The End of the Tunnel

By Lew Resseguie

Lew Resseguie has known Presidents, worked professionally as an actor in theater,film and television , a songwriter, newspaperman,and theatrical director and producer. He started his professional life as a newspaperman for the Washington Daily News in the Nations Capitol, decided to pursue his passion at the age of 44, in theater, and was highly successful in pursuit of that career working in theater, TV and film in New York City for nearly 30 years.He is married To Diane Lefrancois, a dancer formerly of Norwich, CT whom he met while performing in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468580013

Lew Resseguie

LEW RESSEGUIE is a native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn, educated at Trinity School in Manhattan, The Oakwood School in Poughkeepsie and Duke University. At the age of eight he conducted an orchestra in Carnegie Hall and became the youngest person to have ever conducted an orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He became an English major in 1950 at Duke University, mostly as a better than average high school basketball and baseball player who was discovered by the Baseball Hall Of Fame baseball coach at Duke. However, in the early 1950's, the armies of North Korea crossed the border and he joined the U.S. Air Force and serving four years, sixteen months of which were in Korea. In 1955, he joined Scripps-Howard Newspaper's Washington Daily News in Washington, D.C. as a theater critic and advertising salesman. He eventually opened his own advertising agency which grew, within three years, to be among Washington's largest. Lew also produced, wrote, directed and starred in the very first BROADWAY POPS concert ever presented with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and for two separate Presidents of the United States at The White House. At the age of 44, he decided to pursue his first real love in life, an acting career in New York. and got his first Equity job as Angela Lansbury's co-star in a national tour of GYPSY. , He has costarred or been featured with some of the legendary names...Helen Hayes, Angela Lansbury, Julia Roberts, Robert Goulet, Barry Nelson, Dolores Gray, Paige O'Hara and Robert Conrad. Recently, he starred in a documentary for NASA which salutes the Gemini Astronauts

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Contents

AN OPENING THOUGHT . . .  

INTRODUCTION 

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL 

KOREA 

AFTER KOREA 

ALONG THE WAY IN SHOW BIZ 

KATHERINE, ANNE, GINNY AND LIZ 

FINALLY . . .  

BE A CLASS ACT . . . HOW TO DO IT!  

AN OPENING THOUGHT . . .  

ONE DAY RECENTLY, I RECEIVED AN E-MAIL FROM AN OLD FRIEND THAT SORT OF SUMS UP WHERE SOME OF US MORE MATURE FOLKS COME FROM. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS PROBABLY THE MOST SOCIALLY CONVULSIVE 100 YEARS IN THE KNOWN HISTORY OF MAN.

THE SIMPLICITY OF THE MESSAGE SAYS IT ALL. I WISH I KNEW WHO THE AUTHOR WAS BECAUSE HE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!

The Good Ol’ Days

I was talking to my Dad about current events the other night. I asked him what he thought about the shootings at schools, our immoral President, the computer age and just things in general."

He replied: . . ."Gee, let me think a minute . . .

I was born before television, penicillin, polio shots,

frozen foods, Xerox, contact lenses, Frisbees and the

Pill. There weren’t things like radar, credit cards,

laser beams or ball-point pens. Man had not invented

pantyhose, dishwashers, clothes dryers, electric

blankets, air conditioners and we hadn’t walked on the

moon.

Your Mom and I got married first-then lived together.

Every family had a father and a mother, and every kid

over 14 had a rifle that his dad taught him how to use

and respect. Until I was 25, I called every man older

than me ‘sir’; and after I turned 25, I still called

policemen and every man with

the title, ‘sir.’

"In our time, closets were for clothes, not for

‘coming out of.’ Sunday’s were set aside for going to

church as a family, helping those in need, and just

visiting with your neighbors.

We were before gay-rights, computer dating, dual

careers, day-care centers, and group therapy. "Our

lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good

judgment and common sense.

We were taught to know the difference between right

and wrong, and to stand up and take responsibility for

our actions.

Serving your country was a privilege, living here was

a bigger privilege.

"We thought fast food was what you ate during Lent.

Having a meaningful relationship meant getting along

with your cousins.

Draft dodgers were people who closed their front doors

when the evening breeze started. And time sharing

meant time the family spent together in the evenings

and weekends-not condominiums.

"We never heard of FM radio, tape decks, CD’s,

electric typewriters, artificial hearts, word

processors, yogurt or guys wearing ear rings.

We listened to the ‘big bands’, Jack Benny and the

President’s speeches on the radio. I don’t ever

remember any kid blowing his brains out listening to

Tommy Dorsey.

"If you saw anything with ‘Made in Japan’ on it, it

was junk!"

The term ‘making out’ referred to how you did on your

school exam. Pizza’s, McDonald’s and instant coffee

> were unheard of.

We had 5 and 10 cent stores where you could actually

buy things for 5 and 10 cents. Ice cream cones, phone

calls, rides on a street car, and a Pepsi were all a

nickel. And if you didn’t want to ‘splurge,’ you could

spend your nickel on enough stamps to mail a letter

and two postcards.

You could buy a new Chevy Coupe for $600, but who

could afford one. Too bad, because gas was 11 cents a

gallon.

"In my day ‘grass’ was mowed,’coke’ was a cold drink,

‘pot’ was something your mother cooked in, and ‘rock

music’ was your grandmother’s lullaby. ‘Aids’ were

helpers in the Principal’s office, a ‘chip’ meant a

piece of wood, ‘hardware’ was found in a hardware

store and software wasn’t even a

word."

"We were not before the difference between the sexes

was discovered, but we were surely before the sex

change, ‘Billy’ having two mommy’s, pornography in a

family home and at newsstands. And we were the last

generation that was so dumb as to think you needed a

husband to have a baby.

No wonder people today call us old and confused, and

there is such a generation gap. . . . and I’m ONLY

53!!!" . . . did you dig that, Son???!???

#

INTRODUCTION 

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE THOSE WHO WILL TRY TO CONTROL YOUR LIFE AND YOUR DESTINY BY WHATEVER MEANS AVAILABLE. TO ALLOW THAT TO OCCUR, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOUR LIFE’S CHOICES ARE SO COMPLETELY YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY, IS A CRIME FOR WHICH ONLY YOU ARE GUILTY

THE POWER OF THE POSITIVE.

Nobody with any common sense will ever deny the importance of attitude in everything anyone attempts in life. Attitudes, either positive or negative, form the foundations for individual success or failure. We get attitude from our environment and our genes, but mostly our environment. The kid that’s brought up in an atmosphere that believes that anything is possible if you’re willing to work hard for it usually has a far better chance of success and happiness than the kid that sees nothing but failure all around him and hears nothing but words ending in n’t!. Kids brought up in an atmosphere that says, the good things of life are not possible so be grateful for what you have and just survive never have a chance of succeeding at anything, much less being happy about it.

But there’s another factor equally, or even more, as meaningful as attitude. It’s a special and undefinable burning deep within the human soul and in the deepest and most private recesses of our minds. When allowed to become a part of our conscious reality, it becomes the element that can make the diifference in our lives, that can bring us as close to ultimate happiness as is realistically possible. However, if not understood and controlled, it can possibly even lead to our destruction. We all have it, but very few pursue it.

THE DREAM!

In the beginning, that’s where it all starts.

Actually, it starts almost at birth . . . perhaps even before. Many, if not most, parents harbor a dream for their children that they were never able to fulfill for themselves. The dream most often evolves around career aspirations and any dream can, and probably will change as time, accumulation of knowledge and maturity make their impact. Most people have their dreams of what should be like for them, but their dreams aren’t clear or strong enough to act upon.

Some dreamers become absolutely obsessive about their dreams. And the rest of the world stands back in awe of the intensity of their drives to succeed in pursuit of their dreams. Some of those dreamers become destructive in the pursuit of their dream and seem totally insensitive to those who neither have nor understand the dream.

Fortunately, not everyone’s dreams of becoming someone or something have the required special motivation. Most people just aren’t willing, or able, to make the sacrifices necessary to even have a chance of making their dreams come true.

The world is filled with parents whose dreams never came true for all sorts of reasons. And, whether you believe that the drive behind is right, wrong or tolerable, it nonetheless exists and must be recognized for what it is.

Looking back the experiences of my own life, I firmly believe it’s vital to know, deep in your soul, that the dream you pursue is YOURS alone . . . that the career you seek is the one YOU want . . . and that you desire it more than most of the social pleasures of life, more than the solid, predictable comforts of life, more than the dreams of parenthood at an early age and more than the dream of finding Mr. or Miss Right. In point of very real fact, the DREAM is more important than just about anything else in the world!

THE DREAM is a phenomenon that is yours and yours alone. And, you know it’s the real thing because it’s so incredibly special and unique to you alone. It is so strong and so intense that it eventually becomes the foundation for everything you aspire to accomplish for the rest of your life. Those who have followed their dream to a successful conclusion will all tell you the same thing;

PURSUING YOUR DREAM IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO YOUR EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL GOOD HEALTH. IT FREQUENTLY EQUALS OR SURPASSES THE VALUE OF OF ANY COLLEGE EDUCATION.

THE TEST OF THAT DREAM COMES WHEN IT’S PURSUIT REQUIRES YOU TO GIVE UP, OR PLACE IN JEOPARDY, EVERY MATERIAL THING YOU HAVE ACHIEVED TO EVEN MAKE THE PURSUIT POSSIBLE. AND YET YOU DO IT WITH THE FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT THE ODDS AGAINST YOUR SUCCESS ARE PILED INCREDIBLY AND IMPOSSIBLY HIGH AGAINST YOU.

THAT’S WHERE ATTITUDE STARTS TO MAKE THE DIFFERENCE!

Without the absolute focus on the pursuit of that dream, the only remaining motivations to succeed, such as financial gain, ego satisfaction or peer pressure, are neither attractive nor a guarantee of any success.

Unfortunately, the dream can’t even be described. Oh, there are some obvious reasons why other people, like wives, parents, friends, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles "TALK" to you about your dream. They say such things as . . . You just want to be famous or . . . You just want to be rich or . . . You just want to prove something or . . . You just want the excitement that movie and television stars have achieved or, You just want to see your picture in People Magazine as you arrive at New York’s ‘hottest’ party!, or a million and one other comments intended to put you down and deprecate your dream. Each of these kinds of comments are always aimed at demeaning the validity of what you are all about. The word just is the tipoff. When you hear it, run the other way.

If your dream is real, you are the only one who can honestly recognize it, understand it and do something about it. Being beautiful, talented or fun to be with isn’t enough if you don’t have the dream to be or do something uniquely special with what you believe are your own special assets. For every thousand people, there are nearly a thousand mostly unanswered dreams. The difference between all those dreams that don’t come true . . . and yours . . . is your singular willingness to go the extra mile, to learn what you need to learn and to work harder than anyone else who has the same dream to make that dream come true. And, the intensity of the dream makes you happily work harder than you ever believed you could.

Those who are afraid to try and make their dream come true, or fear taking the chance of being rejected . . . or fear being told they’re not good enough before they even make the effort . . . are the same people whose lives seem to always be guided by the power of of the negative.

Those who succeed in life, in either their personal or professional lives, are usually quick to admit that the reason for their success was the intensity of their belief in themselves and the power of the positive. They believed they could succeed and should succeed, regardless of what the rest of the world thought! The history books are full of stories about men and women who ignored the scorn of their peers only to succeed and, through their success, change the world.

The power of the positive has been at the core of my whole life. It has gotten me through life-threatening moments, emotionally destructive experiences and the intensity of those times when my dreams have seemed totally unattainable. I’m frankly not sure where it came from, but it has always been a very real part of my whole decision-making thought process.

Let me tell you a little bit about that.

First of all, when I was growing up, we didn’t have television to provide us with a visualization of our dreams 24 hours a day. All we had was radio and newspapers. We got our news from newspapers and our dreams and imaginations from radio.

I grew up wanting to be an actor. My parents, yearning for me to have the best of everything in life, did all they could to provide me with the kind of education and environment which would lead to a better life than they had known. Being an actor wasn’t where they thought it was at, or where it would be, for me. They wanted the best for me, but their idea of what was best for me wasn’t mine. And, the worst part was that we never talked about it. Their idea of success was a good job, a family and security in your golden years. It didn’t matter too much if you loved or hated your job, or if you had to forget your dreams as long as you fulfilled the expectations of those who felt they were entitled to some element of control over you.

So, I got a good education (something I’ve never regretted) and started my life doing what my parents and peers thought I should do. After military service, I got a 9AM-5PM job on a newspaper that was the beginning of a 21 year career in the advertising business. Imagine, 21 years of trying desperately to find happiness and experiencing emotional failure almost every day for those 21 years.

I HATED EVERY MINUTE OF IT! WHY?

Because of my dream. All I ever wanted to be was an actor! Through all those twenty-one very successful years of emotionally forced purgatory in the business world, I spent every spare waking moment involved in things like community theater, singing in church choirs and even writing a theater column for the newspaper for which I sold advertising.

I earned the living I was supposed to earn to support my family and did it as well as I could. But every bone in my body, every sinew of my being and every sensitivity of my mind operated in a state of numbed disbelief that the world had kept me from my dream. The truth was that the world wasn’t responsible for my life. I was, and I had failed myself.

In retrospect, however, I was getting a very practical education in theater arts, the hard way, and didn’t even realize it. All I was doing, as far as I was concerned, was satisfying an unquenchable, unexplainable and unsupported need. What must have really been happening, far deep in my semi-conscious world, was that I was preparing for that ever-so-remote possibility that someday I might find an escape from my prison.

Then, at the age of 44, realizing I would probably never again possess the state of mind to take the risk, I threw it all up in the air and walked away from a business world in which I had attained a substantial measure of success. My children were on their way to leading their own lives, living with their mother in a city two hundred and fifty miles away. I was single, and for the first time in 21 years, was responsible for my own life and happiness. All I had to do was make sure I could pay the rent, eat, make my child support payments and pursue my future.

Of greatest importance to me was the indisputable fact that my dream was still alive and more intense than ever. So, it wasn’t hard to figure out that IF I DIDN’T DO IT AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME, I WOULD NEVER DO IT.

The gamble was enormous because it meant selling or closing all the businesses in the mini-conglomerate I had created and developed over a period of years and walking away from the comfort and security of that life I had known for nearly a quarter of a century. It also meant that I had to move to New York City because that’s where I had to be to make my dream come true. And I had to make that move with barely enough money to survive more than six months.

The dream was more important to me than all the comfort and financial security life might offer.

So, I went to New York. I pounded the pavements for eighteen months, finally got the opportunity for a major audition and got my first job as a professional actor . . . co-starring with Angela Lansbury in a national tour of the famous musical GYPSY.

The beginning of my dream had taken almost 46 years to become a reality.

Today, better than nearly three and a half decades after making that move to New York, I still have that dream, but now it’s based on a solid reality. The reality that I followed my dream and made it become reality is my unforgettable memory. Better late than never, I took the chances that any dream requires and eventually walked into the sunshine of happiness. I finally began to live.

But, it sure wasn’t easy.

This is that story.

DREAMING ABOUT ‘WHAT MIGHT BE’ IS WHAT MOTIVATES MANY OF US TO A HIGHER PLANE. SIMPLY FANTASIZING THAT DREAM CAN BE A TOTALLY DESTRUCTIVE ACT. FANTASY CAN NEVER BECOME REALITY. BUT, HAVING A DREAM AND DOING WHAT IS NECESSARY TO MAKE IT COME TRUE, WITHOUT INTENTIONALLY HURTING ANYONE ELSE, IS WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.

THE LIGHT AT

THE END OF THE TUNNEL 

"THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES YOUR TOMORROW

A BETTER DAY IS WHAT YOU DO ABOUT IT TODAY!

THE ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT THE WORLD

DOESN’T ALWAYS SEE IT THAT WAY"

As the big, Northwest Airlines Jet lumbered down the runway and off the ground, departing from the Cancun, Mexico municipal airport in the spring of 1976, my life, as I had known it for nearly 44 years, was about to change in ways I had never dreamed possible. My lifetime of surrender to the needs and desires of everyone else in my little world would suddenly be relegated to a burner so far back on my scale of priorities as to not be distinguishable from the infinitive ‘nothing’.

Lifestyle changes of any sort, whether they be emotional or professional, can find their genesis in something that happens in the wisp of a single moment of that lifetime. All it takes is a thought, a word, a seemingly inconsequential action on the part of someone else, a realization of a startling personal magnitude or even just the crash of a wave against a vulnerable shoreline.

My moment of absolute truth started only three days before my moment of personal revelation occurred. That may sound a little confusing, so let me explain. I had won a free four day vacation to Cancun, Mexico and had invited my wife, Barbara, (from whom I was more or less separated at the time) to join me. At that moment in the time of my life, I was as unhappy as a 43 year old man could be. Our marriage had been a long distance relationship for quite some time, my business life was no fun (in fact I hated it), my children were all living elsewhere and I woke up every morning with an empty hole in my stomach. And, even though I couldn’t figure out why my life was running on empty, I knew it was and that something was very, very wrong.

The first couple of days of the Cancun vacation were OK and time was filled with doing a little of this and a little of that. There were some other people we knew on the tour so that sociability, helped along by a couple of drinks, wasn’t too tough. Barbara and I had each probably decided not to let our problems stand in the way of a vacation, so everything seemed pretty calm for a change.

On the afternoon of the third day, Barbara and our friends went shopping and I went out to sit on the beach. I didn’t go with them because I felt this strange urge to just sit alone on the beach. I had no specific intention to do any thinking about anything in particular, just a great need to spend some time by myself.

I was sitting on the soft cool sands of the Cancun Beach resort when suddenly, and without any warning whatsoever, every sinew of my being knew what was wrong with my life! In the flash of no more than thirty seconds, I realized that my life, up to that moment in time, had been a monstrous lie. I had lied to myself about who I really was, lied to the world about who I wanted them to think I was and, in the process of supporting those great lies, had emotionally damaged the people nearest and dearest to my soul, my children. I instantly realized that this was the moment when I had to start changing everything about me, my life and what my remaining years would be like.

I was going to become a professional actor.

No. I HAD to become an actor! It had been my secret and private dream since early childhood and I was going to find out if that dream could possibly come true.

In recent decades, it’s become common practice to attempt to understand that men, like women, undergo certain kinds of changes and realizations about themselves and their lives as they prepare themselves to face the downward curve of their mortality. Questions like, Is this all there is?’ and Where did I go wrong?" surface in the hidden recesses of the fortyish male psyche and are very rarely answered with action, only acceptance of what seems to be the inevitable.

The realization that their lives have been neither acceptable to themselves, nor the product of their own perceptions of what they most wanted their lives to be, is usually so unpleasant that facing that reality, and the reasons for it all turning out that way, are very often sublimated and never dealt with honestly. Like almost every other man I knew, during the first 43 years of my life, I became a reflection of what others thought was best for me, or perhaps more honestly, themselves.

The ‘guidelines of life’ that controlled the lives of my parents were vastly different than those I sought for myself. Theirs were rooted in the traditions, values and standards passed down from previous generations. There was very little that might, or could, be altered in the line of genetic succession unless the weakest link in the chain of lineage broke down.

Like most children born prior to World War II, I was slated to become what my Father thought I should become, at the level of achievement he felt was acceptable. It was, Do this, or do that and you’ll reach an acceptable level of success!

There was never much room for trial or error, for the reality of deeply hidden and unfulfilled dreams, or for the understanding that the old ways might be a mistake for a child who appeared to operate from a different set of desires than had the parents, or the parents before them or the parents before them.

Regardless of the method selected, the message was always the same. Don’t dare to do what you want to do. It’s unsafe, insecure. Do what’s expected of you! Get an education at the best college that will accept you, find a solid job that will provide you with occasional promotions and an adequate income with benefits. Get married, have children, own a home, go to church, be a pillar of the community, save money, retire, become a grandparent, play golf and die! But, above all else, make sure that you have SECURITY!

That was the guideline . . . the formula that I was taught, at a very early age. That would define the life I could look forward to.

And, to add to the problems of my generation, came two happenings that changed everything for everyone. The first was a world war to end world wars wherein the fantasy technologies of centuries suddenly became reality. Bombs that could kill millions in the flash of twenty seconds, unthinkable barbarism created in the belief that ethnic cleansing was the wave of humanity’s future and an absolute, yet imperceptible movement away from the values of thousands of years of civilization.

Then, immediately following that war came the development of the most remarkable and far-reaching communications technology ever imagined in the minds and fantasies of all men of history, TELEVISION.

Now we could have the terror of wars and death brought directly into our living rooms, at the same moment those terrors were actually happening. We could see and experience life and death, and everything in between, in the flash of a micro-second. Everything that had gone before was no longer valid and everything to come was scary. It was a time born during mankind’s most destructive and confusing time. Today, almost seventy years later, we still haven’t been able to fully understand its impact.

But, regardless of the final verdicts of historians and psychologists, these two events have dictated everything that’s happened on this planet since September 1, 1939, the day Hitler attacked Poland, the day that marked the end of the world as we had always known it to be to the beginning of the world as we know it today and probably will know it for another hundred years, or more.

All of that, and more, was racing through my suddenly motivated mind as that great silver bird winged its way from the placid shores of Cancun to the city I had called home for nearly twenty-two years of my adult life, Washington, D.C. To anyone who looked at me in that airplane, I’m sure the mixture of turmoil, excitement and fear were not at all obvious. On the outside, I was as calm as a summer breeze. Inside, I felt like a loose nerve ending that was uncontrollably flipping around inside my body, causing electric shocks up and down the very core of my being.

For weeks after my return from Cancun, my thoughts related only to how I would set about doing what I knew I had to do, how long it would take and how big a price, emotionally or financially, I would have to pay. And there would be a heavy price to pay.

There were moments in the next few years when I experienced great pangs of envy for those men who had faced their moment of enlightenment, had ignored it and gone on with their lives as though everything was as perfect as it seemed. It would be years before I realized that most men simply accepted the inevitable and made the most of it as my Father had done. It was only guys, like me, who were a little off-center who tried to make the last forty years of their lives what they wanted them to be and thought little of the ultimate cost to themselves, recognizing that the price of inner happiness is, indeed, very expensive.

That’s what this book is all about. Surviving the unhappy years and then doing what was necessary, for the sake of personal sanity, to turn that debilitating unhappiness into a future that might fill the enormous empty void that was in my stomach, every morning, as I arose to face yet another day, living a life I hated down to its very center.

This isn’t the story of a very special person in any sense of the word. It is also not the story of a revisionist or, many years after the fact, an angry man. It’s a story, told from a still painful distance from the moments of reality, of one man who sought, against all reasonable odds, to first face himself and the reality of his lost life and then face the cost, to others as well as himself, of his personal epiphany.

To this day, only God’s wisdom holds the mystery and freshness of life that he unexpectedly discovered in one very quiet moment, on a very quiet beach, in a foreign land nearly fifty years ago.

"THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘FAMILY’ IN

THE LIFE OF ANY INDIVIDUAL IS

INCALCULABLE. TO DENY THE BLOOD

AND GENES THAT PASS FROM GENERATION

TO GENERATION IS TO DENY THE CONTINUATION

OF CIVILIZED LIFE.

WITHOUT THE CONTINUITY AND

RESPECT THAT FLOWS FROM THE

HISTORY AND KNOWLEDGE OF OUR OWN

PERSONAL HERITAGE, WE HAVE NO FUTURE

TO GIVE NOR ANY PAST OF ANY MEANING OR TO

REMEMBER AND PASS ON TO THOSE WHO FOLLOW."

MY FAMILY BEGINNINGS

The mystery of birth is rightfully considered by mankind to be a miracle. Mine came on May 3rd, 1932, at 8AM in a Brooklyn, NY, Hospital. However, at the very moment that God’s miracle was completed, I less miraculously became the servant of my family history. No longer in God’s caressing hands, I was turned over to the talents, fears, failures and successes of my forebearers, all of which had been passed on to me through my own parents.

In me, for example, would reside the mistake of my Father’s decision NOT to follow the career in music he so desperately craved and needed for his own emotional survival. My Mother harbored a deep anxiety and lurking resentment because she alone, of her sisters and brothers, had been forced to stay at home and nurse her dying Mother while her sisters and brothers ignored the family problems and went on to college. And, from both parents came the deepest of all emotional pains occasioned by the death of my older six year old sister, Katherine, from a sudden attack of spinal meningitis. There was a lot of emotional baggage that was never expressed or obviously felt while I was growing up.

Even though I was born in Brooklyn, my parents lived in Sunnyside, Queens, with my sister Katherine. That’s where I was quickly taken just days after my delivery.

About a year later, Katherine was attacked by the dreaded disease, and, in a very short period of time, she passed away. Naturally, I don’t remember a thing about Katherine although, to this day, her treasured picture hangs in my bedroom and I have conversations with that picture . . . with the sister I never knew but miss very much. This loss was to affect us all for the rest of our lives.

To my parents, Katherine was a very special and very deeply loved little girl. I really don’t know much about her other than that she was very bright, very happy and had touched something deep inside the souls of both my parents for they loved her desperately. Since I wasn’t expected and, based on Mother’s history of miscarriages, I didn’t have a chance, I don’t think anyone ever really got used to the idea that I had made it to life. Until the day she died, Katherine was the light of their lives. I often think of her and intensely wish I had known her and that she had known me.

For the next 44 years, I would strive, desperately, to fill my parent’s emotional emptiness resulting from the loss of Katherine . . . a loss which ultimately prevented them from fully becoming a part of my life. They never were able to overcome their deep fear of being hurt again and I never experienced what it meant to have parents who could open up to me or to whom I could reveal my deepest thoughts and problems. They were in one corner of the world and I was in another and we just couldn’t find a place that made us happy together.

There were no pictures of Katherine in evidence anywhere in any of the homes we lived in and I only really knew of her existence through my Aunt Kit (nickname for Katherine) whom my sister had been named after. Aunt Kit told me that Katherine had been a sweet, funny, warm and delightful little girl whose capacity for affection and honest love had been evident almost from birth. Aunt Kit also told me that my parents grief at her passing had been very traumatic and that only my existence as a helpless baby had kept them from diving into deep depression. I guess that’s why neither of my parents ever mentioned Katherine to me as I was growing up.

To this day, my great sorrow in life has been the absence of this wonderful little girl who I know would have meant so much to me. The pain of her passing was a pain my parents carried for the rest of their lives. Sadly, I knew nothing about their pain and now have only begun to realize how it affected my life, their lives and our lives, so completely.

In any event, let’s get back to when I was six years old. Although my memory is pretty clouded about that age, there are some things I do remember. For example, I remember, at the age of five or six, going with my Father to the Chevrolet dealership in Mt. Vernon, New York, and watching him buy a brand new car! It was a 1937 Brown Chevrolet 2-door for which he paid all of $650. That car lasted us all the way through World War II which is probably why I remember it so well. Actually, we kept that car until 1949 when my Father bought a 1947 Ford that had a specially built 1948 Mercury engine in it. That was probably the hottest purchase my Father ever made.

I also remember Flossie Van Emburgh, a five year old neighbor in Mt. Vernon, with whom I understand I was deeply in love. I still have a couple of pictures of Flossie and remember her quite well. I think my preferences have changed over the years, but that first ‘love’ will always occupy a special place in my heart.

Flossie’s only real competition, however, came from the pony-ride man who would visit our neighborhood once or twice a week. I also have a picture of myself, aboard my favorite pony. What a cowboy I was . . . and am to this day.

But some of my most vivid memories of that age relate to the one thing my Father and I shared, music. As a hobby, and because he was so good at it, he was appointed musical director and conductor of the Kings County (Brooklyn) American Legion Marching and Concert band. Every Sunday afternoon, dressed in the band uniform that matched my Father’s, I would join him on the bandstand in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park where, at some point in the afternoon, I would stand on a chair and conduct the march, On The Square.

Because the band was so well-known and well-thought of, they would march in major parades up New York’s 5th Avenue, with me trotting next to my Father, leading our red-coated compatriots who were, as far as I was concerned, the best marching band in America.

The most exciting moment of my life to that time occurred on December 20th, 1940, when the band performed in concert in famed Carnegie Hall. The concert was a benefit for the Free French movement at the beginning of World War II and, midway through the evening, 8 year old Lewis D. Resseguie is listed in the program as having conducted On The Square.

I vividly recall the evening, and especially that moment. About halfway through the concert, they set up a chair for me to stand on in the center of the stage, directly in front of the band. When all was quiet and I was sure everyone was looking at me, I gave the downbeat and we were off and running. The band, quite used to me by now, played like their lives depended on it and they were great. At the end of the number, I turned to the audience and, for the first time, saw what an audience that size looked like from a stage. It was awesome, but I stood there and bowed, taking it all in, as the audience gave me a standing ovation for my efforts.

At that point in time, and of no particular note other than as an expression of my own ego, I became the youngest person to have ever conducted in Carnegie Hall. That record was quite appropriately broken a few years later by a young Italian boy, age five or six, who could play sixteen instruments, had written three symphonies and was considered a musical genius.

Music was my Fathers life, his heart and soul. Even though he earned his money in the advertising world during the day, his evenings were spent conducting or rehearsing the band or any number of symphony orchestras around New York City. And, when he wasn’t conducting music, or practicing on the French Horn, he wrote music. Everything I did as a child was transposed into a full melody with lyrics and enshrined in a book with appropriate notations. Such songs as Cars, Cars, Cars! celebrating my love affair with toy cars and The Pennington Marching Song for my Kindergarten Class in Mt. Vernon reflected my Fathers only, and best, way of expressing his affection for me and his pride at my accomplishments. He wrote songs about my marching with the Junior Blue Jackets of America, my High School and the Boy Scouts. If I did it, he wrote a song about it.

But his love of music wasn’t restricted to cute little ditties about the activities of his son. As a young man in his teens, he had enlisted in the Army and had become a member of the Army’s last remaining