both stated that they attended New England College in New Hampshire. Also, documents signed by Conrad and Randele had matching handwriting.

Randele made a deathbed confession to his family, telling them who he really was. He is survived by his wife, Kathy, and his daughter, Ashley.

#2: On November 24, 1971, a plain looking man calling himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington. His story has become legend.

Cooper, in his mid-40s, was dressed in a business suit with black tie and white shirt. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., he gave the stewardess a note saying that he had a bomb in his briefcase.

Cooper opened the case, showing the stewardess a quick look at a mass of wires and red colored sticks, resembling dynamite. He told her to inform the captain, which she did. She told the captain that he wanted four parachutes and $200,000 in cash.

The plane landed in Seattle, and Cooper got what he wanted in exchange for the flight’s 36 passengers. Cooper kept the flight crew members, and the plane took off again, heading for Mexico City.

Hours later Cooper did something hard to believe to this day. He jumped out of the back of the plane with the money. The plane eventually landed safely but Cooper was gone into the night sky.

Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: He jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money. The pilots landed safely, but Cooper had disappeared into the night sky.

Many think Cooper could not have survived the jump. The parachute could not be steered and he was dressed in clothes not suited for such a jump. He was not a veteran jumper. Some of the money was found in 1980 and the serial numbers matched the cash that Cooper was given.

The case has never been closed.

So, who is the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of all Time) among these big money thieves? If success is the determining factor, I know who I vote for. Do you?

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2017/03/17/more-and-more-players-practicing-
what-ted-williams-preached/7HKaU4sQhUQ7y9QnQ5CMgP/story.html



I've always agreed with TW about this and am finding a modified approach to this can actually help, even in slow pitch #softball. It's actually simple. If you swing down on the ball you will hit it on the ground, so go upward. But don't get under the ball. Hitting the ball hard into the air, at a slight angle, will result in more hits in the long run. Ground balls get through sometimes, but, basically, they suck.
#TedWilliams was the king of hitters, as far as knowing what you are doing.

Go #SeniorSoftball.

                                Just got this book, on a recommendation from a friend, a real sexpert on the subject. I'm using it as a research tool for my next novel, Seven Stages of Sexual Attraction. The story can be summed up by the dramatic question: Can a woman truly love and trust a man while also condoning his sexual play with others or will too much sexual freedom lead to extreme consequences and destroy their relationship?

I just started writing, so don't look for it anytime soon, but maybe in mid-2018.

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