Bill Zuckert
15 December 1915-23 January 1997
25 February
Well, darlings, I'm back.
The memorial was Sunday, and I was incredibly nervous, because it was this giant extravaganza with a photo montage, clips from his film and TV work, audio clips from an interview he once did about old time radio, and 16 speakers.
And I was the emcee.
I had ten heart attacks before starting, but right at the very beginning I got my first laugh, and I relaxed.
And don't be surprised about the laughs, darlings, that was the whole point of this memorial--lots of funny stories, no weeping allowed.
The whole thing went like gangbusters (small inside joke). It was nearly as long as Hamlet, but there were no dud speakers, and everybody had a great time. The three best speeches were by Ed Asner, Marvin Kaplan, and Bob Healy, an old Navy buddy of my Da's, who told the most hilarious stories from their time together in New Guinea in WWII. Great stuff.
And then I sang, and was told afterwards by several people that they teared up during it, which pleased me, because that was the only time where that sort of behaviour was appropriate.
All in all, it was a great tribute. Afterwards, I felt as if I was at my own wedding, though. There were 130 people there (Mom and I counted names in the guestbook afterwards), and they ALL wanted to talk to me, and I wanted to talk to all of them, and there were people whom I haven't seen for years and years, and I had no time to talk to them properly, and there were all these old people who haven't seen me since I was a baby and I had to talk to them for as long as they wanted to talk to me, and it took me half an hour to walk the four feet from the door to the food table.
And then yesterday I came back to NY on the 7a flight (argh!) and the stewardesses were all as mean as snakes, but they gave us cookies as we exited, so it was all very good cop/bad cop. Went town and rehearsed my show that opens tomorrow (they teched without me yesterday), then came home and collapsed.
Them bad kitties were all frantic with happiness that I was back, and wanted to sit on my lap all at once, which would have been fine if they could be in such close proximity to each other without fighting.
The best example of this was when I was in bed, and Elvis wanted to go under the covers and cuddle, so I let him, and them Monty wanted to go under the covers and cuddle, and was VERY SHOCKED that his arch-enemy was under there too, so they had a fight right ON my face. I have three puncture wounds surrounding my left eye--a little too close for comfort, and one inside my nose.
When I came back to bed after checking my eye in the mirror, I was explaining to Monty how VERY VERY BAD that was, and he was looking at me like I was the biggest baby in the world, as he gets a new bleeding scratch on his face every couple of days or so.
A festive welcome home.
The most amazing part was that the two baddest kitties of all, Milo and Baldrick, had no part in this at all! They were both sitting angelically to the side during all this fuss, looking absolutely shocked at such behaviour.
The first Christmas picture, 1966,
and the last Christmas picture, 1996.
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Last Updated Tues 18 August 11:53:09 1998