Losing My Heroes

There are many days during my lifetime that I will never forget. It's funny how some stand out so clearly from the rest, but life seems filled with those kinds of days. Very few of those days are from my childhood, but there are two that will stand apart in my mind and in my heart for the remainder of my time here.

In 1979 I was ten years old and a baseball fanatic. I played the game, I watched the game, I read about the game, I listened to the game, and I talked about the game -- boy, did I talk about the game. I was a fan of the New York Yankees like my father before me. I am a loyal fan of the Bronx Bombers today, and I can still get a tingle and a thrill when I go to Yankee Stadium or watch them win an exciting game. I had every player's batting average committed to memory and could easily rattle off the team leaders in Home Runs, Earned Run Average, and Runs Batted In. Members of my family would routinely quiz me on my statistical genius, and like a trained monkey I'd answer them; even though we both knew that they had no idea whether or not I gave them the right answer. I watched every game back then -- adult responsibilities prevent me from doing the same nowadays, but I'd gladly welcome the opportunity -- and when I did, I wore the jersey of my favorite player, my baseball mentor, my hero: Thurman Munson.

The captain of the Yankees wore number 15, and so did I. The burly backstop of the World Champions kept a classic handlebar moustache but I was much too young to emulate that. Thurman played the game the way it was meant to be played -- hard. He never phoned in a game or failed to leg out the weak grounder to short; that's why I loved him. Thurman meant so much to the team that the Yankees named him Captain in 1976. He was the first Captain the Yankees had named since the retirement of Lou Gehrig some 37 years earlier. I can't think of a baseball player since that has been as universally loved by fans and players alike -- perhaps Mark McGwire in 1998, but even so, I still believe Thurman had something that is so rare, so fleeting' He was a true hero.

On August 2, 1979, in the middle of a pennant race, Thurman Munson's twin-engine plane fell short of the runway during an attempted landing at the Akron-Canton airfield in Ohio and tragically burst into flames. Thurman died that day -- and so did a part of me. I find it poignant that I am exactly the same age now that Thurman was when he died. His legacy is still with me, every day.

When I first heard the news I refused to believe it. I still remember exactly where I was standing the moment I heard. Funny how memory works that way isn't it? We can remember these precise details about the most emotionally devastating moments of our lives, yet we can't remember where we put the remote control 15 minutes ago. I was standing in the hallway of the house I grew up in, just next to the stairs by the railing. I can still feel the coolness of the floor tile under my feet, and I can still see the picnic-table red carpet that covered our living room. I can remember my dog 'Gloopy' coming up to me and licking my hand because he always knew when something was wrong. I grabbed him and hugged him with everything my little ten-year-old arms could manage, and I cried.

It felt as though my entire world had changed, and I truly feel that it did. Somehow things weren't going to be okay this time, and there was nothing that my Mother could do to make it all better. This was really my first brush with death in a tangible sense. No one in my immediate family had passed away in my first ten years on this Earth, and for that I feel fortunate, but in a way I was wholly unprepared for what I was suddenly faced with. When you're ten and your hero is taken away from you like that, it's hard to really know how to react, how to feel. It's hard to know when it's okay to stop crying. Incidentally, the Yankees never recovered either, failing to make the World Series after winning the previous two. They would make it back to the Big Show in 1981, but lose a tough series to the hated Dodgers.

I found a way to carry on, of course, but baseball never fired the same passion in me anymore. I still loved the game; I just loved it a little less. I can remember not even watching the last few games of the season, after it was apparent that the Yankees would not win their division, and not be able to defend their back-to-back World Championships. Something just snapped in me, and I couldn't find the solace in the game that I could before. All I wanted to do when I looked at the Yankee pinstripes was break down in tears. It would take a long time before I was able to come back to the game of my youth.

With baseball no longer holding the prominent position in my repertoire of favorite activities, I escaped into another that had so much impact on me during my youth.

Music.

Music has always played a major role in my life. From the time I was old enough to form permanent memories, I can recall music playing in the house. Neither of my parents were musicians, but there was always a radio on, or a record playing somewhere around the place while I caused havoc and drove my Mother crazy. Mom especially was a music lover; she'd sing along with the popular songs on the radio and her enthusiasm was more than infectious. Through this kind of exposure, I came to associate music with fun and good emotions. To this day, there's nothing that can alter my mood quite like music. Most times all it takes is one song or one CD to snap me out of whatever funk I may happen to be in. Music is very important to me, and I thank my parents in part for helping to encourage that.

Of all the diverse music in our house, the music of The Beatles was omnipresent throughout. It was certainly a constant and I grew to love it rather quickly. Whether it was on the radio, or I was playing my parent's LPs of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road, they quickly became my favorite artists, even surpassing Kiss-- hey, it was the 1970s and I was young -- as my most played records. There was just something about the songs; I don't know whether or not it was the melody, or if on some level I really did understand the lyrics, but they spoke to me like nothing had ever done before. I almost wore a hole in the second side of Abbey Road I played it so much.

[Aside to the youngsters: Records actually had two sides back then; you had to flip them over' crazy isn't it?]

Well, as all fans of the band tended to do, I found myself identifying with one member of the 'Fab Four' over the others. To no one's surprise I'm sure, that member was John Lennon. Again, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what drew me to him, but certainly his wit, his charm, his sense of humor, and his poetic lyrics all contributed to my fascination. John seemed to me to be the 'smart' Beatle, and I identified with that. Every video clip I'd ever seen had John goofing around or laughing; just being himself, and it was easy to admire him.

Years went by as they tend to do, and the music of The Beatles was with me the whole time. It was like a loyal companion, and I sort of grew to depend on it. Their songs could make me happy, make me sad, or make me want to get up and jump around my room -- which I did on several occasions. But I always loved best, the songs that John Lennon sang.

So by 1980 I had become quite a fan of the band, even though they'd been split 10 years at that point, when one day I serendipitously came across a song on the radio that sounded remarkably like John Lennon -- I hadn't heard it before. I asked my Mother if she knew what this brilliant new song was, and she admitted that she didn't, so we both sat in rapt attention waiting for the DJ to announce the details. The song in question was "Watching the Wheels", and it was a new single off of an upcoming record called Double Fantasy by John Lennon & Yoko Ono. To say that I was excited by the news would be the grandest of understatements.

Hearing new music by my favorite artist was almost enough to restore my faith in the World after it had tore my hero away from me one year earlier. I was resolved to get to the record store and grab the 45 of this new song as soon as I could convince my Mother to take me there. At that point in my life I really needed something that I could attach myself to. I had lost my first real hero and a lot of my youthful innocence in the prior twelve months, and the prospect of having someone new to cling to was exciting.

Twenty one years later it's hard to know with any certainty if I had appointed Mr. Lennon as my new hero at that particular moment in time, but it was certainly the first real positive sign in my life in what had been a long, tough year. In retrospect of course, I wish I hadn't heard the song that day, but I suppose that I would have heard it eventually. To this day it's difficult for me to listen to that song without tearing up; although sometimes I still feel 11 years old when I hear it, and those rare times I covet, as they are treasures.

On the ninth of December, 1980, I was at my Grandmother's house, playing on the floor of her living room. The music on the radio stopped, and the man on the station broke the news through choked back tears: John Lennon, the man said, upon returning home from a recording session last night was shot and killed in front of his New York City home by a deranged fan. These days I prefer the term 'degenerate fucking scumbag.'

I wouldn't be able to say honestly what the feelings were that ripped through me right then, but I remember slowly looking up to my Mother's eyes, and when she returned my gaze, I knew that this was real, but at the same time so impossible. I think I remember just sort of slumping there on the floor of Grandma's place, perhaps in shock, perhaps just too filled with sadness to do much of anything else. I could not believe that it had happened again. John was gone. Taken away from me, just like Thurman; all in the course of less than 16 months. Now I too, like my Grandfather before me, had a December day that would forever live in infamy.

At eleven years old I think that you are old enough to understand your position in life, and certainly old enough to understand the gravity of a situation such as that, but perhaps young enough to still have some na've optimism about what lay ahead. At eleven years old, I lost whatever optimism I may have had. I had allowed myself to idolize two individuals that had given me so much; so much hope, so much inspiration, and something to aspire to. Now they were dead. How the hell was I supposed to be able to deal with that?

Now, as I write this essay at thirty-two years old, I've been given some more terrible news. George Harrison passed away on November 29, 2001 of a cancer related illness. This saddens me more than I can put into words here because George, to me, was the solid musical force behind The Beatles, especially in the later years. His brilliant musical sensibilities and innovative use of Eastern melodies and instruments furthered the music of the band more than any other individual contribution.

It would not be untrue to say that George Harrison was my second favorite Beatle after John, and being a guitarist, I felt a connection to some of George's work that inspired me to become a better player, and to try new ideas. He was a true visionary, and he will be missed more than I think he'll ever know.

George was dubbed 'The Quiet Beatle' by the press in the mid 1960s, yet in so many ways, he wasn't. His musicality, his ability to take simple lines and alter them so that they became something completely different spoke volumes. His songwriting spoke even louder than that. Frank Sinatra once called Something, 'The greatest love song ever written.' -- it doesn't get much better than that.

George said, 'All things must pass', and we have to accept this as a natural part of the cycle. This is truly a sad day, and I will miss you terribly, George. I salute you for your work and your compassion; for your brilliance and your message of peace; for the love of all that life had to offer and the love of others that you so eloquently preached. Thank you for everything that you gave to me, I will never forget you.

Could you maybe say 'Hello,' to John for me?

I haven't allowed myself to have another hero since that day in 1980.  I guess the thought of experiencing that loss again is too much. There are certainly people I admire, people I look up to, but I don't have heroes anymore. Today I am able to celebrate the lives of Thurman Munson and John Lennon, and I am able to be thankful for the things that they unknowingly gave to me. I am grateful for being able to share a portion of my life with them, but somewhere inside it still hurts. Somewhere inside of me that eleven year old boy is still staring at the radio, hoping that it's all a terrible joke, that none of it happened, waiting to hear the news that John is actually okay, that things will be fine, and that it's ok to believe in heroes again.

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