[Fredslist] Fwd: Marty Glickman changed my life

[Bambe Levine]

> 
> 
> 
>> I never wrote this story but since HBO had a piece on Marty Glickman the other night, I thought that it was time…especially since these memories date back over 40 years….Read it only if you have time or feel disposed to learn more about him from my experience.  It's also a personal story about me…usually one which I do not share so publicly..Okay, here goes:
>> 

>> The year: 1970.  The place,:Central Park.  It was May, Opening Day of the New York Women's Advertising Softball League.  We were the Girls of Summer.  
>> 
>>  I played center field, old number 7s position for the Nadler & Larimer’s team, creators of the Faberge shampoo commercials….Remember? Well, it was a long time ago.
>> 
>>  We waited near assigned our field for the opposing team to show up show up but they never did.  Maybe they forgot.  Perhaps they didn’t care.  We were stood up and abandoned with no one to play with.   Now what?  
>> 
>>  In the distance we saw a group of guys playing ball.  We strolled on by. How about that!  They were the on-air guys of the radio station that used to broadcast the Knicks.  What was it? 1010WINS?  WABC-AM?  WOR-AM?   Humm…
>> 
>>   "These girls look lost,”  we head. “Let's choose up sides and play a game with them,” someone said.  And there I was playing softball ball with the likes of Marty Glickman and the rest of his cohorts.
>> 
>>  The ball burned towards the batter.  A hit came to center field.  I had my glove ready…made a deep and threw it back to the second baseman who tagged the first base runner.  “OUT!”, the umpire said!
>> 
>>  I thought I would die.
>> 
>>  In the next inning I got a hit…and that's how the game progressed for four power packed innings…”Holy Cow” as Phil Rizzuto would say!
>> 
>>  After the game. Marty Glickman came over to me.   "Let's go out for a drink," he said.  I put my fingers through my hair as if to comb it.
>> 
>>  "Sure.  Why not.  Let's go…" 
>> 
>>  And so we walked out of the park to a hotel bar on West 68th and Central Park West.  
>> 
>>  "So Bambe," Marty started.."What do you do?”
>> 
>>  I briefly gave him my credentials and we started to talk….Turned out Marty owned a six week summer camp touring Europe for very privileged New York kids.  They would do summer skiing in the morning while the snow was still cold and play tennis in the afternoon. Naturally he needed good counselors who could teach skiing and other counselors to teach tennis.
>> 
>>  "Do you ski like you play softball?" Marty inquired.  
>> 
>>  "YES" I responded in less time than it took Sarah Palin to say YES when she was asked if she wanted to run for VP? 
>> 
>>  You see I had started skiing as a teenager with my Irish Twin brother who had been scouted by the Yankees. (My father threatened to cut him off if he went in that direction--so he became a lawyer, instead.)  Anyway, Barry and I were pretty good athletes and skiing with him helped to push me to the brink of my abilities. As I got better I became a hot-dogger taking risks that would make a mother curse the day you were born.  But I never broke a bone.  I did have to nurse some pretty nasty black and blue dents, mostly on my rear…..Oh well, back to my Marty story.
>> 
>>  So Marty invited me to become a ski counselor at his 6 weeklong European Summer Camp trip.  
>> 
>>  I took a 2-month leave of absence from my very first PR job as I was transitioning from editorial to public relations. I worked like a dog to get job, too!  I said a tearful goodbye to my boyfriend but not without giving him 2 months worth of money to give to my landlady for my $106 dollar a month rent controlled apartment on West 70th Street.  Then I bought some new hot Hot pants, lots of sun-screen, and left for Milan on June 30 that year.  Our itinerary:  2 weeks in Cervinia--the Italian side of the Matterhorn (the other side Zermatt, Switzerland), 2 weeks in Val d'Isere, and finally 2 weeks in St. Mortiz…before heading to Paris for a week to visit a friend, and then home.
>> 
>>  Marty Glickman followed me everywhere as I taught mostly beginner skiers learn to snow plow.  With some of the other counselors we skied to into Zermatt and brought back some contraband cigarettes.  Little did we know what we were doing was illegal.  And Marty followed my activities as I also played tennis with the kids in the afternoon and went to discos at night.
>> 
>> Not bad…
>> 
>>  The day we arrived, the first of July, it snowed like Christmas.  Snowdrops were the size of marshmallows falling from the sky.  But it was summer. The snow melted as it hit the ground and by mid-afternoon we were playing tennis, longing for temperatures to drop to make new snow so we could ski on fresh powder.  All skiers know about this! 
>> 
>> Our first night in Cervinia, we went to the only open disco in town…There was a group of Italians...all watching us.  We were the loud Americans on vacation and having fun
>> 
>>  …One handsome man walked over to me and…
>> 
>>  Cut!  It's almost the end of that story and the start of another.
>> 
>>  I stayed with him in Italy for 2 years.  He was a banker, living in Florence working to become an international banker for Credito Italiano, at that time the second largest bank in the country. 
>> 
>>  But Marty Glickman made this all happen.   What if I not gone to play softball in Central Park that day?  What if the other side showed up?  Or it rained?  And what if Marty Glickman was called into a late meeting and had not been there…? And if and if and if..
>> 
>>  And to this day, 40+ years later, Franco and I still talk on the phone and see each other every time I return to Italy--which has become a yearly trip for me….He's 82 now…but I'm still that young girl of summer, looking with wide eyes for my next adventure.  No more hot-dogging .  Hardly any more skiing.  Why did I stop!  Because no one really wants to go with me.  The heat of Cancun or Nevis seems to me more appealing than ice flakes prickling against my face on the slopes of Aspen or Davos.
>> 
>>  God laughs...
>> 
>>  \When I heard that he had died several years ago I immediately saw him in my brain.  It was a poignant memory that stuck in my head and I tell it to you now:  He was sitting on the sun deck high above in the Italian Alps, with the sun beating on his newly mustachioed face.  Marty was checking out a new blue baby sweater he had just purchased for grandson.  I see him now, sitting on that sun deck smoking a cigar, staring off in no place in particular following the smoke he had just released from his lungs.
>> 
>>  Marty was a man for all sport seasons.  He has pride, a spirit and a beautiful heart….He was a good –in fact very good man.
>> 
>>  Fate stepped in again.  On Monday night Time Warner was dark on the east side of Manhattan leaving us without telephone, internet or TV from mid-afternoon until around 11 that evening.  But we caught it last night.  
>> 
>> What a thrill…It was so good to remember the life of this remarkable man.  But I never told him of my Italian adventure .  You see it hanged my life forever…
>> 
>>  Thanks Marty!
>> 
>>  
>> Bambe Levine
>> 
>> Gotham Member since 2004
>> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.gothamnetworking.com/pipermail/fredslist/attachments/20130828/3d35e6dd/attachment.html