Stories of Terror Strike Home

I’ve written about the intertwining of current events and news articles with my life experiences. Today provided examples of both the bemusing and tragic juxtapositions of reality with my past.

Monday’s New York Times ran an article on Chatham, Mass., where a little more than two decades ago my magazine co-sponsored a retail innovation technology award (RITA) competition at the Chatham Bars Inn. Invoking the perquisite of office, I brought along my whole family for three days of fun, walking and biking around Chatham and playing on the beach, a mini vacation catalogued by Gilda on our VCR camera, the tapes of which I recently converted to DVD format. Gilda filmed me walking from my meeting to the beach where Dan and Ellie built sand castles.

One of Gilda’s and my fondest memories of our children is dinner in the dining room of the Chatham Bars Inn. The dozen adults—judges and spouses—ate together. As required by the hotel, the men wore jackets and ties. Ellie and Dan, respectively 8 and 11, ate at a separate table in a separate area of the dining room. We dressed them up in their finest outfits. The wait staff treated them like a prince and princess. They were models of decorum, acting very grown up amid very grown up surroundings.

The Times article chronicled the increased presence of great white sharks in the waters around Chatham, a terror the town has not only learned to live with but also has embraced for economic benefit (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/us/sharks-in-cape-cod-town-draw-tourists-flipping-the-jaws-script.html?ref=us&_r=0).

A continent away, in the waters of Venice Beach, Calif., where Gilda and I stayed two years ago, terror of another kind struck Sunday. A lightning strike electrified the salt water, injuring about a dozen swimmers. One young man died. 

Like many of you, I heard of this tragedy on the radio news. The deceased was not identified. As I was riding Metro North to Manhattan this morning to attend a rally against man-made terror by Hamas against Israel, a friend at my former magazine called. The young man who died was the son of our West Coast saleswoman. 

It’s been hard to breathe deeply all day. The support for Israel rally brought out collective grief, not just for Israelis killed in the conflict in Gaza but also for the hundreds of civilian Palestinians killed, injured and trapped in the crossfire. Jews identify with the suffering of other Jews, and other peoples. It’s in our blood, our DNA, given our long history of persecution. But it’s mostly an abstract association. Among the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, many of my relatives could be numbered. But I never met them. I have pictures of but a few of them. 

Similarly, I know many Israelis, friends and relatives. I long for a time when they won’t be in daily danger, when they can return to the beaches of Tel Aviv and Herzliya without fear, without searching for the location of the nearest bomb shelter.

Nick Fagnano just wanted to wash the sand from his body when he waded into the Pacific Ocean right before the lightning struck. I might have met Nick once when he was a teenager. I truly don’t remember. But I knew his mother for most of the 32 years I worked for Lebhar-Friedman. Mary joined the sales staff of Chain Store Age in 2003. She and her husband, Jay, always talked positively about their son, his devotion to baseball. He was a pitcher on the Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High School baseball team. In September he was to enter USC as a junior to study urban development.

Headlines and initial stories said, “20-year-old man” killed by lightning. Yes, he was old enough to be called a man. But to Mary and Jay, he will always be their boy, their only child, taken from them in a freakish confluence of timing and nature. 

A Mother's Vindication and Muscle Bound

A Mother’s Vindication: Gilda doesn’t normally read the sports pages, but she sent me an article the other day that must have found its way onto the most emailed list of The NY Times. The article recounted how many parents, including professional and retired athletes, are reticent about allowing their children to play football because of the fear of injury, especially head injury. 

“How nice that people are coming to these conclusions about football 30 years after I said I would never allow Dan to play!,” she wrote in a note to Dan and me accompanying the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/sports/football/with-fears-about-safety-football-faces-uncertain-evolution.html?_r=1). 

Can’t say I fault her for crowing and being clairvoyant.

The article even quoted Hall of Fame quarterback and football analyst Terry Bradshaw predicting within 10 years football would be “eclipsed in popularity by soccer and other sports.”

Of course, playing soccer is no guarantee a child will be injury-free and mothers will be worry-free. Case in point: Dan played on a travel all-star soccer team from the time he was nine years old. Except for most of that first fall season, he was the goalie, which was rather startling as he was a less than determined player when he played defense. You might say he was the most accommodating defender there ever was. If the ball was between him and a player from another team, his politeness gene kicked in. He deferred to his foe, giving him free rein to kick the ball to the goal. 

As soon as Dan was shifted to goalkeeper late that first all-star season, he underwent a transformation. Perhaps it was realizing he was the last line of defense, Dan became downright protective of his space. He would fling his body towards the ball, even running headlong into an advancing forward. He did not give up goals lightly. One weekend tournament he played four games before the coaches realized he had fractured his wrist. His team won all four of those games.

At another tournament when Dan was around 12, this one attended by Gilda as well, an opponent took a shot from about 30 feet away. Screened on the play, Dan nevertheless made the save—with his face. Down he went. Play stopped as his teammates and coaches gathered around his dazed body. 

Standing on the sidelines, Gilda’s maternal instincts took over. She started to rush onto the field, but was restrained by the referees. To no avail she cried out, “What kind of game is this where a parent can’t run to her injured son?” Dan recovered soon enough and completed the game. His team won that one, too.

Muscle Bound: Ever been to Muscle Beach, that stretch of surf and sand in Venice, Calif., made famous by body builders including Arnold Schwarzenegger? I have, though a look at my frame would not immediately conjure up images of muscles. The closest I’ve come to enjoying muscles is partaking some steamed mussels along with a basket of crisp French fries, otherwise known as moules et frites. But I digress.

A front page article in The Times the other day brought to light the concerns of Venetians that their honky-tonk world is under threat. Seems Google, and even the ex-guv Arnold himself, might be buying up properties to reshape the terrain away from street people, body builders, drop-outs, skateboarders, medical marijuana dispensaries and the homeless (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/bodybuilders-flinch-at-googles-venice-beach-incursion.html). 

Gilda and I have been to Venice Beach, just down the way from Santa Monica, several times, but it was only during our most recent trip to California, last November as part of the time we spent in Los Angeles for our nephew Ari’s wedding, that we opted to stay at the Venice Beach Suites and Hotel, in a third floor room overlooking the boardwalk and beach. It was lovely watching the setting sun from our window. I wouldn’t say we were fearful of the street people. Cautious would be a better word. We’re generally adventurous tourists, but quite content to say “been there, done that” once the experience is over. I doubt we will rebook a room on Venice Beach.