Good Morning All & Happy Wednesday (and National Rubber Eraser Day of all things)!
No family nor friends birthday wishes today, but tomorrow is my beloved son-in-law’s (Joel’s) birthday, in case you want to get a head start on wishing him a Happy Birthday! Here’s to you Joel! Speaking of birthdays, here’s to actress Claudia Cardinale, who is 82 today; to advice columnist Heloise, who turns 67 today; to actress/screenwriter and one of my favorite actresses, Emma Thompson, who is 61 today; to actor/writer and Alzheimer’s Disease champion (his mother has Alzheimer’s Disease), Seth Rogen, who turns 38 today; and to actress Emma Watson, who is 30 today. Happy Birthday to all of you!
I came a real gem of a card in one of my files yesterday…it’s a note from a Greg (or Gary) Condra of the Washington State Dept. of Veterans Affairs expressing his condolences on the death of my father, Don Newbold. His note includes a picture of Dad at a ceremony at Seattle’s Kingdome during a Seattle Seahawks game honoring Dad and other World War II veterans. The picture shows Dad standing on the field looking up into the stands. It’s a keeper, for sure! Here’s an excerpt from the note:
“I had the opportunity to work with Don on the cemetery advisory board (for the Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake WA) as we designed the state’s first veterans cemetery. His contributions were invaluable and instrumental in achieving the results you see today. I only wish I had been able to work with him more. He always had kind words and asked about Caleen who he worked with for so long on the WWII Memorial (on the State Capitol grounds in Olympia) and the history project (the World War II oral history project for Washington State). Without his work raising money tirelessly it would not have happened!…
I also had the joy of coming across a letter to me from my wife, Judy, in June, 1978 (we were dating then). It was written just after she had surgery on her foot. The following passage from her letter is pretty funny: “When you stay in the hospital they give you all these pills that are supposed to make your foot feel better, but actually they just put you to sleep so that you don’t know your foot hurts.” In the same letter, she mentions that she had been asked to make a wedding cake for one of her college friends. As some of you may know, Judy is nothing short of a master, world-class chef and baker and her reputation precedes her. So much so, that she did a number of wedding cakes over the years…Of the cakes she made, the marriages lasted at least 50-75% of the time…a much better batting average than in professional baseball, don’t you think?
I also found an e-mail I had sent to the Montana Dept. of Fish & Wildlife applauding their bear management program using Karelian Bear Dogs from the Wind River Bear Institute and its founder, Carrie Hunt. We first learned of the work of the bear dogs (Karelian Bear Dogs are originally from Finland) during a presentation that Carrie and her team made at Waterton Park in Alberta, Canada—just north of Glacier National Park in Montana in 2000. We were so impressed with their mission to reduce human-caused bear mortality and human-wildlife conflict that we decided to become a supporter of the Institute. They’ve done a great job in helping reduce the number of human-bear encounters in the parks since 1996 without injury to bear, human or dog…quite remarkable don’t you think? If you’re interested in finding out more about the work of the Wind River Bear Institute, check them out on Google. You’ll be glad you did! Carrie Hunt has a Karelian Bear Dog Kennel in Florence, Montana—just south of Missoula in the Bitterroot Valley. All you dog lovers out there just might want to visit Carrie’s facility and learn more about the Karelian Bear Dogs!
I came across the 1969 Topps Football Card for Jack Snow of Los Angeles Rams fame yesterday. He was always a favorite of mine, as he used to hook up with Rams quarterback great Roman Gabriel (my wife Judy’s all-time favorite football player) on many spectacular pass plays in the 1960s and early 1970s. Jack was born in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1943. His family moved to Long Beach CA during World War II and he was a three-sport star at St. Anthony Boys’ High School. He went on to play college football for legendary coach Ara Parseghian at Notre Dame. In his senior year at Notre Dame, he was a consensus All-American and finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1964 behind the winner, Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte. He more than doubled the old Notre Dame record for receiving yards in a season and had 19 more receptions in one season than any previous Notre Dame player. Jack also averaged nearly 37 yards per kick as the 1964 team’s punter. Jack was the 8th overall pick in the 1965 NFL draft by the Minnesota Vikings, who then traded him to the Los Angeles Rams. He finished his professional career with the Rams. His 6,012 career receiving yards ranked 30th in NFL history. Jack also acted in movies and T.V….In 1969 he appeared in the motion picture “Marooned” (starring Gregory Peck). He appeared as himself in the 1969 episode “Samantha’s Shopping Spree” of the television series “Bewitched.” He played the character Cassidy in the comedy movie “Heaven Can Wait.” After his football career, Jack went into the real estate business with college roommate Bob Arboit, in Newport Beach CA. He was the Rams receivers coach for a period of time in the 1980s. In 1992, he became an analyst for Rams radio broadcasts and a daily program host. He followed the team to St. Louis in 1995 and continued with them until his untimely death in January, 2006 due to complications from a staph infection at the age of 62. His wife, Merry, died in 1998 due to thyroid cancer. Jack and his wife had three children, one of which, J.T., was a professional baseball player for a number of years, most notably with the San Francisco Giants. The Snow family started The Snow Foundation to fund research in the fight against Wolfram Syndrome, a rare condition that afflicts one of Jack’s grandchildren. Here’s to Jack Snow, Roman Gabriel and all of the great Rams teams of the 1960s & early 1970s!
Here’s the word definition for the day:
Supine (soo-pine): “A person lying face upwards.”…”Failing to act or protest as a result of moral weakness or indolence.”
Here’s the thought for the day:
“If we expect to inherit the blessings of our fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive simplicity of manners, and not sink into inglorious ease. We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
—Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams, October 16, 1774, as quoted in “The Book of Who Said That?: Words You’ll Never Forget By People You Can’t Remember” (2017)
Here’s to a great “National Rubber Eraser Day” and lots of love & good wishes always!
Press on,
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, Mark, etc.)