On a flight from DC to Detroit a couple years ago, I sat next to an elderly woman wearing a leather bomber jacket. I started chatting with her and found out that she’d been in DC attending a reunion of her deceased husband’s WWII air force squadron. We talked through the entire flight, about how they met when they were both stationed in England, about his missions, and about our families and our cats.
When we landed and I got up to leave, she looked me straight in the eye and told me, “It was nice talking to you, and I hope you have a perfect life.” I gave her a funny look - a perfect life? - and she followed up with, “I don’t want you to have a good life. I want you to have a perfect life.” I’ve been trying ever since.
The late great John Hartford (fixed his bus in Springfield Illinois)
Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead
The Late Mark Vann, Banjo picker for Leftover Salmon
Wayne Gretzcky (met several times) VERY kind guy!
1997 Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings…waited on the whole team (sans goalies) Yzerman gave me all the teams autographs on one piece of paper for my Hockey-addicted boys…
Lots of St Louis Sports figures and Celebs …fine dining has it’s perks…
When I was a little girl, likely about age 5 or so, my Dad took me to a restaurant for lunch. As we were waiting for our order, I looked over and saw an elderly man, sitting there, eating soup. He looked so sad. I didn’t say anything to my Dad. I got up from my seat, walked over to the booth he was sitting in, climbed up beside him, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He just looked at me and smiled, and said “Thank You”. Then I went back to my lunch with my Dad.
To this day I still remember what he looked and sounded like. He touched my heart in a way I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe or understand.
I had a half-day encounter with a truly inspirational Aussie guy this summer who had a profound effect on me. And from subsequent emails, I was surprised to find that he thinks of me a lot too. After the tsunami, he saved a young girl from the remains of a building in which 91 bodies where found. She was the only survivor, and had been trapped there for 22 hours. He since returned to the island, and undertook a 17km swim from the pier around a neighbouring island and back, to raise money for the orphans. An amazing guy.
Read more about him here. He met up with mrs jjimm during the anniversary, and she supported him during his marathon swim, but he got struck down in Bangkok with a stomach bug, and he couldn’t return. But we’re still in email contact, and I hope he’ll remain part of my life for a long time.
About 6 years ago, my boyfriend at the time, my best friend, and I went to Philly to see Nine Inch Nails. We got there pretty early and went down to the CVS to get something to drink. There was a 15 year old girl in a Playbopy Bunny t-shirt there who had come from Baltimore alone to go to the show. Alone, she walked from the train station in really inappropriate shoes and now her feet were like chopped meat (it was a ridiculously long walk even in good shoes).
This kid, named Ingrid, had no idea what to do about her feet, and everything else for that matter. She asked us, a threesome of strangers, for a ride to the arena. I got her a box of bandaids and patched up her feet, and then we drove her and looked out for her until the show started. She was so damn naive, she kept thinking she was actually going to se Trent Reznor walking around the stadium. Anyone could have told her anything and she would have believed it, with some potentially horrible results. I felt like her big sister for the night.
After the show, we found her and drove her to the train depot and waited with her until she got on a train for home. I never heard from her again, and I think her parents should have their heads examined, but I hope she’s OK, and still starry-eyed with wonder.
In 1978 or 79 to 1981 I participated in the Pacific Region YMCA High School conference. It was a blast and occurred during Thanksgiving week. We would take a bus or van down to California, spend the day in San Francisco and the next day head to a camp in the San Bernadino mountains.
I met some pretty awesome people there and kept in touch with some for quite a awhile, but finally lost contact.
There was one guy, however, that just somehow touched me inside. He was a year or two older than me and he was awesome. Yes, he was cute and all that, but that’s not the way it was. It was funny, all kinds of people noticed and commented on the connection we seemed to have with each other. I still remember his name.
He lived on the other side of the state from me and actually drove over to visit me once. We decided to go hang out at the mall, where we ran into several people I went to school with. They all wrongly assumed that we were “together”. It was kind of embarrassing for both of us. I talked to him once or twice after that, but never saw him again.
i was part of a Son-rise team and we had regular meetings about the progress of ‘our’ autistic kid. One day Karen showed up. She had been the person to help our kid’s parents get started with Son-rise and had shown them how love, learning and play worked together. She travelled all over the UK and the world helping families and came back to visit every so often for a refresher.
I don’t know how to describe Karen. She was just so…something. She had a quality i can’t describe. She had this joy shining out of her and she was totally in love with the world. Not in a dippy way. She came across as incredibly smart both intellectually and emotionally. To be honest i was actually slightly intimidated by how much i liked this woman. She was so ALIVE! We had our meeting and talked about solutions for ‘our’ kid and talked about how much she was looking forward to the imminent birth of her own first child. It was a magical meeting.
It doesn’t sound much and i’m having problems describing how much of an effect she had on me. I’m having even greater problems describing how i felt two months later when i was told that she had died in childbirth. To meet someone so truly special just once is a blessing and i’m so glad i had the opportunity.
Girl called Marie, in Bonaparte’s Hotel up on St Paul’s Tce, one night in mid to late-1984. She had a fire-engine red wrought iron bed covered with leopard-skin and purple scarves (!)and would (or could) only make love while “When Doves Cry” was playing on her cassette deck. Fortunatley, she had a C90 tape made up with the song played over and over and over again. I had to walk from Bulimba to Highate Hill the next morning in the rain (maybe 5 miles). Never saw her again. Still get the heebie-jeebies when I hear “When Doves Cry”! Still, in its’ full form, a hell of a story to tell at parties! Never forgot Marie…
A couple come to mind. Back in the early 70’s I spent a summer working on a salmon charter fishing boat out of Westport, Washington. We would have the occasional celebrity on board but only one really stood out. He owned a car dealership in the Seattle area and his big shtick during his commercials was bashing the hoods of brand new cars with a sledge hammer. He brought a couple of knockout babes with him and for the most part played the character in his TV commercials. That particular day he was on the boat it was windy and rainy and the high swell made fishing difficult. While most of the passengers huddled in the cabin out of the weather, he insisted on fishing. For a couple of hours he told me what it was like being in the car business and what it was like being a local celebrity. But he also told me that he missed seeing his children from his first wife and despite his success, most nights he went to bed alone. It was rather sad. Anyone that lived in the Seattle area back then knows of Dick Balch. FYI, the worst celebrity I met was Lee Marvin, he treated everyone like crap and after being called the master baiter for the 10th time, he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t catching any fish. For some reason the bait kept coming off the hooks.
The other was a former co-worker of mine. I didn’t get to work with him till about a year before he retired but he made coming to work a pleasure. Before I worked with him and since he retired, it seems like I have to carry the load at work. But with him, we worked together extremely well and he always seemed to have a smile on his face. We haven’t talked much since he retired, he has been enjoying the non working life. He lost his wife last October to cancer and I just found out this past week he is stricken too. He is down in Phoenix getting medical treatment, I sure hope he comes back to Washington, I would like to see him again. If I don’t, Godspeed Ray Darling, thanks for being a friend.
