Posted on 08/26/2016 7:27:58 AM PDT by gigster
My most famous or influential people include Red Skelton, B. B. King, Tim Allen at a party, and Tom Gale, The designer and collaborator with Bob Lutz on the Dodge Viper and variants.
Kid Rock. he’s a scrawny little guy who flew into our airport here in Charlevoix for a Venetian Festival weekend. He was in a private jet without Pam Anderson, but he was with another raggedy blond. I’ve since seen that he’s bought his own private jet. He must’ve been impressed by our hangar facility. Everyone who has seen it is.
Bob Hope, Mark Jackson, Coach Dan Reeves, Mike Dikta, Mean Joe Green, Andre the Giant, and several others
Leonard Peikoff, the intellectual and financial heir of Ayn Rand was an instructor of mine at UCSD La Jolla in 1985. He described me as a Peripatetic Objectivist.
“...we caught no fish.”
Which just goes to show that even larger than life heroes can have an ordinary day.
I was in an elevator once with Diane Feinstein
“He described me as a Peripatetic Objectivist.”
LOL, Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk came to mind.
Some of the influential, plus some of the less-influential but yet intriguing people I've met and spent time with, many of them no longer with us:
Pres. Ronald Reagan (twice at private receptions so I was able to converse with him personally).....Illinois Governor Jim Thompson.....Illinois Senator Charles Percy.....Chicago Mayor Daley the Elder.....an aging Red Grange (the "Galloping Ghost"), named the best collegiate college football player of all time.....a good friend, Hall of Famer, White Sox pitcher/broadcaster, Early Wynn, along with his broadcasting side-kick Hawk Harrellson, All-Star major league baseball player and also broadcaster for the White Sox (both gentlemen being regular customers of our family sports center business in a Chicago suburb)...also popping in all the time were MLB manager, Tony LaRussa, pitching star, Tom Seaver, Michael Jordan, and Bob Thomas, star Chicago Bear football place kicker, now a circuit court judge in my former county). Also had the privilege of spending a couple delightful hours with the Rev. Billy Graham, my fascinating table companion at a banquet in his honor.....
.....plus, the famous original "Morris the Cat", star of TV cat food commercials, who was my special guest at the groundbreaking of my county's new animal shelter. Morris's owner, Bob, had a thriving kennel in my district and was a political supporter of mine. I have a photo of me holding a very orange-colored Morris at the event, he weighed a ton (very overweight), and slept most of the time sprawled out on the top Bob's desk at his kennel business in district.
.....plus my most unusual "meeting-up".....shaking the gloved hand of the Queen of Denmark at a private dinner party. She was the honored guest of a Danish friend/former classmate of mine who owned a famous Danish restaurant in a Chicago suburb (I tasted my first smoked eel at the smorgasbord laid out at the party. Oh, my....!)
I met lots of other "celebs", but the above names stick out in my mind for various reasons....and just as plain happy and interesting memories.
Thanks, Gigster. This fun thread makes "name-dropping" acceptable for 'umble people like me, LOL. Hope my little capsule anecdotes were interesting to my fellow freepers, also.
Leni/MinuteGal
Are you a Peikoff-ian or a Kelly-ite?
Joe LoDuca, Emmy award winning composer cousin of my buddy from Detroit who scored Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules, and Evil Dead I and II.
I had lunch with JFK at the Whitman’s estate on Storm King Mountain, New York. I was a kid. He was running for the Senate. It was him and me at the table eating tunafish sandwiches in the Whitman’s kitchen. All I remember about him was his enormous head and that he never quit talking. Pestered me with all kinds of questions. I was more interested in the tunafish.
Very nice Leni.
Dr. Billy Graham, debating the leftist activist, Mario Salvio over a series of evenings at MIT.
Rev Graham chewed him up and spit him out. Times were tumultuous in the 1960s.
Listening to Rev Graham, in a small setting changed the course of my political life. Good times.
Red Skelton, Donald O’Connor, Bob Newhart, Jeff Foxworthy, Ray Charles, Mel Torme, Helen Reddy, Charles Nelson Reilly, Kate Jackson, Roberta Flack, Gov Martinez of Florida, Lyle Alzado, Steve Spurrier, Rodney Marsh, Bill Nelson — that’s all that I can remember at the moment.
I would not describe myself as a Peikoffian, but I am an avid reader of Objectivist books and authors. George Reisman and John Ridpath come to mind. Thanks for the response. This was fun.
I met Liddy in Honolulu while working at the Harley shop there. Introduced to me by his former cellmate. He struck me as a very intense man. Observing everything. Firm handshake. Direct eye contact. No nonsense. After work that day I went out an bought his book “When I was a Kid This was a Free Country”.
Supposedly Huntz Hall was in the Navy. He did a training video where he was a careless pilot and accidentally kills a bunch of people.
Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan. Tab Hunter. Flew back from Hawaii on the same commercial flight as Bob Hope (he had been over there filming a Christmas special), jealous because he got to visit the cockpit in flight (hey, it was the 1980s).
Thanks, Doughty...and, by the way, in the anecdotes I recounted in my above post # 247, I didn't even dare (LOL) to mention the name of Tony Accardo, big-time mobster whom I met up-close-and-personal. This was when I was a high-schooler on a double-date and the three of us picked his daughter up by car on a Saturday night at the Accardo mansion in River Forest, Illinois, a Chicago western suburb.
I went up to the gangster's front door with my date and hers, we were ushered in by a housekeeper...and I rather brazenly asked for a tour of the house while waiting for his daughter to get ready.
Accardo himself took us around the first floor (gold-plated fixtures everywhere, expensive, ponderous, dark carved-wood Italianate furniture, funereal-colored ruffled pure silk lamp shades .....and with a one-lane bowling alley in the night-clubbish basement). The house was old-fashioned European, kinda creepy and gloomy-looking. Tony himself was gracious and friendly, but looks-wise he was as ugly as his reputation and mob ties.
Leni
Hi Leni! I met Morris the Cat too, lol! I went and saw Reagan when he had the rally at College of DuPage, but at that time I wasn’t yet connected in the political world, so no invite to the reception for me.
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