March Madness. And I’m not talking about what is happening on the hardwoods. We have war, inflating gas prices, inflating interest rates and inflating inflation. It’s like I’m reliving my youth. Worst of all, however, the National League has gone with the designated hitter. “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” And in March, unfortunately, but not surprisingly, we have had more death which is why we are all here. A bit about the basketball. To tie it all back, the big story at the tournament is the school named for St. Peter who as we know is the gatekeeper to the great beyond. He had a busy month but also eked out some Cinderella-like wins against the villainous Kentucky Wildcats, Murray State and Perdue. Guys who have to risk their lives crossing Communipaw Avenue most days aren’t scared of some fancy-assed basketball players. However, while Communipaw was not a problem, navigating Tobacco Road proved a little more perilous and the mighty Peacocks lost to UNC. They have no reason to hang their heads however as they showed the basketball world some Jersey tough. Congrats to them. Now strap yourself in because even though there are not many A-listers, this thing is long.
Charles Entenmann of baked-goods fame, died at 92. As a kid, getting Entenmanns anything was an incredible treat. They had a “day-old” store which is somewhat oxymoronic given that Entenmann products have a half-life of about 72 years. I mean you could bite into their crumb cake weeks later and it was fine. Thousands of years from now, archeologists who unearth the Entenmann’s product should feel free to stop their progress and enjoy whatever it is they unearthed with a glass of cold milk because, given all the preservatives mixed into the thing, it will probably be as fresh as the day it was baked. The bakery started in Brooklyn by Charles’ German grandfather and eventually moved to Bay Shore, Long Island and occupied 14 acres. With the help of Charles’ engineering prowess, the products were shipped everywhere in their cellophane-fronted boxes. Frank Sinatra had their poundcake delivered to him weekly though probably not from the day-old store. Charles was also decidedly philanthropic. He was once told that the Great South Bay YMCA was overbooked in its childcare center. After pondering it over lunch, he donated $1Million so that they could build a child-care wing. Also, perhaps in a way of helping all of those who his products drove to obesity, he established the Entenmanns Family Cardiac Center. God knows how many people his chocolate donuts helped to send there over the years. The company was first sold to Warner Lambert and is now owned by the largest baker in the world, Bimbo bakeries. Gotta love that name. The irony of his whole life though was summed up by his son who reported "He didn't eat Entenmann's cake; he just wasn't a dessert guy." For a guy who probably could have had all he wanted for free, it seems a bit of a waste. Then again, he made it to 92.
Next up, we lost Tim Considine who played the part of Mike, the eldest of the three sons of Fred MacMurray in “My Three Sons.” He was 81. He probably had a few of Charlie’s chocolate donuts and didn’t reside near the Entenmanns Family Cardiac Center. In any event, it was a toss-up for me between going with Mr. Considine or Luis from “Sesame Street” in the second slot. However, given that I was a big “My Three Son’s” fan and didn’t really watch much “Sesame Street,” I went with my heart. I didn’t see much of Mike on the show because right after I started watching, they married him off and Earnie, the newest third son, was adopted into the family. I guess they couldn’t have Fred knock-up some woman so they went with the adoption theme. Chip was my favorite. Interestingly, Chip and Earnie were brothers in real life. The calmness with which Fred MacMurray ran the household was in such juxtaposition to the chaos that I grew up in (good chaos I might add but chaos nonetheless) that I was drawn to the show. As for Mr. Considine, he started his acting career at 12 and was in a lot of Disney vehicles before “My Three Sons.” He never really wanted to be an actor and probably due to that did not suffer the trauma of many child actors of his era. Rather, he had a fulfilling career as a photographer and writer while on rare occasions doing a film or TV appearance. He would even, on occasion, fill in for William Safire and pen the “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine. Fred knew how to raise them.
Now on to Luis from “Sesame Street,” who is actually Emilio Delgado and who died at 81 (same age as Mr. Considine). While I didn’t watch the show, I have been a fan of Dr. Tooth and the Electric Mayhem since their inception. Except for the fact that I am repulsed by the notion of the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, I would be incensed that they have not been admitted. Perhaps, like Dolly Parton, they have chosen to be excluded from the process, although the RRHOF has not acceded to Dolly’s demand to be left off the ballot. I marvel at the way that the Sesame Street folks pat themselves on the back for their diversity with folks like Mr. Delgado, but did they really do brown people any favors by introducing his character as the handyman? Let’s reinforce some stereotypes by the way. Why not an accountant, or hedge fund operator? Anyway, they did something and it provided Mr. Delgado with steady work for 44 years which netted him enough money to buy and sell me many times over. The show even married him to another actor on the show Sonia Manzano. The wedding, while not seen by as many people as Tiny Tim’s to Miss Vickie, lasted much longer in television terms and taught kids a lot about counting and the like. I wonder if a divorce would have taught them more about numbers as they could have been seen fighting over everything. Alas, for another day. Mr. Delgado’s real love was music and he occasionally sang on the show and also with the Pink Martinis as a guest vocalist. With his death, all the Muppets are diminished.
I should have known better but I thought Rock ‘N Roll might remain unscathed this month. Then on the 24th I learned of the death of the Foo Fighter’s drummer Taylor Hawkins at 50. He would have been on my least-likely list, notwithstanding that he has had drug issues in the past. No cause of death was given but at 50 and on tour with the band in South America, it is hard for a cynic like me to think much else other than drugs. It is a loss because he was a great drummer in a great band. He was the drummer for the Foos for 25 years, fully half of his life. Prior to that he played with Alanis Morrisette after her “Jagged Little Pill” album burst on the scene. While playing behind Dave Grohl, who made his bones drumming for Nirvana, must have been daunting, Hawkins did a great job. Aside from Grohol, he was the most prominent face of the band. A real loss of a good guy and excellent drummer.
Another drummer, who also happened to be the first woman Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, died at 84. Don’t believe me on the drummer thing? Check this out
Okay so she ain’t Buddy Rich or Taylor Hawkins. I try to keep this light so I will steer away from her and her bosses’ (Bill Clinton’s) politics because I would probably disagree with much of their decisions but none of that should detract from an amazing life. The one criticism I will level at her is that she vetoed the reelection of Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. I mean, how do you veto a guy with a name like that? I always thought Boutros Boutros-Ghali would be a great name for a rock band and here she was sending the guy off to the unemployment line. Oh well, enough criticism of the dead. Albright was the daughter of Czech refugees who fled the Nazis when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. Her family was Jewish but converted to Catholicism as a cover. As a youth, she was never informed of her Jewish roots and didn’t acknowledge them until much later in her life. She married well and became a foreign affairs scholar. She was an advisor to three Presidential candidates. The third, Clinton, made it to the Oval Office (and a broom closet where various things we won’t go into here took place with cigars and the like). He made her his Ambassador to the United Nations and ultimately, his Secretary of State. I, however, in order to think nice things, will always remember her as a drummer.
Dr. Donald Pinkel, who developed an aggressive treatment for childhood leukemia died at 95. He too probably did not ingest much Entenmanns. Before his breakthrough treatment, childhood leukemia was the number one killer of children between the ages of 3 and 15 and had a 96% fatality rate. Today, the cure rate is 94%. Simply miraculous. All of this was formulated by Dr. Pinkel at St. Jude’s hospital in Memphis which was started by the actor Danny Thomas. Those commercials that you click through are not bullshit. He was at St. Jude’s before it was built and in the segregated City of Memphis, he demanded the hospital be integrated. He left in 1974 when his stance on the need for better nutritional assistance for the poor, many of whom were black, ran into friction with local white politicians. Today, St. Jude’s new Research tower bears his name. A true pioneer.
Last month we lost one of the inventors of the ethernet and this month we lost John Roach at 83. He designed and convinced the Tandy company, which owned Radio Shack, to sell the TRS-80 personal computer during the early stages of the PC. With little competition, the TRS-80 (TRS for Tandy Radio Shack) became, for a time, the most popular computer to be had. Tandy even hired Bill Gates and Paul Allen (pre-Microsoft) to write proprietary software for the TRS-80. Well, that didn’t last long and Radio Shack has had its share of crashes. In business you have to innovate or die and Radio Shack did not innovate sufficiently and the TRS is a relic now found in the Smithsonian and not on desktops. None of that detracts from Mr. Roach’s place in the birth and growth of the personal computer.
If you were a fan of the television sitcom “Wings,” the world lost Farrah Forke who played the rather alluring helicopter pilot Alex Lambert at 54. Forke was named Farrah after a family friend’s child, and another alluring actress from the Corpus Christie area, Farrah Fawcett. While adolescent boys didn’t have the poster of Farrah Forke on their walls, she might just as easily have been put on posters. She started her career in the Texas production of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and she peaked with Wings. Like her helicopter on a foggy day, she has been grounded.
The actor William Hurt, died at 71. A four-time academy award nominee and a winner for “Kiss of the Spiderwoman,” Mr. Hurt starred in such films as “Body Heat,” “The Big Chill,” “Children of a Lesser God,” “A History of Violence,” and “Broadcast News.” As far as I know he never slapped the host of the awards show who when he was a contender. While he shone in films, it was the stage that he coveted. He is a Jumbo having graduated from Tufts and studied acting at Julliard. While his acting career was highly lauded, his personal life was somewhat less Oscar worthy. He was a serial divorcee with ex-wives not raving about his temperament. I am not a movie guy having seen none of his work. Nevertheless, I can understand his genius and his legacy is great.
Mork from Ork’s sort of step-dad, played by Conrad Janis, died at 94. “Mork and Mindy” was a hit show and a breakout role for the comic genius Robin Williams. The show also starred Pam Dawber as Mindy. Mork’s first appearance on the small screen was actually in a dream-scene in “Happy Days” so technically the show was a spin-off. In Richie Cunningham’s dream, Mork wanted to take him back to his planet as a specimen of humanity but Fonzie stepped in to put the kibosh on their intergalactic plans. The scene was so popular and the show’s producer, Gary Marshall, so impressed with Williams, that the spin-off was developed. Janis was the steady hand in trying to control the frenetically hilarious Mork. All the actors on the show were really just footnotes to Williams who was simply a tour de force. Janis, however, in addition to being an actor, was a jazz trombonist and an art aficionado who owned a gallery. While he had over one hundred film and television credits in addition to his music, it will be “Mork and Mindy” for which I will most remember him. Na-nu Na-nu.
For you “Soprano’s” fans, Paul Herman, who played the role of Peter Gaeta (Beanie) on the cult classic, put on his cement goulashes and died on his birthday at 76. His character on the show owned pizza parlors but I doubt they were on par with DiFara’s of Brooklyn. He also did five seasons on the HBO show “Entourage.” I may be one of the few people who never saw either show. In addition to the small screen, he did a lot on the big one in movies such as “Goodfellas,” “The Irishman” (decidedly not about the Irish) and some Woody Allen films, among others. He sleeps with the fishes.
While the New York Times, has moved more overtly to the left than I would like, I cannot help but marvel at the level of the photographs that are routinely published by the Grey Lady. The woman responsible for a lot of that, Michele McNally, died at age 66. Although not a photographer herself, she understood the genre and pushed the Times to elevate its photojournalism to the level even beyond that of its writing. During her 14-year tenure, the Times received six News and feature photography Pulitzer Prizes and she herself, according to the New York Times, was awarded “the Jim Gordon Editor of the Year Award for photojournalism from the National Press Photographers Association, and in both 2015 and 2017 she received the Angus McDougall Visual Editing Award from the organization Pictures of the Year International at the Missouri School of Journalism.” If you thought my rattling off those award names means that I ever even heard of them, perish the thought. I am clueless as to what they are but they sure sound impressive. The photo array found in the Times, from the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima Daiichi atomic plant disaster was nothing short of amazing. Where she brought the Times in its photojournalism can be seen here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/decade-in-pictures.html?searchResultPosition=34. She may not have been the editor for them, but it is the plane to which she elevated the Times’ photojournalism for which she gets the credit. Nothing short of amazing.
Don’t know why these things occur in such ways. Perhaps there is something to the Rule of Three but two other noted photojournalists (and one photographer/filmmaker) lost their lives this month as well. Dirck Halstead, a UPI photographer died at 84. He covered everything from the war in Vietnam to the shooting of president Reagan and took some amazing photos of these historic events. Sumy Sadurni, a freelance photographer who chronicled the many struggles in East Africa through moving photographs died at 32. Given the danger that she faced in her coverage, it is somewhat ironic that she died in a car crash. Some of both these photojournalists’ work can be seen in their New York Times obituaries. I should also note the death of Brent Renaud who was a photographer/filmmaker who was killed covering the war in Ukraine. He was 50. Truly tragic.
Sports, like Rock music, was quiet in March but that said, we lost Jean Potvin, the brother of Dennis, at 72. Like his more famous brother, he, too, played for the Islanders on two of their great teams winning the Stanley Cup in 1980 and 81. He played in the NHL for 11 years, eight with the Islanders. He did radio for the Islanders for a time after his playing days and stayed in the New York area.
Yankee fans (well actually all of us but Yankee fans my feel it more) lost Ralph Terry at 86. Terry’s career was pretty much defined by two pitches. The first was to Bill Mazerowski in the bottom of the 9th in game seven of the 1960 World Series which Mazerowski quickly deposited over the left field fence at Forbes Field to gain the championship for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Terry later bemoaned not throwing a curve ball to the hitter. Proving that the worst of times can give rise to the best of times, the second pitch was to Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants who, like Mazerowski, hit it sharply. Fortunately for Terry, it was hit sharply into the glove of Yankees second baseman Bobbie Richardson who held onto it for the 1962 World Series win. Not heeding his admonition of two years earlier, he went with a fastball to McCovey and thankfully did not suffer the same fate. Terry went 23-12 in 1962, his best year. He was 107-99 during his 11-year career which for him, was always about redemption.
My favorite pizza place is Palermo’s in Bordentown, NJ. Go ahead and scoff but until you’ve tried it you ought not to sell it short. That said, when you make pizza and get a New York Times obit (written by Pete Wells no less), as Domenico DiMarco did, that is saying something. He died at 85 and was spinning dough pretty much until the end. There was a time when no one made the pizzas at DiFara Pizza in Midwood, Brooklyn but him. He bucked the Totonno’s trend of brick ovens and proved that great pizza could come out of a gas oven. The lines were a testament to his ability. Hopefully he left the recipe and instructions on how to run the oven with someone.
On the other end of the culinary spectrum, Sally Schmitt died at 95. With her husband, she started French Laundry (so named because the building once housed a French steam laundry) in Napa which Thomas Keller has turned into a temple of fine dining. Keller said it was Schmitt’s cooking that started it all and she credited her high school home economics teacher. Perhaps we should resurrect those classes if they can give rise to such a place.
When Steve Jobs died, it was the first time I had survivor guilt. I mean, while he was no humanitarian, he was an innovator who changed the world and still had a lot to do. I, on the other hand, write this stupid blog. Anyway, I figured between the two of us, the world was better with him in it. He has been dead for over ten years and I haven’t felt survivor guilt until this week when I lost a good friend. Ray Arcario was 62 and worked for the State of New Jersey overseeing building projects. He is responsible for overseeing the construction of the World War II Memorial in Trenton, the 9-11 Memorial in Liberty State Park and many other State projects. When he died, he was putting the finishing touches on the total restoration of the New Jersey State House which, when done, will be a magnificent testament to his abilities. He also built character in young people as the director of his church’s youth camp. He was funny, kind, explosive and the embodiment of good. He will be missed by those whose lives he touched and those who don’t know him but will marvel at his work for years to come.
Next month is the first anniversary of this blog. Thankfully, I have no control over who will be featured.
I love your Entenmann's discussion—funny 'cause it's true....
I, too, feel that the adoption of the designated hitter rule was a detriment to baseball, removing, as it does, an important part of the strategy of the game. It isn't surprising, though, that in this age of "dumbing" things down, that it has been relegated to the dust bin of history.