Month: September 2020

The year, 1989. The place, L.A. The occasion? A birth and a death.

But first, some pictures to set the stage.

 

 

 

 

I remember 1989 like it was yesterday. That was the year our firstborn, Ben, entered the world. And it was also the year my friend, Rick Bellinson, was dying of AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). Good news, bad news, right? Which you wanna hear about first? Oh, wait – my blog, my rules.  So, it’s bad news first then. Read on if you dare.

I knew Rick through my work at the time. He was a guy about my age, a friend of my boss, Herb Piltzer. Rick was already dying from the moment I first met him though you wouldn’t have known it to look at him: Tall, slim, dashing, athletic.  I think it was Herb who came up with the idea of a charity basketball game to help raise money to defray some of Rick’s medical expenses. Also to raise awareness about AML. And to raise awareness about the bone marrow registry which it was hoped might one day save Rick’s life with a donor match and marrow transplant.

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No way in hell were any of the Lakers or the Clippers gonna get involved in a potentially career-ending injury from a basketball game against the likes of Rick & Friends (aka “Team Bellinson”). But even back then football’s Raiders were renegades, iconoclasts, and outlaws, willing to take a chance on a good cause. Thus was “The Game of The Century” born. Well, maybe just Game of The Decade? The Year? The Week?  In any case, thus did I – almost! – get to block Jerry Robinson’s shot. As I recall he had a pretty fair jumper, though I know for a fact he didn’t set near as mean of a screen as Howie Long or Steve Wisniewski, both of whom were also Raiders that year. Ah well, as I said, all for a good cause.

Rick couldn’t get up and down the floor too well by this point, so he coached. And we played our hearts out for him – to no avail, of course – the Raiders were MUCH better athletes. But we kept it close, or they  toyed with us, one or the other. Rick died not long after having never been lucky enough to find a marrow match. But we raised some funds and we raised some awareness, and in the process, I got to set foot on the hardwood with some pro athletes I would likely have never even met face-to-face otherwise – Jerry Robinson, for one. An interesting piece on his football career can be found, here.

 

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In 1989 we attended St. Augustine’s-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church. When our son was born, we chose Rod and Audrey as god-parents. They were there for his baptism and they were there for us when we needed a babysitter. At the time Rod was an economist with McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach and Audrey and I once shared an office at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute where we both interned.  We lived next door to each other, three blocks from the beach, at the Santa Monica Bay Club.

 

 

After Ben was born, I remember Rod and Audrey having a tough time with a failed pregnancy. Audrey had poly-cystic ovary disease which can lead to infertility.  They finally succeeded with the birth of their daughter Rachel.

 

Fast Forward Three Decades

 

 

Rachel’s now a linguist, a PhD. She recently began teaching classes at the Univ. of Michigan.  She also recently was interviewed by a Chicago TV station where she talked about what it’s like to be the child of an inter-racial couple in an era of BLM. You can see that interview, here.  Or read about it, here.

 

You know me: I’m a bottom-line kinda guy, so….

 

What’s the bottom line here? When most people say “BLM” in the Twitter-wars these days, it is for them a product of whatever was the most recent input they had from their Internet news source of choice, plus whatever they had for breakfast that’s now probably giving them indigestion. But for me? It’s all about 1989. Specifically, a charity basketball game with the LA Raiders, and my son’s god-parents.  If you, either directly or by implication, say that Black Lives DON’T Matter, then to me, you are disgracing the memory of my friends, both living and dead. And, again to me, you are crapping all over the vows, taken by god-parents everywhere, to love and support the newly baptized. It is, for me, just that simple. And it runs just that deep.

So, if you’ve got a belly full of gas from your breakfast, or heartburn over what you see happening on the news in cities these days regarding BLM, I will say only this: You are welcome to burp the foul stench built up in your stomach anywhere you so choose. It’s still a free country after all.  Only, don’t do it right in my grill, or I’m liable to come down on your head like a ton of bricks. Because, to ME, those lives are the lives that matter most of all.

These are people, not abstractions. And they’re sure as hell not points to be scored in some petty electoral squabble, or some Internet debating game you’d like me to play with you. Also, please try to distinguish these people from the after-effects of your own disrupted digestion. Because, bottom line? I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let the likes of you desecrate what I consider be holy ground: God’s own people, my friends, both the living and the dead. Got it? Gooooood.

 

(Here endeth the day’s lesson.)

The peace of the Lord, be always with you.

(And also with you.)

Now go in peace, to love and serve.