Category: Really Important Things

When words still pack a punch

In July 1971, Dave Garroway was hosting a summer replacement series called The CBS Newcomers. In that role, he had two duties. One was to be the master of ceremonies, welcoming the audience and introducing the young performers before each segment. The other role was to be Dave Garroway. Over the years Dave had been known for his observations on life – many offbeat, some profound, some worth a chuckle, but all were a vital part of the style that made Dave a favorite with so many.

On one episode of Newcomers, Dave began talking about how Americans lived in a disposable society. “We drink coffee from disposable cups,” he said, “and wipe our faces with disposable napkins. The airlines serve cocktails in disposable glasses.” At that point, Dave reached for his pocket and pulled out an object, holding it up for the cameras. “It saddens me to think there are those watching this show who have never owned one of these. It’s called a fountain pen. It didn’t write under water, and it didn’t write upside down, but it wrote beautifully. And then – get this now! – when it ran dry, you didn’t throw it away. You filled it again – and again – and soon it fit your hand. It got to be your pen.” It was a moment that was pure Garroway. And, in my case, it still packed a punch nearly 50 years later.

The other week, as I was transcribing all these notes, I came to this moment where Dave talked about fountain pens. Like most of you, I’m accustomed to writing with whatever ball-point pen is handy at the moment.1 At the office, I’m fond of those ball-point gel pens with the replaceable cartridges. But something about that passage knocked loose a memory in my mind, and I did something about it.

When I was in high school, I was at a drug store browsing around. In the school supplies aisle, I saw a fountain pen. It was a Parker Vector in a blister pack, the entry-level pen. It cost more than other pens in the aisle, but I got entranced by the idea of writing with something different and bought it. That pen was my best friend the rest of my days in high school. I still have pages and pages of notes written in that flowing, slightly translucent blue ink I fed it through cartridges. That poor pen went through so much – I forget how many times I bent the nib – but it worked like a champ, and it was my pen, my faithful companion. I still have it – somewhere.

And that’s what I started thinking about the other week. Where was my friend, my pen? I searched everywhere, but couldn’t find it. After a while, I still couldn’t find it. No fear; I just ordered a newer pen that came highly recommended, and then a neat clone of a classic pen. Both of them are in the bag I carry to work every day.2 But that wasn’t enough. About that time, a check arrived with some royalties for the book that was published last year.3 And I thought it would be nifty to commemorate that book with a little present to myself. Something that would last. Something I could use. Why not a pen? And not just any pen, but a pen that had fascinated me for a long time?4 So now, a few dollars later, this little beauty is in my collection, a little prize to myself for getting a neat book published after so many years. And it is my pen, and I hope it will be to the last of my days. I love this beauty, this reminder of another time. It feels solid and balanced in my hand. It writes wonderfully. I look forward to a long, happy friendship.

And it’s all because a little aside on a short-lived, little-remembered television show 49 summers ago knocked loose a recollection. There’s still power in Dave’s words. Not a bad legacy to leave.

:: No, we haven’t gone anywhere. We have just been overwhelmed of late by no end of things: a crush of demands at work, a few more demands involving outside work (some of it paying work, too, and we seldom refuse that kind of deal), as well as the overwhelming sense of unease and anxiety in the run up to (and playing out of) Election 2020. With all of that going on, I haven’t been able to spend the time I’ve wanted in Dave’s realm.

I can, however, report that all those pages of notes are steadily being woven into a coherent manuscript – as of right now, I’m up to Dave working as an NBC guide, his eye on taking an announcers’ class. So even though I’m not saying much, this thing is still happening. I do have a contractual deadline, after all, and I keep those kinds of deadlines, no matter how much oil gets burned in the wee hours of the morning to do so.5 Stay tuned, y’all.

A priceless response to a miracle

As we’ve gone through this present health crisis, historian that I am at heart, I’ve often thought about various scourges from the past and the effects they had on people in those days. One in particular has come to mind on several occasions, and for as much as I may have overdosed on back issues of Life magazine and started having idle daydreams about life in the 1940s and 1950s, all it takes is the mention of one particular affliction to make me come back to the present. And it’s that terrifying affliction1, and the miracle that helped end its reign of terror, that figures into a story Dave Garroway never tired of telling on television programs or sharing in interviews – because it was a story that drove home just how meaningful a miracle it was.

One evening in the 1960s2 Dave was getting ready to go to a testimonial dinner for Dr. Jonas Salk. Young Dave Jr.3 asked his dad where he was going.

“To a dinner for Dr. Salk,” Garroway replied.

“Who’s Dr. Salk?” Dave Jr. asked.

“He’s the man who found the vaccine for polio.”

“What’s polio?”
—
May the day come, and may it be soon, when children will ask the same about our current scourge – and so many other health afflictions we have yet to conquer.4

Why we do this

As will happen when you’re an author, I’ve been asked what my next book will be about. “Oh, about 300 pages, give or take” is a tempting response, but that’s not a terribly social thing to say. Instead I reply with a certain degree of pride, “It’s about Dave Garroway.” That gets me one of two responses. One – typically from people past a certain age – will be a gleam of recognition, followed by memories of how that person loved to watch Dave back in the day.1 The other typical response is a polite version of “…who?” And that prompts my short answer, that he was the first host of Today, and that usually satisfies the person asking the question even if it reduces Dave to one role.2

Then there are the other types of responses. Sometimes they’re fun responses. There are the inevitable wags who will make jokes about J. Fred Muggs, as if Dave’s life can be reduced to those three or so years. Then there are the people who focus on Dave’s bad habits, on the tantrums he was reputed to have thrown off-camera, on the tales of drug use (and the type and amount of drugs will vary, depending on which rumors are being repeated).3 And, of course, there are those who will focus on the way he died and suggest there were bats in his belfry all along.4

It all gets wearying after a while. I’ve been digging into Dave Garroway’s life for more than four years now. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on. I’ve had lengthy conversations with his children, talked to people who worked with him and to people whose parents worked with him. I’ve read through his FBI file. I’ve traveled hundreds of miles to dig through box after box of archival material. I’ve scoured a half-century of newspaper archives and read through thousands of articles. Whatever I’ve been able to find, I’ve read. And something in the back of my mind, somehow, keeps waiting to find that big dark secret that’s going to ruin him forever. I keep thinking of the story that David McCullough told of wanting to write a book about Picasso, only to get a hundred pages in and realizing that even though Picasso was of monumental importance as an artist, he couldn’t stand Picasso as a person, so he decided to write about someone he found likable, and that’s how his Pulitzer-winning biography of Harry Truman came to be.

I’ve often wondered when my Picasso moment was coming with Dave Garroway. So far, it hasn’t. Instead, the more I read about him, the more I process what I’ve learned about him, the more I like him. The more I understand him. Yes, there are times he did things I wish he hadn’t. I wish I could go back in time and tell him to ignore the advice of that dentist at that card game, that Dexedrine was going to do horrible things to his mind and lasting damage to his body. I wish we knew then what we know now about how to treat chronic depression. I wish I could tell him to not sign away five years of his career when he left NBC in 1961. And, of course, I wish I could have kept him from doing what he did that day in July 1982.

But I can’t. All I can do is tell the story of his 69 years the best and most honest way I can. Which, for me, is not going to be that hard to do. I haven’t uncovered any deep or dark secrets. Eccentricities? A lot of those, but harmless. But I haven’t uncovered a life of dirty deeds, of sociopathy, of crime or vice. I haven’t unveiled anything that’s really uncommon for anyone of his times.5 Instead, I’ve discovered the life of a man who was little different from the rest of us, only he led his life in the public eye, and from that came benefits and disadvantages that were magnified because of his fame. But, viewed in scale, how different was he from the rest of us who live in privacy?

Carol Ford is someone I have become blessed to know.6 Years ago she took on a most formidable task: writing a biography of Bob Crane. That word “formidable” is because Bob Crane is known as much for certain aspects of his private life, and the circumstances of his murder, as he is remembered for Hogan’s Heroes. It wasn’t helped by a rather scurrilous major motion picture that took great liberties with the historical record. It was a task I wouldn’t dare to take on. Where would I begin, and how far up the wall would the inevitable jokes and comebacks and unkind comments drive me?

But Carol and her co-authors, made of stronger stuff than I, set out to correct that record. They talked with everyone they could locate, including people who knew Bob Crane really well. They did the hard work and research. And out of it came a truly massive volume7 that will tell you everything you want to know about the real Bob Crane. Not the Bob Crane that you think you know, not the Bob Crane from the sick jokes, not the Bob Crane from that hit-job of a movie, but the real and complicated and human Bob Crane who actually existed. Not just the Hogan’s Heroes Bob Crane, but the up-and-coming DJ, the white-hot star of KNX Radio, the sensation of a top-rated television comedy, and then Crane’s efforts after Hogan’s Heroes ended. It doesn’t shy away from the difficult topics about his life, but it discusses them in a context that’s missing from other accounts, and debunks a lot of tall tales that have spread about Crane’s life.8 It treats Crane’s life in scale, and you learn a lot about him that you didn’t know before, because no one before had cared to tell those stories because they wanted to talk too much about sex, videotapes and murder. You never knew so much about Bob Crane being a terrific drummer or a world-class disk jockey with a quick wit and an uncanny sense of timing, or a man who was genuinely loved and is still fondly remembered by his friends and colleagues.9

Carol continues to be Bob Crane’s foremost advocate, and makes appearances in the media and at conventions and in other forums to promote the book and speak on Bob’s behalf.10 It hasn’t been the easiest task, and I know for a fact she’s tired of hearing questions about that movie, that she’d be happy if no one ever brought up Crane’s murder or those videotapes or any of that ever again. But I know why she does this. It’s because she feels a duty to tell the story of Bob Crane with honesty and dignity, to rescue him from the jokes and the caricatures and to help people remember that Bob Crane was a human being with a full and complicated life much like the rest of us. And in this, she has succeeded.11 Her incredibly detailed book restores Crane’s humanity, shows his flaws in scale and restores focus to the many good things about him. After reading it, you don’t look at his famous squinting smile as the leer of a wolf, but as the grin of a man who couldn’t conceal a quick wit. Bob Crane is fortunate to have Carol Ford and her associates as his biographers; they have told his story in a thorough manner, and they are tireless champions of his legacy, a story that is so often not told because one aspect of his life drowns out everything else.

And in a wider sense, that’s why what we do matters. Bob Crane can’t be reduced to punchlines about videotaped sex and a gruesome murder. Nor can Dave Garroway be reduced to a caricature about drug addiction and co-starring with a chimpanzee and committing suicide. Were all of those aspects of his story? Yes, they were. But that’s not all, and the real story, in scale, tells us a lot more. Here is a man who lived and breathed and loved and lost, just as all of us have. And with the help of a lot of good people, I’m going to tell you his story, and I think you’ll learn some things and appreciate what he did.

That’s why it matters. It’s because if there aren’t people doing this kind of work, a lot of history is going to get lost. And yes, there are times when it seems it’s a lonely, thankless job. I’m under no illusions that Dave Garroway is very much a niche subject. I don’t foresee long lines stretching around corners on the day this book is released. I don’t see getting interviewed on the morning shows about him. Any audiobook version will probably be you hiring me to come to your house and read it out loud in your living room.12 But I am committed to telling you the Garroway story because I want to cut through a lot of the old tales and urban legends, because I’ve found the real story to be a lot more fascinating than anything you’ve read before. Because the more I go into his story, the more I find it’s worth telling. And even if I only sell ten copies of the book (and even if those copies are sold to kin folks who purchase them out of pity), this whole exercise will have been worth it. I’ll know that I helped keep the Garroway story from vanishing down the memory hole.

That’s why we do this. We do this because we care. We do this because, somehow, these stories have meaning to us. The more we come to know the people we write about, they start to matter to us the way friends or family might. Not in the sense that we defend their every action or excuse their misdeeds – that’s fandom gone awry. But, rather, in the sense that we care about making sure they are represented with truth and accuracy, but also with dignity and fairness, just the same as we hope our own stories will be told when we’re gone.

If I can do that much for Dave Garroway, it really won’t matter how many copies of the book I sell, or if it only gathers dust on library shelves. The man’s story is worth the telling, and worth the remembering. And that’s why I’m happy to do it.

When the echoes disturb

There are times when the work I am doing on the life of Dave Garroway, though those events took place decades ago, has echoes of the times in which we now live. And sometimes, those echoes are for the saddest reasons.

Over the last several weeks, I have been transcribing a handwritten log of articles I’ve saved from my searches in archival newspapers. You rediscover a lot of things you’d put aside in your head when you do that. Some of the rediscovered items are funny, and some are goofy. I had planned this week to write about a few cute little pieces I’d found about Garroway, along with Steve Allen and a few others, making it cool to wear glasses.

But this week isn’t the time for that. Not with what’s going on right now, not with its raw and inescapable sadness and frustration, the vaguely sick feeling it’s provided, and the many reminders of how much we’ve fallen short and how far we have yet to go. All of this has made me think, instead, about some things that echo with disturbing similarities.

In the last few days, I have been working on the late 1950s and early 1960s. By this time Dave Garroway, having hosted Today for several years and being very successful in so doing, had very much made the show his. The program had moved into heavier content as its novelty wore off, and Garroway had not been hesitant in using the program to bring attention to things that concerned him. One of those things was the cause of civil rights.

A few years back I covered an instance when Garroway faced down a bunch of bigots who were heckling a young Sarah Vaughan. To him, such things weren’t a pose; equality, and thinking for yourself, were core values. His father had taught him to get all the facts before judging anyone or anything, and it was a lesson he never forgot.

Garroway’s commitment continued into the Today years, both on the program and behind the scenes. Prominent figures for justice such as Thurgood Marshall would be interviewed by Garroway, as would victims of injustice, such as a black applicant who was denied a job as a page in the House of Representatives. Black entertainers such as Erroll Garner were prominently featured.1 On a March 1961 edition of Today, Garroway devoted both hours to Oscar Brown to help raise support for his his musical Kicks & Co.; within days the musical, which needed backers for part of its $400,000 budget, had received thousands in donations from dozens of viewers, ranging from a music teacher’s check for $5.00 to two separate donations of $5,000.

Oscar Brown with Dave Garroway. (NBC photo)

One day in December 1957, when it was learned that an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center had been the first black military pilot and a World War I hero, Garroway insisted on interviewing that man, Eugene Bullard, on Today. At the end of the interview, the crew spontaneously applauded.

Garroway displays Eugene Bullard’s medals. (NBC photo)

Today‘s commitment to equality didn’t just apply to what people saw on camera; behind the scenes, for instance, Fred Lights became network television’s first African-American stage manager.2

It would be comforting to think Garroway’s take on matters of equality was warmly received. But it wasn’t always. Going through the archival collections from that era, we find signs of those times in sad abundance. Some examples: a South Carolina newspaper editorial accusing Garroway of “dramatizing” the crisis around the integration of a Little Rock school in 1957, or a letter to a Florida newspaper calling Garroway “one-sided” and “out to get the MVP award from the NAACP.” When Sen. Strom Thurmond appeared on Today after his marathon filibuster against civil rights legislation, Garroway asked Thurmond if the filibuster was meant to counter the possibility that South Carolina Gov. George Timmerman might run against him in 1960; Timmerman, himself no friend of civil rights, told a newspaper that if he ran, “I won’t leave it up to a nincompoop like Dave Garroway to make an announcement for me.”

While some of that is rather ripe, nothing can match the venom aimed at Garroway from a couple of states in particular during the period from 1956 to 1961. Going through papers from Mississippi and Louisiana in particular will make you acquainted with some particularly awful editorials and opinion pieces.3 For instance, a December 1956 Today story about prosecutors rebutting a story of bigotry motivating a prosecution was blasted by a Mississippi paper as being slanted. When Mississippi Gov. James Coleman was interviewed in April 1957, an editorial charged Garroway with asking “loaded questions” and displaying a “slight air of holding his nose.” A subsequent editorial accused the press of hating Mississippi and looking for angles to get that slant in.4 Even an item about Lynda Mead being the second consecutive Miss Mississippi to be crowned Miss America found a way to slam Garroway as “one of those northern bigots who likes to lambast the South with innuendo” and hoped he would “change his tune after his audience rating falls off drastically.”5

In May 1961, as the Freedom Riders challenged segregation laws in the South, Garroway aired a piece about one of the movement’s figures, activist James Peck, on Today. Peck, whose long tenure as an activist in several movements had seen him arrested several times, was called a felon by Mississippi Gov. James Eastland in an effort to discredit the Freedom Riders movement. The Peck interview on Today was yet another opening for segregationists to attack Garroway.6 Subsequent editorials called Garroway a “South-baiter” and slammed his impending resignation from Today as a hypocritical act.7 Another editorial praised the mayor of Jackson “for his word duel with TV Communistator Dave Garroway, whose soon departure from the networks will cause no tears to drop in Dixie.” Yet another extended hollow condolences on the death of Garroway’s wife: “Of course we know of the terrible tragedy in his family and we offer our deepest sympathy8 but we believe that his leaving the air lanes will be one of the greatest aids the South could have had, by his absence.” A columnist called “Davie Garroway’s Today show” as “offensive to Dixie” and “due to lose its bigoted star…Dour Dave.”9

Garroway would sometimes wonder if his outspokenness on civil rights had cost him, both in terms of his career and in his personal affairs.10 And there were times when he was at personal risk. Dave Jr. remembered a story in which his dad went to a jazz club in the South and stepped outside for some fresh air. Garroway suddenly found himself surrounded by a group of angry bigots who called him “a (racial slur beginning with ‘n’) lover” and tried to shove him around. The band leader saw this, gave a signal to his band mates, and, still playing, they marched out of the club. Without missing a note on their instruments, they surrounded Garroway and shielded him from the bigots.

There are many things troubling us right now. I hope someday soon I’m writing on more uplifting aspects of Garroway’s life. This, however, was too uncomfortable a parallel with our current moment. As in the times Garroway lived, we’ve got some work to do.

Not exactly at large, for now

You may have been wondering why the blog has been silent for the last several weeks. There are reasons. This is the kind of blog post I hate most – the “why I haven’t posted anything for a while” post – but in the interest of disclosure, I’m writing this so you won’t think this project is abandoned.

It’s already been an interesting time here as it is. That goes with the profession I’m in. But the current health situation only made made it more interesting. We had just come back from Spring Break, and it was perhaps Wednesday when we started to get the feeling that the dominoes would topple in our direction. Sure enough, early on Friday afternoon we got the word: we would be online-only for the next two weeks, with further word to come later.

What happened next was intense. Well, for a lot of us. I had already started planning for online-only instruction and just had to take the last remaining steps. The higher-ups sent word down of a required three-day in-service session that would commence the following Monday, where we would get instruction on what to do – most of which, for me, would be redundant. I also didn’t like the idea of being in three days of all-day meetings around 60 or 70 other people, and voiced my misgivings to the higher-ups.

Fortunately, by the time Monday came around, the higher-ups had decided to follow new guidance from the health authorities. Those of us who knew our way around online learning were excused after the general sessions the first day. I retreated to my office, began putting my lessons into the course management system, and was ready for business when instruction resumed later that week. We have since been notified that we’re online-only the rest of the semester, which was no big surprise, but I was ready for that. My institution has handled this big shift very well, especially with how quickly it all happened, but we’ve done it.

I would like to say that it’s all been smooth sailing, and that it has left me copious time to work on Garroway. Well, guess again. There have been hiccups, and in some ways this has been more labor-intensive as I work to keep the students focused on what remains. There’s also the need to be available to the students during the day, which means I keep an ear out for the e-mail alerts and such, and when I’m on guard like that it’s hard to focus. There’s also the occasional moments of melancholy; I think about all the little signposts of springtime that I look forward to each year, and they’re hard to enjoy on a deserted campus. I’m especially gutted for my seniors, who were looking forward to that march across the stage in a few weeks as they got their degrees, and now that’s gone. But in hard times, you do what you must.

As for things at home, our outside interactions at present are limited to my weekly run to the store. We are taking social distancing to its extreme, perhaps, but we’re doing our part. It helps that I am an introvert who is married to an introvert. But with two cats, a good (if not great) Internet connection, and a house in the middle of a forest with plenty of wildlife to watch, it is a pleasant way to spend a quarantine period. (Sometimes it’s even blissful, as it is on days when Turner Classic Movies – for my money, the greatest cable channel in history – gets really good.)

And thankfully, our health – so far – is good. What bothers us here isn’t the current plague, but the tremendous amounts of pollen that waft through the air at present. I’m hoping we will get a good rain shower to take the edge off, at least for a bit. It’s misery to see bright, warm sunshine tempt you, only to know you’ll pay for it with tingling eyes and an itchy nose later.

What does all this mean, longer term? Well, I had hoped to get some travel done in the coming weeks and months to conduct some interviews and on-site archival work. Those plans have changed. I am working on ways to conduct my interviews remotely, but that will take time to sort out.

The good thing, however, is that I still have a mountain of material I haven’t made use of in the manuscript (or, for that matter, on this blog). I haven’t had time to go through it all – too busy with trying to stockpile it, I haven’t taken the time to figure out just where it fits in the Dave Garroway story. So it may be that the forced hiatus in travel could pay a few dividends. We’ll see, at least.

In the meantime, nothing is more important than staying healthy, and each of us doing our part to help stamp out this crud. Be well out there and I’ll see you soon with some new material.