The Last Boy, by Jane Leavy

Richard J. Garfunkel

1-2-10

I just finished 450 horrible pages of debauchery and self-destructive and wanton idiocy of an American idol, who hated himself. I have been a Yankee fan since 1951, my first game, and was a Mantle fan like everyone else. I learned about his true character when I was a freshman in college from a classmate who lived next to him in Dallas and often baby sat for the Commerce Comet. Over the years many stories leaked out about his career and how he wasted possibly the greatest physical potential since Babe Ruth. Leavy tells in intimate detail all of his failures, disgusting conduct and his dissolute life. Don't cry any crocodile tears for The Mick. He wasn't misled he made and dissipated fortunes, ruined his children, abused his wife and countless women and was at best a disgusting lout. He was surrounded by idolaters who generally warned him, helped him, gave him the best legal, moral and medical advice and he ignored them all. In the end he left almost $7 million to his do-nothing, drug-ravaged idiotic off-spring, who never were loved by him, and amounted to nothing. His financial legacy continues to pour money into the bank accounts of his Okie, trailer park trash heirs.

Probably of all the ballplayers in the post WWII era, from Williams through Mays, Aaron, DiMaggio, etc, never made together as much as Mantle, from merely his name. The rumors of his business losses are just that. All his lawyers made good on his earlier investments, and his later advisers, despite their loutish client, were always there for him. Don't waste your time or money on this book. it is a disgusting account, with little about his baseball career.  Leavy was obsessed with this guy and decided to let all the poisons come out. Alone the language she quotes and his actions would make anyone with an iota of taste throw up.

As bad and boorish as DiMaggio was, he comes across as prince compared to Mantle. DiMaggio, who was incredibly uneducated, and self-absorbed, never made it easy for his center field heir, but so what! His life has already been parsed and it wasn't much of a bargain. But, again, compared to Mantle he was an alter boy and a saint.

Mantle was a somewhat of a babe in the woods, but his actions towards fans, strangers, family and friends was at a level of obnoxiousness that had to be unrivaled. But his buddies like Ford, Martin and others loved his “good-time Charley” spending and partying. As bad as most of them were, they couldn't keep pace with The Mick. Maybe Billy Martin, a drunken and disgusting lout could have rivaled Mantle if he had the fame and had not killed himself when he drove off the road drunk.

FDR tackles HL Mencken for a loss at the 1934 Gridiron Dinner!

(Only 76 years ago this December)

November 24, 2010

Richard J. Garfunkel

Upon FDR’s return to the District from his Thanksgiving holiday at his Warm Springs retreat, known as “The Little White House,” he was to be the featured guest at the Gridiron Dinner, which was hosted by the press corps which covered the White House and all the action that abounded within the political scope of the Congress.

FDR understood that the host of this annual event was HL Mencken, whose diaries later revealed his dark side. When the diaries were made public, his racism and anti-Semitism, not to mention his deep anti-democratic sentiments came to the surface. Innately he had little concern for people and for sure almost no compassion for the needy. But most of this was certainly hinted about in his lifetime. Mencken relished his reputation and his friends and apologists, thought of him as an eccentric contrarian, but in truth he was basically a chronic, dissatisfied complainer. But, all in all, he was more venal and self-absorbed, and his vehemence showed more and more to FDR as his initial support for the president quickly waned.

At the December, 1934 event, the sponsors seemed to be inspiring mischief and therefore were looking for “blood in the water,” Mencken was well known for venting his spleen and he was expected to reveal his true venom as the Roast Master. Maybe it was because of the President’s presence at the event, that the so-called “Sage of Baltimore” was a bit more cautious and reserved or possibly it was because FDR represented the “home team” and would speak last

Mencken opened with welcoming, “fellow subjects of the Reich,” and he said, “Every day in this great country is April Fool’s Day,” He started out relating his support for the President, but quickly launched into a diatribe about him being a “slippery posturer.”

When FDR’s turn came to speak, he opened with what Mencken called his “Christian Science smile,” and referred to “my old friend Henry Mencken, “ and then in a room filled with the members of each level of the press, he began a rancorous denunciation against their whole profession. He attacked the “stupidity, cowardice and Philistinism of the working newspapermen.” FDR continued with a look of piety only that he could do, and to the laughter of almost all who were there, he claimed that those assembled did not know what a “symphony is or a streptococcus” and then described their industry as “pathetically feeble and vulgar, and so disreputable.” Of course, the audience became quite frosty and strangely silenced. But his words eventually became crystal clear to many of the old-timers. FDR had taken it all from an editorial called “Journalism in America,” written by Mencken himself, ten years before in his own publication, The American Mercury. Eventually FDR, with a large smile finally revealed to all the true source of such venom.

Mencken, incredibly embarrassed, boiled over and said, “I’ll get the son of a bitch. I’ll dig the skeletons out of his closet.” As he was fulminating and trying get out a retort, FDR moved passed him at the conclusion of his response, as the audience reverberated with laughter when the true author was revealed. FDR had turned the tables on Mencken, got in the last word, and as Harold Ickes would write later, “FDR had smeared Mencken all over.”

The Poconos, Flea Markets and Hyde Park

November 15, 2010

Richard J. Garfunkel

The economy is alive and well just west of the Delaware River. All one has to do is to head west from the George Washington Bridge to Route 80 and keep on driving until one reaches the Delaware Water Gap. Once over the bridge, Jersey becomes Pennsylvania and one enters the edge of Middle America. There are a string of towns along the Delaware River named Bushkill, Stroudsburg, Marshall’s Creek, and Tannersville. These communities straddle roads like 209 and 611 and the backups at the intersections make traffic jams anywhere in the Big Apple passé.

We were last there about a month earlier in 2009, and we stayed in the same time-sharing facility, called the Villas at Fairway. Our villa was so large that a whole family of boat people could live there and never meet each other for days. It has fireplaces all over and a sauna and whirlpool in our bathroom! So it was quite pleasant. We stopped in a place galled Odd-Lot Outlet in Marshall’s Creek on our way from Route 80 to Bushkill. We picked up all sorts of ephemera goodies from stationary, to notebooks, to picture albums. All in all, with 20% discount coupons, one could not go wrong buying items from 75 cents to three dollars. By the way, one of the big “cash cows” for the retailers, right over the border from New Jersey, is fireworks, and all sorts of these dangerous toys can be purchased quite easily. After finally reaching our destination, we unpacked, relaxed and went out to an “early bird” dinner at the Big A Grillehouse. After our meal, we headed back to an evening of Bond-A-Thon movies, Turner Classics and needed relaxation.

The next day we headed out after breakfast to the massive Pocono Bazaar Flea Market, right on 209 in Marshall’s Creek. We found great bargains on gloves, sox, apples, tomatoes and all sorts of other trinkets which included Sinatra CD’s at $3 a throw. By the time we left at 10:50 am, our space had a line of suitors awaiting our departure. The lot was jammed, and we headed south to Route 80 and Stroudsburg, where we found the Olde Engine Works Market on North 3^rd Street. Again we found some reasonable books and other collectibles. Once we satiated our interests, we headed back to the Villa for lunch. After our meal, we then made our way north, a mile or two, to the Bushkill Falls, which cuts through the hills and valleys of the upper Poconos. It’s a fun walk up and down the steep wooden steps flanked by critical handrails. The weather was wonderful and the park was alive with visitors from all over. We met some young people from Brooklyn with their two cute little girls, one who was named Eleanor. After our long climbs and some picture-taking, we departed the “Falls” and still had some energy to head down to the Indian Museum just south of the Fairway Villas. It was a full day, capped off by a wonderful dinner of lasagna and a filet sole stuffed with crab meat at Petrizzo’s Italian Restaurant.

After dinner it was once again back to our Villa and while keeping one eye on television, I enjoyed reading a fascinating biography of the star-crossed operatic diva, Maria Callas. What a saga, her story relates, from her birth in NYC to her being trapped in Italy during the war, to her struggles with her weight, self-doubt, desire for success at the Met and La Scala and her disastrous love affair with Aristotle Onassis. Along with that tempestuous story, I was also re-reading the late Grace Tully’s memoir, FDR, My Boss. On Sunday, we had to plan our morning carefully, because we wanted to be at a reception in Hyde Park, NY at the Roosevelt Library at 2:00 pm. So after breakfast, since we wanted to do more shopping, we headed out to Tannersville, which is about 15 miles west on Route 80. We wanted to stop at the Peddler’s Village and the Crossing Factory Outlet Mall. Peddler’s Village is a series of buildings that has hundreds of consignment booths of collectibles. Last year, I was able to get some interesting books at a deep discount. This year I wasn’t disappointed. I found and interesting book, Battlefields, Then and Now, which compared views of these fields of conflict, in their original setting, to the contemporary changes in the topography and landscape. The book included, Alexander the Great’s victory at Gaugema in 331 BCE,  Julius Caesar’s triumph at Alesia in 52 BCE and others through Waterloo, Gettysburg, Rorkes’ Drift in Zululand to Normandy and Khe Sanh. Among the other books was We Few, about the 400 Marine officers who were hurriedly graduated in 1944 from Camp Le Jeune, because of the desperate need for junior officers in the Pacific, and were thrust into the fighting on Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Linda also found some bargains, and we hurried over to the Outlet Mall, whose parking lot was already bursting with cars, and looked for a Harry & David’s, who offers a wonderful jar of artichokes with merlot. It’s just great on anything! We were really short on time, so we sped back to Bushkill, changed for the reception, finished packing and got on the road. to Hyde Park.

We had originally planned to stay the whole day in the Poconos, but a few weeks ago, long after our plans had been formulated, we were invited to a reception regarding the official opening of the “Tully Papers” at the Hyde Park home of our late, great President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The late president’s last private secretary, Grace Tully, who was born in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1900, and had never married, died in 1984. All of her papers, which included personal notes from FDR, among other ephemera and collectibles, went to her family. Ms. Tully worked for FDR from 1928 to his untimely death on April 12, 1945. She had originally worked for Bishop, and later, Cardinal Hayes in New York City, for ten years, was a bit bored with her work. After leaving the Diocese and a stint working in the presidential campaign of 1928, she was offered a job as an assistant to FDR’s long-time personal and private secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand. Missy, who was one of FDR’s closest confidantes, was born in Potsdam, NY and raised in Somerville, Ma. At the tender age of 22, she had held a number of jobs before she worked for the Democratic National Committee in 1920. After FDR’s defeat as James Cox’s Vice-Presidential running mate in the 1920 election, they were both out of jobs, and FDR hired her as a secretary. She started working for him before he was struck down by polio in 1921 and stayed with him for 21 years until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of 43. Many attributed her stroke to the pressure of her ceaseless and devoted work and devotion to the President. With her death three years later, an important member of FDR’s original team was now gone. Both Missy and Lois Howe, who were FDR’s closest confidantes were now gone. His relationship with her will never be fully gauged, but for sure he depended on her wise judgment and counsel. Missy had many, many admirers over the years and the famed NY Times columnist Arthur Krock praised her in his eulogy as an incredibly important influence to both FDR’s life, family and the workings of his administration. Over the years, Grace Tully and Missy had become very close, and they were an integral part of the President’s small, but intensely loyal circle of friends, confidantes and advisors. Grace and Missy were like sisters and when Missy became ill, Grace moved up to the number one position as FDR’s top secretary. In fact, from 1928 on, she performed the dictation and typing chores that Missy shunned. Like Missy, Grace and FDR’s other close aides, often dined with the Roosevelt family, attended social events at the White House and traveled on all of the campaign trips to Hyde Park, Warm Springs and the national conventions. She was present at the Warm Springs “Little White House” cottage, with his cousins Margaret “Daisy” Suckley and Laura “Aunt Polly” Delano, among others, on the day he was stricken. A few days later, after the White House funeral service, Grace, wrote, “I went home for dinner and found my young niece, Alice Lee Sinton in a state of near collapse. She wanted to remain with me while I unpacked and repacked for the trip to Hyde Park, and she wept the entire time. Between sobs she exclaimed, ‘What are we going to do Gracie? I’ve never known any other President.’ Here was a girl in her early twenties who could remember no President but Roosevelt. I found it hard to realize at the moment, but I have since heard scores of young people of her generation repeat her identical words, and with the same feeling of hopelessness about the future.”  On that Sunday morning in the Rose garden, just where FDR had planned to be laid to rest, Grace concluded her book by writing, “…Franklin Roosevelt was buried in the rose garden, close to the Big House, high above the Hudson.”

After Missy’s death, Grace Tully had inherited all of her personal White House papers and memorabilia, and it was these papers and her own that went into her estate. In 1980, the then Director of the Roosevelt Library, Mr. William Emerson asked Ms. Tully if she would give the personal letters she had to the Library. She refused, but said that after her death the Library would then have them. In 1984, Grace Tully died at age 84, but the family refused to release the letters. No one had any idea that the estate contained over 5000 pieces. From then to 2000, there was no mention of the papers until Cynthia Koch, the current Director, noticed that some of the “pieces” were listed in an auction catalogue. Eventually the whole lot, which included other presidential material and letters from Missy LeHand’s estate along with 39 personal letters from Margaret “Daisy” Suckley, FDR’s friend and distant cousin, were bought by Conrad Black for $8 million. In the ensuing years, Lord Black, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and had to give up his Canadian citizenship, wrote an outstanding and encyclopedic history of President Roosevelt entitled, FDR, Champion of Freedom. He quickly got into a financial snit with the IRS, his company Hollinger International, and creditors. He was indicted and convicted in Illinois U.S. District Court on July 13, 2007, for diverting funds, along with other irregularities, to his personal benefit from money due Hollinger International when the company sold certain publishing assets. For example, in 2000, in an illegal and surreptitious arrangement that came to be known as the “Lerner Exchange,” Black acquired Chicago's Lerner Newspapers and sold it to Hollinger He also obstructed justice by taking possession of documents to which he was not entitled. He was sentenced to serve 78 months in federal prison, to pay Hollinger $6.1 million, in addition to pay a fine to the government of $125,000. After his early release from prison, this year, pending the re-opening of his case on appeal, the Internal Revenue Service initiated a legal proceeding in the United States Tax Court against him for $71 million in back taxes which it claims is owed on $120 million in unreported income between 1998 and 2003. Black is challenging the claim, arguing that he is not subject to US taxing authority claiming that he was, “neither a citizen nor a resident of the United States” and was not obliged to pay taxes in the U.S.Recently, on October 28, 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit overturned two of the three remaining mail fraud counts. It left Black convicted of one count of mail fraud, and one count of obstruction of justice. The court also ruled that he must be resentenced. There seems to be more troubles ahead for Lord Black.

After the adjudication of the criminal proceedings against Black for using corporate funds to buy the collection (among with his other indiscretions) and his conviction and imprisonment, the ownership of the “Tully Papers” went into litigation. Eventually, the Sun-Times Media Group, the successor to Hollinger International, put the whole 5000 piece collection of letters, memorabilia and presidential “chits” (or notes) up for auction at Christies. Since it was deemed that many of the papers were of presidential material and that under FDR’s presidential directive, before his death, he had stated that they should go to the Library the sale was halted by the National Archives in 2005. Negotiations immediately began for the Library to gain possession of the documents. In actuality, the documents were stored, under court order for safe keeping, in sealed boxes, at the Roosevelt Library and Museum since 2005. Despite all the problems that proceeded throughout the long negotiations, including the bankruptcy of the Sun-Times, a special Congressional Bill, SB 692, was sponsored by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Louis Slaughter (D-NY) and signed by President Obama, which facilitated the donation of the “Tully Archive” in its entirety. The law provided for the waiver of the government’s claims to the papers, provided that the owner made a gift of the entire collection to the National Archives and Records Administration. With all that in mind, these papers are now permanently part of the FDR Library.

After the program and the wine, cheese and other culinary goodies, we were all able to meet the archivist and look directly at a number of the documents. About two dozen of them were scattered on a table and for the first time in many decades these papers were made available for public view. They were all in remarkably good shape. Seeing a 75 year old note from FDR to Grace Tully regarding Harry Hopkins and the President’s recommendation on spending $150 million was quite unique. In fact, today all of the papers will be open to the general public at Hyde Park. It was a busy and exciting weekend trip which started at the Bronxville Metro North train station and wound its way through the rolling Poconos, along the bluffs above the mighty Hudson River and back down the Taconic Parkway (which FDR had a major part in creating) to Westchester and our home in Tarrytown.

Milt and Dana Hoffman, with the Tigerlillies at the Hebrew Institute

November 4, 2010

Richard J. Garfunkel

Milt Hoffman, the Dean of Westchester County’s journalists, was a guest on The Advocates this week. He recently lost his beloved wife Judy of over 50 years. We met the Hoffmans many years ago at a Jai-alai Fronton in Connecticut and on vacation in Florida. They were a great partnership, and Milt, who covered seven Democratic and Republican National Conventions, knew more about local government and how it worked, then anyone I, or any one else, has ever known. His column, Tales of Hoffman, ran for over 30 years and he was always at the forefront of governmental reform and transparency. Today, after almost nine years of retirement, he is busier than ever; serving on many governmental, historical and review boards. One can hear Milt’s visit to The Advocates by going to http://advocates-wvox.com.

Yesterday, at the Hebrew Institute, where Milt has been a member for many decades, his granddaughter Dana Hoffman, and her a cappella singing group, the Tigerlillies came to entertain and honor her grandmother. Since my son Jon, was a Princeton graduate, the Class of 1998, I was aware of the long and wonderful tradition of Princeton’s a cappella groups. Therefore, despite a heavy rainstorm, I made my way over to Greenridge Avenue in White Plains, and joined the enthusiastic throng of Hebrew Institute regulars to hear their performance. I also had the pleasure of sitting at one of the tables where half the Tigerlillies were having lunch. These young women, who reflect some of our best and brightest, came from places as disparate as Shanghai, California, Long Island, and Philadelphia. They were first year students, sophomores and juniors and all had diverse intellectual interests ranging from engineering to history to English literature.

The Tigerlilly tradition began at Princeton University on a fall afternoon in 1971. Maria Danly '74 and seven other women gathered beneath the gothic architecture of 1879 archway, filling it with a four-part arrangement of the jazz classic How High the Moon. This was the inception of the female a cappella sound at Princeton. The group has changed over the past three decades, but the tight-knit combination of music and sisterhood has stayed the same. Since 1971, the Tigerlilies have traveled far and wide, touring exotic locales such as Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Bahamas. Don't forget Boston, Birmingham, Cape Cod, or Colorado: we have also made our way all around the continental U.S. Though our working repertoire changes as new songs are arranged and added, the Tigerlily sound and performance personality has always remained strong and unique.

Meanwhile the performance was not a disappointment. Their skill at harmonizing was wonderful, their synergy was obvious, and the music was great. It was a wonderful musical event, and I was one of the first to buy their Sincerely Yours CD, which has 23 tunes from Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend to How High the Moon. To buy the CD, one can go to this site:

http://www.princeton.edu/~tigerlil/store.htm , I am sure you won’t be disappointed.

Part I

Arizona continues to enchant us and our 6^th trip there since 2000 had not been a disappointment. Even though there have been talks of boycotts, problems of illegal immigration and the fact that the State has a governor named Jan Brewer who has a problem understanding the US Constitution along with two Senators; John McCain and Jon Kyl who are troglodytes at best, the state remains a great place to visit.

One thing for sure is that politics is alive and well in that beautiful state. On almost every vacant corner of Scottsdale, as we drove to and from the Camarillo Tennis and Fitness Center, there were scores of campaign signs flacking for each candidate. There seem to be hot contests for governor, US Senator, the Congress, superintendent of schools and other positions. Though most of the stations we receive at the Westin Kierland are national cable outlets, we were able to see a commercial or two for McCain. He’s not much different from what he was in 2008; just over the hill and a poster child for term limits. Ironically compared to some of his GOP Tea Party colleagues, he comes across as a Rhodes Scholar, not the dolt who was a high school flunky and 895^th out of 900 in his class at Annapolis.   

The flight left at 9:30 am, was decently smooth on Jet Blue, and except for some turbulence over Oklahoma, we cruised at 492 mph at about 34,000 feet above sea level. (On the way back we reached over 675 mph and were 25 minutes early.) We arrived at sunny Sky Harbor International Airport right on time, deplaned, gathered our luggage, found the jitney to the rental car pick-up, and picked up our brand new Ford Taurus with Sirius-XM radio. We listened to Frank Sinatra all week!

Its about 15 miles and 20 minutes to the Westin Kierland in Scottsdale, and after arriving and checking in, we headed down Scottsdale Road to Olde Town Scottsdale for a little shopping. We bought a lot of post cards and quickly noticed this key shopping districts for visitors was quiet. Of course, it wasn’t a big travel week, but according to most of the store-owners traffic was off, and there were many sales.

Finally we headed back to the Kierland, did a little shopping for vittles at the Safeway on Greenway Drive, unpacked, and rested a bit. Linda had bought tickets to see, “Backwards on Heels, the Ginger Musical,” about Ginger Rogers, produced by the Arizona Theater Company at the Herberger Theater Center in downtown Phoenix. We drove down Route 51 South, were able to park on the street, and walked a few blocks to the theater. It was the 2^nd to the last performance, it wasn’t sold out, and it was a pleasant review of Ginger Roger’s career from the time she was in Texas at age 15, through her early movies with Fred Astaire, her battles with her stage door mother, her various marriages and her Academy Award for “Kitty Foyle” in 1940 at the age of 29. The dancing and the music were entertaining and though the production was a bit disjointed, and the characterization of Astaire was a bit silly, but it was overall worth the time and the price of the tickets.

Meanwhile every morning we were able to play tennis on the hard courts of the Camarillo Tennis and Fitness Center. There were always many players early in the morning, but by the time we finished between 10:30 and 11:00 am the courts were empty.

One afternoon we drove up Scottsdale Road to both Cave Creek and Carefree, two small towns north of Scottsdale. We’ve been up there a number of times. In Cave Creek, where it is more casual and reminiscent of the old west, there are stores on Cave Creek Road which sell all sorts of pottery, bric-a-brac, tiles and cowboy-style garbs. We stopped in at Buffalo Bill’s Store and bought some more $1 tiles and then worked our way to Frontier Towne where we had lunch at the Smoke House Restaurant. Across the street was the Cave Creek Cowboy Company, which featured Ostrich boots and belts that ranged up to $2500 and $500. Too rich for my blood!

Not far up the road is the modern, planned town of Carefree, which is much more upscale and has many various stores which specialize in Native American pottery and all sorts of Hopi and Navajo dancing figures, known generically as Kachinas. We even got haircuts by a very nice woman from Tashkent, named Tatiana Makarova. In Carefree, on their main street which is called fittingly Easy Street, we visited a branch of Ortega’s, the English Rose Tea Room, the Desert Treasures and the Native American Gallery. The owner of the English Rose Tea Room is a British woman named Jo Gemmil, and we have met her, now and again, over the years. She has some interesting China and a lovely place to have high tea. At about 3:30 pm we were on our way back to Scottsdale.

After returning to the Westin Kierland, we decided to go over to the Westin Hotel and watch their piper play his bag pipes at sunset on their deck. As we listened to his sonorous and age old tunes, we had drinks and engaged in conversation with some young women from Ontario and other folks more from our generation. Amongst their group was a woman named Sylvia Bennett who was an entertainer who sang with Lionel Hampton and his band for ten years.

The next day, after tennis, our usual trip to the post office and a few other chores, we headed for our rooms, showered, changed and packed for out 100+ mile trip to Sedona. The roads in Arizona go quickly from 55 to 75 mph as one leaves the more populated areas and as soon as we reached I-17 we were flying along at over 75 mph. We cruised into the red rock region of Sedona in less than two hours. We found our time-sharing unit at the Sedona Pines, which is about six miles south of Upper Sedona on Route 89A. It was quite comfortable and, ironically, we had toured this place as part of a “time-sharing” meeting that we had years earlier.

Once we were settled in, Linda had an appointment at The Spa at Sedona Rouge which is on 89A. By the way almost everything in Sedona is on Routes 179 and 89A. I took Linda over to the Sedona Rouge; she then went to the hot tub, and would eventually get ready for her 90 minute massage. I left at 5:30 and came back at 7:00 PM. After her treatment we went to dinner at a nearby and very crowded restaurant named Dahl & DiLuca. We enjoyed a wonderful salad, an appetizer of mushrooms stuffed with mozzarella, and entrees of tortellini with Bolognese sauce and chicken picata. We sat at the bar; the service was good and the food was excellent.