From Crayons and Perfume to Smartboard Jungle (Part Two)

Linda Ellerbee, my news hero!

Well, anyway, back then, I could not wait to get to college so I could prepare to be what I felt was my calling—to be a broadcast journalist, a television newsreader. I was going to be the next Barbara Walters or Linda Ellerbee. She was the witty, irreverent NBC News Overnight newsreader who seemed to be having a blast being herself while reporting the news.  I could do that, I thought.

Ever since I was in third grade, I loved to write plays, stories and you name it. As an only child, I did not have any siblings to play or fight with. So I would often invent stories for my Barbie dolls or sit in my big, yellow beanbag chair imagining that I was a Brady, a Partridge, or a Walton. I longed to be a part of a big, loving family. I would sit back and dream I was Jan, the sister with the longest, blondest hair, hanging out with Marcia and Cindy. Or in my mind, I was aboard the psychedelic colored Partridge Family bus, on a way to a gig, to sing I Think I Love You.

Back then, I wrote, starred in and directed my first play ever entitled, Is She Really Miss America? It basically was about how someone could be really pretty on the outside but not a very good friend or person. I was so lucky that Mrs. B, my third grade teacher encouraged these independent writing projects. She even let us present it in class one day. How cool was that I got to direct a few of my close childhood friends in a makeshift, classroom production? How cool to have a teacher like Mrs. B that let me express myself. A teacher who let me be me. Someone who allowed me to express my passion for writing.  Shouldn’t all teachers encourage students to pursue their passions, get them excited about learning and living?

The Waltons taught us all many important life lessons.

 Back in December, I went to the 40^th anniversary of the Waltons’ Homecoming. This was the beautiful holiday story that launched the popular television series about a poor, rural Virginia family during the Great Depression. In the Homecoming, the family waits for the dad to return from work, which is located far from Walton’s mountain. It’s Christmas Eve, dad promised to come back home. There’s a huge snowstorm, everyone’s worried about dad. Then John Boy, the eldest, is dispatched to try and find him. And of course, the father ends up coming home late Christmas eve, bearing presents for all. Just a sweet and lovely story about the power of love, patience and family. The Waltons have little more than a warm bed and a warm bowl of soup. Yet they have each other. But there is a bigger message here and I call it,” embracing our inner John Boy.” Following our hearts, hopes and dreams. 

I always related to John Boy since we both loved to write and were the idealists who saw the world through rose colored glasses.

 

John Boy (who was really series creator and lead writer, Earl Hamner when he was growing up in the Blue Ridge mountains of central Virginia)), wanted to be a writer more than anything else. But he knew it was unrealistic since his family was dirt poor. They could barely feed seven kids, let alone think about sending their eldest son to college. He thought he needed to learn a trade and settle in the confines of Walton’s Mountain. But John Boy’s passion was to write. He would scribble on those tablets and hide them under his mattress. In the Homecoming, Richard Thomas’ John Boy noted, “You know what’s in this tablet, Mama? All my secret thoughts- how I feel, and what I think about. Things I never told anybody ‘till now. What it’s like late at night to hear a whippoorwill call and its mate call back, the rumble of the midnight train crossen the trestle at Rockfish, watchen water go by in the creek and knowen that some day it’ll reach the ocean and wonderen if I’ll ever see the ocean. Sometimes I hike over to Route 29 and watch the people in their cars and wagons go by and I wonder what their lives are like. Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. It all gets bottled up and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. Can’t sleep or rest till I rush off up here and write it in that tablet.”

Ultimately, John Boy (Earl) ended up going to the University of Richmond on a scholarship and through the sacrifice of his family Recalls Earl Hamner in his blog, You, Me and The Lampost, “My father ruefully parted with the white shirt he had planned to be buried in, and my mother spent the money she earned from selling eggs and buttermilk to buy me a suit from Sears and Roebuck.”

We all need dreams, hopes and passion. Kids need adults and teachers to support and nurture those dreams. We all need to follow the John Boy inside of us and listen to our hearts. Listen to our calling.

Back to when I was a kid. I continued to write and direct my own classroom plays, usually my own original episodes of then popular television shows like Charlie’s Angels. It was so much fun. A group of classmates would come over. We would rehearse and then recreate an episode in class and perform for the younger kids, too. How cool my teachers let me do that. They encouraged me to be me.

In junior high, I loved Saturday Night Live. So I would write my own episodes starring Rosanna-danna, the Coneheads, Lisa Loopner and her goofy boyfriend, Todd. Whatever. But again. My teachers encouraged me. And again friends would come over. We’d practice and present in English class.

Not exactly the happiest of my years but met lots of important mentors who helped bend and shape me into who I am today.

At my junior high school in Flushing, I met one of my favorite teachers ever. Mrs. H. She was young, pretty, sweet, soft spoken with a big heart. In Mrs. H’s class, we read classics like Julius Caesar and the Diary of Anne Frank. While reading Anne Frank, we were instructed to write our own diary entries—not just in response to Anne’s story. We were encouraged to write about what was happening in our own lives. At the time, my parents were broken up. I was an awkward thirteen year old with bad hair, zits and no friends. But I had a passion to be a newscaster. I would actually start to shake if I did  not make it home in time for the six o’clock news. I would pour my heart out to Mrs. H. It was so clear from her responses that she cared about me. She would write back, encouraging me to hold on to my dreams and consoling me that my tough home life would eventually get better. Ah, to have a teacher who cared and who would take the time to reach out to me.  You don’t ever forget that.

Then there was Mr. S. The tall, geeky English teacher with skinny, bird-like legs, who it seemed like in one single step, could glide across the room. He was not warm and fuzzy like Mrs. H. But he ran the Bugle, an awesome award-winning junior high school newspaper. When I was in seventh grade, he had a ninth grader write about me, the aspiring playwright-newscaster. Then in eighth grade, I got to interview my heroes, the local anchors of the Eyewitness News Team, Ernie Anastos and Rose Ann Scamardella (on whom Gilda Radner’s Rosanna-danna character was based on. In fact, one time, I did my own Rosaan-danna routine for Ms. Scamardella, which she seemed to enjoy). Mr. S. published my interviews with Ernie, Rose Ann and then heartthrob, weatherman, Storm Field, even though you were not technically supposed to be writing for the Bugle until your senior year—ninth grade. So I became a bit of a mini-celebrity in school.

Rose Ann Scamaradella and Ernie Anastos, two of the nicest people in tv news and two personal mentors.

 

Then in ninth grade, I became music and entertainment editor of the Bugle. I wrote many music articles including a John Lennon tribute (that was the year Double Fantasy came out and the year the former Beatle was shot outside the Dakota building by a crazed fan). I continued my connection to Ernie. He was so nice to me. He’d let me come down, watch the news broadcast live and introduce me to his fellow news people in the studio and in the newsroom. I met local legends Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel. Grimsby was a character. He had a dartboard of the Ayotollah Khomeini in his office and when the camera was not on him, would sit with his sneakered feet up on the news desk, smoking a cigarette, in a pair of faded blue jeans. It did not matter. All New York City saw was Grimsby from his waist up anyway and he wore a blazer and tie. Beutel on the other hand, was dressed immaculately, polished, polite and a real gentleman. He had the perfect, cool, deep authoritative news voice, had been to Vietnam and covered every important local story, too. One of my favorite memories was interviewing this veteran newsman. He answered every question thoughtfully. He was the consummate professional. I was so sad when I heard he died of Altzheimer’s. I can’t imagine this once sharp newsman’s mind ever fading.

On to high school where I continued to write music and entertainment stories. I began reviewing Broadway and off-Broadway plays-musicals, getting to see them for free. I continued to visit Ernie and the Eyewitness News team. I remember one night he introduced me to his then new co-anchor, Kaity Tong by saying, “This is the girl I told you about. She is going to be sitting in your seat someday!”