Month: July 2019

Was your mom a fan of the long-running CBS soap opera “As The World Turns”?

My Mom sure was. And one of the characters she — and the nation — were most captivated by was a wily, love-her-and-hate-her woman named Lisa Miller Grimaldi Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman McColl Mitchell Chedwyn.

Lisa was a fixture on “As The Wirkd Turns” for 50 years, played all those years by the very talented Eileen Fulton.

I know my mom would have busted her buttons If she’d lived long enough to see me interview Eileen Fulton in the spring of 1988 about a novel she had written, a murder mystery.

It’s not often that a two-year-old toddler makes the cover of Time Magazine.

But 26 years ago this month, the magazine reported on the story that by that point had the entire nation’s attention. She was known as “Baby Jessica,” the subject of an exceptionally bitter custody battle, pitting her birth mother against the couple who had legally adopted her.

That couple, Jan DeBoer and Roberta “Robby” DeBoer, eventually lost in court, and were forced to return Baby Jessica to her biological parents, Dan Schmidt and Cara Clausen.

A year later, the DeBoers wrote a book. That’s when I met them.

It’s the midsummer classic, major league baseball’s All-Star Game.

And no player ever appeared in more All-Star games than the legendary and once home run king Hank Aaron.

Now, when I was growing up, Ernie Banks of the Cubs was my main man, but Hank Aaron was right up there – and not just because we share a birthday.

I got the chance to meet Hammerin’ Hank in the spring of 1991…

Some sad news about “Mad” Magazine the other day, when the iconic publication announced it will effectively end its 67-year run this fall.

After August “Mad” will be sold only via subscription and in comic book stores, and each issue will only include articles previously published.

For decades, one of the msot prolific and popular “Mad” writers was Dick DeBartolo, sometimes known as “Mad’s Maddest Writer” He was hired by founder Bill Gaines in 1962.

And .. if you ever wondered who thought up those crazy questions on “The Match Game” or “Family Feud,” he’s the guy.

I talked with DeBartolo in 1994. He had just come out with a book, celebrating the life of “Mad”:

America is 243 years old today.

And while, naturally, the founding fathers get most of the press on the Fourth of July, let’s not forget that over those two and ahalf centuries, the United States has produced some great letter-writers.

In the 1990s, a young author and historian named Andrew Carroll undertook a very ammbitious task: he set out to find, and publish, hundreds of extraordinary letters that actually span over 350 years of American history.

I talked with him in 1999:

Did you keep a journal or write stories or poems when you were a kid?

And. maybe just as important, did you keep them?

One who did was singer-songwriter-poet Suzanne Vega. We talked some twenty years ago when she publisjhed a collection of some of her own youthful writings.

Now I’m off to have some lunch .. at Tom’s Diner, of course.

U.S. Navy Admiral James Stockdale was Commander James Stockdale in 1966 when he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese.

He was held as a POW for the next eight years.

How did he do it? How did he survive?

I had a few minutes to talk with him in 1983.

In later years James Stockdale served as president of the Naval War College, president of The Citadel, and candidate for Vice President of the United States 1992, as independent Riss Perpt’s running mate

On television, Richard Belzer often plays characters who believe in conspiracy theories, sometimes complex, complicated, and outrageous theories.

But twenty years ago, Belzer wrote a book called “UFOs, JFK, And Elvis.”

Guess what it was about?