Update 11-13-07

Hi,

A trio of quick things and a Veterans Day comment from The New York Times.

First, a memory teaser from Barnet Kellman, who adds that he hopes it’s an inoffensive bit of nostalgia.  See if you can answer this quiz:
        Today, I was working with two wardrobe ladies on a costume which has to do some funny things on my new show (Notes From The Underbelly -- coming on Monday after Thanksgiving, ABC 9:30 -- shameless plug).  Anyway, I told the ladies I thought the garment they were offering me would work if they would add a “fruit loop” to the back.  Though they were both in their forties and very well-versed in fashion jargon, they stared at me blankly, not understanding what I was asking for.  I told them that “fruit loop” was a term that was very familiar to me from South High. 
        Remember was it was?  Extra credit:  Remember what we did to them?
   
    [Rich -- Next, a question from me.  My sister just asked me about a YMCA that I went to in the spring of 1955.  I answered with my usual semi-articulate, "Huh?"  She thinks it was in Cedarhurst or Hewlett, but she's not sure.  She also thinks it was in an old house.
        I have no idea where it was, what it was, or what I was doing there.  The only thing I can vaguely connect with a Y at that time is I went to what I think was a Y-sponsored camp for two weeks later that summer.  Wel-Met Camp.  Or Camp Wel-Met.  I think it was near Port Jervis in New Jersey, which always sounds like it ought to be an oil refinery.  Can anyone help on that, too?  There's no extra credit and no prizes.]
   
    Finally, from Amy Lieberman, the latest performing schedule for the man in her life and the singing voice of Boston Legal, Billy Valentine.  This is mostly for those of us who live in LA or those of you who occasionally visit.  But it's also a reminder that Billy has a CD out that would make a very nice holiday gift.  And have I bought one yet?  No, but I did remember to pay my Alumni Association dues.
        November 26th
        Billy Valentine and the Stuart Elster Trio at the Casa Del Mar Hotel, 1910 Ocean Way. Santa Monica,
       California, 6:30 PM -- 10:30 PM
      November 30th
        Billy Valentine and the Stuart Elster Trio at the Universal Sheraton, 333 Universal Hollywood Drive,
        Universal City, California, 8:00 PM --12:00 PM
      And ... December 31st -- New Year's Eve
        Billy Valentine and the Stuart Elster Trio at Shutters Hotel on the Beach, 1 Pico Boulevard, Santa
        Monica, California, 9:00 PM -- 1:00 AM
         For those of you who are not in Los Angeles, of course, you can always hear Billy's mellifluous voice on
    Boston Legal every week, from the title track on through the end of every episode.  Also, you are more than welcome to take a look through his website.  The link is: www.billy-valentine.com    Enough said.  Enjoy.
    We look forward to seeing you eventually.
   
    And the Veterans Day memory, filched and condensed from the Times:  Over There – and Gone Forever by Richard Rubin, November 12, 2007
         By any measure, Frank Buckles has led an extraordinary life.  Born on a farm in Missouri in 1901, he saw his first automobile in 1905 and his first airplane in 1907.  At 15, he moved to Oklahoma and went to work in a bank.  In the 1940s, he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war.  When he returned to the United States, he married, had a daughter, and bought a farm near Charles Town, West Virginia, where he lives today.  He drove a tractor until he was 104.  But even more significant than the remarkable details of Mr. Buckles' life is what he represents:  Of the two million soldiers the United States sent to France in World War I, he is the only one left.
        This Veterans Day marked the 89th anniversary of the armistice that ended that war.  The holiday was first proclaimed as Armistice Day by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and it was renamed in 1954 to honor veterans of all wars.  There's a good chance that this Veterans Day will prove to be the last with a living American World War I veteran. Mr. Buckles is one of only three left.  Ten died in the last year.  In documentary The War, Ken Burns notes that 1,000 World War II veterans are dying every day.  But the passing of the last few veterans of the First World War has gone largely unnoticed.
        Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.  Almost from the moment the armistice took effect, the United States has worked hard to forget World War I.  Maybe that's because more than 100,000 Americans never returned from it, lost for a cause that few can explain even now.  The first few who did come home were given ticker-tape parades, but most returned only to indifference.  There was no GI Bill to see that they got a college education, vocational training, a mortgage, or a small-business loan.  There was nothing but the hope that they might eventually return to what then President Warren Harding would call "normalcy."  Prohibition, isolationism, the stock market crash, and the crisis in farming made that hard.  The Great Depression made it harder.
        A few years ago, I set out to find any living American World War I veterans.  No one knew how many there were or where they might be, and no one much seemed to care.  Eventually, I did find some, including Frank Buckles.  Eighty-six years earlier, he'd lied about his age to enlist.  The Army sent him to England, but he managed to get himself sent to France, though never to the trenches.  After the armistice, he was assigned to guard German prisoners waiting to be repatriated.  Seeing that he was still just a boy, the prisoners adopted him, taught him their language, gave him food from their Red Cross packages and bits of their uniforms to take home as souvenirs.  In the 1930s, while working for a steamship company, Mr. Buckles visited Germany, and it was difficult for him to reconcile his fond memories of those old POWs with what he saw of life under the Third Reich.  The steamship company later sent him to run its office in Manila.  There, in 1942, the Japanese occupied the city, took him prisoner, and kept him in captivity for 39 months
         Still, he easily carries the burden of being the last of his kind.  "For a long time, I've felt that there should be more recognition of the surviving veterans of World War I," he tells me, but there isn't.  Four years ago, I attended a Veterans Day observance in Orleans, Massachusetts.  Near the head of the parade, a 106-year-old named J. Laurence Moffitt waved to the small crowd of onlookers, sporting the same helmet he had been wearing in the Argonne Forest at the moment the armistice took effect.  I didn't know it then, but that was the last small-town American Veterans Day parade to feature a World War I veteran.  The years since have seen the passing of one last after another -- the last combat-wounded veteran, the last Marine, the last African-American, the last Yeomanette -- until, now, we are down to the last of the last.  It's hard for anyone to say for certain what it is that we will lose when Frank Buckles dies.  It's not that World War I will then become history.  It's been history for a long time now.  But it will become a different kind of history, the kind we can't quite touch anymore, the kind that will be just beyond our grasp now.  We can't stop that from happening.  But we should, at least, take notice of it.