How I met JoAnne Worley.

My Friend JoAnne

Great stories always have an unexpected twist.  I have told this one before but another chapter was added just last Saturday evening.

I’ll start there.  

As the MC of an Anniversary Show last Saturday night for CSL-LA, I got the honor of introducing my friend Joanne Worley to those gathered. This is perhaps the easiest job any master of  ceremonies could have.  Everyone knows Joanne Worley, especially this audience. It happens to be the congregation of the church we both attend.  Although I will claim to have known JoAnne several decades others have known her much longer than me.  So I decide to tell the story of how Joanne and I met as part of her introduction.

I have told it many times since it happened in 1978 but I have never told it from stage before.  I did write about it in this blog 7 years ago, here is a link to that story. My introductory version at the Anniversary Show was somewhat abbreviated.

“Let that man on the Boat” 

You never forget a story when there is a foreign militiaman holding an automatic weapon on you and has taken possession of your passport.  It was also the first time I had ever been on a cruise ship, and the first time I was cast in an actual film.  I don’t remember much about the plot of the movie, nor much of the cruise itself, and I don’t think I even read the entire script.  I was playing the part of a ship entertainer with a few scenes that connected my act to the mystery plot of the film.  I have never seen it, if it was ever indeed released - even for television. There is a reference to the movie on my IMDB but it also says it was an animated feature with other actors that I have never met.

It was a somewhat hap hazzard production.  They had not taken into account the electrical needs of all the lights and cameras which put a big strain on the aging ship.  There was always the fear that the next take would blow up the ships generator.  It was comforting to hear the director yell “cut” instead of hearing a loud explosion from the engine room.  

All of that is really irrelevant to my meeting JoAnne that morning.  She got the cruise director who eventually got me on the boat and released from dockside detainment.  If I had never seen JoAnne again after that she would still be my nautical heroine forever.

So, I tell this story to introduce JoAnne and was pleased it got some laughs.  JoAnne of course was her charming, bubbly self on stage, the night of out church show, singing parodies and yes even doing ventriloquism with a puppet chicken during her act.  JoAnne can command a stage and control an audience in a way that only comes from her incredible talent and years of experience.

Ah, but every great story has an unexpected twist. Some twists take 40 years in the reveal.

At this show was the wife of a church member.   She said she was a fan of JoAnne and me and had been for a very long time. She always wanted to tell us her story.  This is what she said.

At 12 years old her parents wanted to take her on vacation.  They chose to join the passengers of the Marconi with an ocean cruise from New York to Santo Domingo and back.  It just happened that this was the very cruise I would join mid way through to shoot the movie with JoAnne.  She vaguely remembers a scuffle at the dock in Santo Domingo but didn’t realize I was the instigation of that affair.

 When she figured out a movie was being made on the ship, she became fascinated by the process of film production.  She followed the crew from set up to set up and watched every take.  She lost interest in all the official ship board activities and preferred to spend the days at sea watching grips and electricians make movie magic.  It was a turning point in her life.  She said, “That is the moment I realized I wanted to be in that business.”  She is now a successful union card holding movie crew member.

She said, “When I heard you and JoAnne were going to be here together, I wanted to tell you how much you changed my life.”  Then she said, “I can’t believe you told that very story tonight.”   To be perfectly honest, I can’t believe I told that particular story either.  We took a picture of the three of us to commemorate the evening.

The legendary Marconi cruise proves:

Life is an Adventure and the definition of and Adventure is: An experience for which the outcome is unknown.  We never know exactly what will happen at the next moment of our lives nor how it might change us forever.  The moral here is, make every moment count.

As you were,

Jay 

My First day without a Mother

It was difficult to get Mom to smile for a picture.
This is one of her smiles I like the most.
It is a grainy still frame from a video I took
at her 90th birthday before she realize I was
filming.  

Although my Mom has been leaving us for some time now, yesterday she moved on physically. Her last few years were like the journey of many elderly people. We have come to a point where medical technology can keep the old alive, but not necessarily living.   The ultimate irony is that we keep a body alive only to lose the mind inside.

I was last with her two weeks ago when my brother, sister and I went to see her in Dallas.  All three kids together with her, the four of us alone.  There was enough Pampy inside to let us have moments of genuine eye contact and maybe a sentence or two.  Her stories were mostly nonsense to us.  She seemed to follow them quite well for a moment or two.  

At one point she said very clearly, “The Boys are telling me it’s about time to shut this thing down.” Since that is a very Toler family expression and she always referred to her brothers as THE boys we kids assumed she was referring to her brothers who have all passed, two within the last year.  Clearly she was in communication with them and they were getting anxious to have her join Dad and the family.  

I have communicated more with Pampy though my heart than actual conversation over the last year.  As the “middle child” I claim a relation with Pampy that is different from my only younger sister and my only older brother.  Since I left the house at 21 years old most of my relationship with Pampy has been by phone, and more recently by email.  In fact for a long time I wrote this blog for her enjoyment alone. She told me once she felt like she knew what I was doing when I wrote the blog stories. Her exact words were, “I can keep up with you.”  There were a couple of times she took my comedy seriously and I had to explain it was a joke. I suspect that she is able to read it with more clarity now.

I could always call Mom and talk to her, particularly in lonely times on the road.  I would feel better by just telling her where I was.
  

This is what I remember at this moment about Mom/Pampy.

I arrived in Pittsburgh for a corporate show and a couple of my bags did not make the connection.  I was trying to put together an act from what I carried on.  One of the producers was looking to rent a suit for me... all he could find was a tuxedo. It was a long time at the airport waiting for no bags,  now I was pushing it to be ready for showtime. It was April 1st and this all could be some cosmic prank but April 1st is also Pampy’s birthday. In a moment to take a deep breath I called my Mommie. 

I am sure Dad was also on the line so we talked about the kind of cake he got her and what they were doing to celebrate her birthday.  They asked about me, where was I today. I tried to make this corporate show from hell sound as glamorous as I could, but Pampy, in her intuitive way, is not buying it.  She gets the truth out of me.
Pampy was a spiritual woman and what ever way she prayed worked... in mysterious ways.  Her spiritual growth continued all her life and she knew it all from the basics to the metaphysics. My siblings will agree that she had some connection to the mystic and spiritual side.  However, she could make it work more for others than for herself.  She never thought she was good enough to be good enough at something good. If that is a riddle then that could be a perfect metaphor for Pampy. 

She said something like, “Those cases will show up.  God sent you there with everything you need to do your show. I know it, Honey.”  I felt a lot better but,  I had called Pampy to wish her a happy birthday and she ended up giving me a spiritual mind treatment.  We said goodbye, happy birthday, April Fools etc. and I hang up.  I have just enough time to pull whatever I can do together and tell the producer to get the Tux.  The hotel phone rings, I think it might be Pampy calling back but it is Front Desk.  

“Your bags were just delivered do you want us to send them up to your room?”

The bags arrived in 5 minutes. From that moment on it was like every other hotel ballroom show I have ever done before or since.  Everything was there right where it should be at that moment. I had not really needed those cases or what was inside until that exact moment.  

Some might say that Pampy had nothing to do with it and coincidences happen sometimes. Well,  if you think so, you didn’t know Pampy. If only chance is involved once in a while the things that Pampy prayed for would not come to be.  Not to say they all did.  But they happened with greater frequency than any odds maker would ever give.  

There are more stories. They will come to mind again with the spark of some unrelated stimulus in times to come.  We all agree our Moms are magical, creative, imaginative, artistic loving Angels.  No need for me to present more proof here now.  If you had known her for as long as I knew her you would agree with this statement. There is absolutely nothing in her life she has done that would disqualify her from an executive suite at whatever concept of heaven she wants to live in.  The idea of where she would spend eternity was something she thought about a lot.  She loved to contemplate such things on walks.  She was walking the property until she was neither physically nor mentally able to so.  She told me once, “I’m not sure I like this idea of a Heaven with streets paved in gold like they talk about.” She paused and laughed through the next part, “Can you imagine how hot those streets would get. Paved in gold is ridiculous, I’m not walking those streets.” 

It’s been a year since Pampy could call me on speed dial, and that long since I could call her.  Most of our last calls involved me trying to remind her “God sent YOU with everything you need to do your show”.   There is a direct line to my heart that is on Pampy's celestial speed dial now.

As you were,

Jay