B005S8O7YE EBOK (47 page)

Over the seven decades of my life, my acts of giving back have included canvassing for civil rights in the 1960s, flipping burgers at a county fair, reading to children, reporting for a television news program on both the environment and illiteracy, and performing at benefits at locations ranging from grand hotel ballrooms to raise money for worthy causes to playing guitar on a flatbed trailer in a parking lot to raise money for a neighbor burned out of his home. But the project that has occupied literally half my time for over two decades has been educating staff, members of the United States Congress, and the public about the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. The story of the passage of NREPA will have to be told another time. Among other reasons, it’s waiting for an ending that includes the date the bill was signed into law.

An unexpected bonus from my environmental activism has been the friends I’ve made among the conservation community, Congress, and its staff. Though my conservationist friends make quite a bit less money than they could be earning in the commercial sector, they do what they do because they have a passion to make the world a better place, and because someone has to do it. “Because someone has to do it” is probably as good a definition of giving back as any.

I’d like to dedicate the rest of this chapter to other friends whose professional lives and charitable work have inspired me. Maybe they’ve inspired you as well.

I was already a fan of U2 when I learned about Bono’s association with Amnesty International in the cause of human rights. When Bono brought his intense focus to cancellation of Third World debt and raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic in Africa and elsewhere, he was an effective advocate. He used his name and fame to make his case directly to heads of state and lawmakers.
When I visited with Bono in Ireland I found him to be impassioned and articulate about issues that affect tremendous numbers of people. But what impresses me most about Bono’s activism is not only how relentless he is in pursuit of his mission to alleviate the suffering of so many people, but that he makes it a point to be well informed in great detail. He does his homework.

If Paul Newman’s acting career was inspiring, his charitable accomplishments were even more so. The Academy Award–winning actor combined his cooking skills and business acumen with his name recognition to support a number of worthy causes, but the one closest to his heart was the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Connecticut. Initially funded in part with the profits from Newman’s Own food products, Newman founded the original camp with the support of his wife, Academy Award winner Joanne Woodward, and the writer A. E. Hotchner, his longtime friend. Paul’s efforts stirred the generosity of so many people that Hole in the Wall Gang Camps sprang up around the world like mushrooms after a spring shower.
^*

The camps are designed to give children with grave illnesses an opportunity to spend time with other children with serious health issues in an environment that takes into account the children’s comfort, health, and safety. For two weeks campers leave behind their identity as “the sick child” and experience life as most children do, in the company of other kids like themselves. Special care, equipment, and medication are provided along with the volunteer services of medical professionals, counselors, cooks, housekeepers, maintenance personnel, and all the other people it takes to keep a camp operational. The season lasts from June through the end of August, with sessions scheduled in two-week increments to allow
a maximum number of children to attend. There is also a session for siblings, whose identity as “the healthy child” often puts them later in line for the family’s attention. A session gives siblings peer input as well as adult counseling to help them understand that they’re neither “bad” nor alone in sometimes feeling resentful of their brother or sister with special medical needs.

As part of the camp’s fund-raising effort in 1990, Newman recruited friends from Broadway and other celebrities to participate in the First Annual Fandango Benefit Gala. The gala included a gourmet lunch, a silent auction, a live auction, and a performance with musical parodies loosely based on a script adapted by Hotch. The show featured Paul, Joanne, guest celebrities, and, most important of all, campers who acted, sang, danced, and/or played instruments. The children’s disabilities were accommodated in such a way that any child who wished to participate could do so.

I didn’t realize when I agreed to participate that I would be embarking on a journey that would compel me back to Ashford almost every September for the next seventeen years. Performing with the children was a heartening and highly entertaining experience. How could I not become a camp regular?

The downside was losing the children. The upside was helping the youngsters bring to fruition dreams they might not otherwise have achieved and bearing witness to the courage, determination, and grace of the children, parents, and siblings. Performers and celebrity counselors over the years have included Julia Roberts, Marisa Tomei, Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg, Alec Baldwin, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Naughton, Kristin Chenoweth, and Cy Coleman. Every show closed with the entire cast singing a song Cy wrote with Dorothy Fields called “(If There Were) More People Like You.”

If there were more people who cared

There would be fewer people to care for

More people of worth

Good people worth our saying a prayer for

Less people who don’t

There would be more people who do

If there were more people like you

In 1998 the children and I sang a song at that year’s gala that I wrote with A. E. Hotchner. The song was called “Hope.” Hearing Hotch’s words sung by the campers made everyone in the theater believe in miracles.

The word is hope

Light as air, you don’t care

You can cope if you have… hope

You may be down

Things are bleak, you can’t speak

Don’t you frown, you’ll come around

’Cause there is hope

Among my many memories of autumn weekends in Ashford, these three stand out:

1. The hectic scene backstage—if you could call it “backstage.” The building was so small that there was no room behind the stage, just a wall. “Backstage” was a passageway in the basement through which offstage performers crossed from stage left to stage right. Off the passageway were a couple of bathrooms that doubled as male and female dressing
   rooms. Several other small rooms accommodated volunteer seamstresses working overtime to fit costumes on newly arrived guest performers, adjust previously fitted costumes on campers, and assemble hats, shoes, socks, jewelry, reindeer noses, bunny ears, and other vital costume pieces. Odds were that not everything would be ready by showtime, but everything always was.
   

   Upstairs the director was blocking the movements of the actors and the children onstage. “You! Move over here, please. And you, stand there, please…. Leo, can we please run through that last number again?… What? Okay. Everyone needs to leave the stage right now so more lights can be hung…. I’m sorry, what? The children need a food break? Okay. Children, line up, please. Hot dogs and other finger foods are available outside….” Twenty minutes later: “The lights are hung? Great! Everyone back on the stage, please…. Wait, it’s time for the children’s scheduled rest period? Can we
   please
   get all the adults back onstage?” (
   Exeunt
   the children.)
   

2. Nathan Lane playing an elderly Sundance Kid opposite Newman’s aged Butch Cassidy. Hotch had set the scene in a nursing home in which the two outlaws might have found themselves had they lived into their dotage. As did many of the actors in these shows, Nathan strayed so far from the script (a very loose structure to begin with) that the other actors couldn’t say their lines because they were laughing so hard. My daughter Sherry played the attractive nurse who brought meds to the elderly Butch and Sundance. In addition to performing at almost every gala, Sherry volunteered regularly as a counselor. That year she shared counselor duties with the very down-to-earth, hardworking Julia Roberts.
   
3. Newman playing Sarah Brown in 2006 opposite Bernadette Peters as Sky Masterson in
   Guys and Dolls
   . Hotch usually cast Newman in opposite-gender roles for the galas. On this occasion, he cast most, though not all, actors across gender. As Benny Southstreet, I traded repartée with Alec Baldwin playing Nathan Detroit. Kyra Sedgwick glowed with femininity as the respiratorially challenged Miss Adelaide, while Paul and Bernadette egged each other on to find yet another improvised comedic moment between them. The audience of extraordinarily generous donors couldn’t have been happier. Nor could I.
   

Paul Newman’s turn as Sarah Brown in that show was one of his last performances in a Hole in the Wall Gang Camp gala. This song says it all:

Can do… can do… This guy says the horse can do…

Paul Newman could do.

James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and Jackson Browne are never too busy to perform for a cause, be it a local school, saving the Amazon rain forest, or an effort to bring about world peace. No cause is too big or too small for them to lend their names and voices in support. I consider it an honor to share an occupation and a longtime friendship with each and every one of them.

Sometimes I lose hope that human beings will do right by each other, animals, and the planet. Wars continue to be fought. People continue to commit violence against each other.
Homo sapiens
is the only species I can think of whose behavior includes deliberate cruelty to other beings. This knowledge sorely tests my belief that the human inhabitants of this planet will be able to function as a world community with integrity and compassion.

When I feel this way, it helps to remember my ancestors’ journey. My grandparents left their homes and villages and traveled all those miles believing they would find a better world for their children and grandchildren. More than a century later their courage keeps me going. The “you can do anything” message from my father and mother buoys me. Because of all these people, my life really was a tapestry, with each thread leading to a range of possibilities including—knock wood—a wonderful family, good health, great friends, music, peace, joy, love, curiosity, and adventure.

With every sunrise I reaffirm my intention to spend part of that day giving back, be it through a smile, a song, a letter to the editor, a friendly email with compulsively correct spelling and grammar (my father would have it no other way), or simply remembering to say thank you.

With every sunset I’m grateful that I made it through another day, and I hope that my descendants and I are granted enough days to fulfill the promise of my grandparents’ journey.

S
lice is walking rapidly toward me.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Are you ready?”

I barely have time to quip, “I was
born
ready!” before he takes off again.

As I try to keep up I hear my boots clicking noisily on the concrete floor. We approach a door marked “Stage Right.” Slice stops, puts up his hand, and says, “Hold up a minute.”

I do as he says.

Slice opens the door, pops his head in, and says something I can’t hear to several stagehands who, I observe, are in physical positions suggesting inactivity. Despite Slice’s relatively small stature, his comment and the manner in which he delivers it causes the stagehands to spring immediately into action. Soon everything is up to Slice’s standard of readiness for the entrance of his artist. He pops his head back out and reaches for something in a pocket of his shorts. Indoors or out, no matter how cold it is, I’ve never known Slice to work in anything but shorts. He brings out a small flashlight and uses it to guide me around a row of tables with computers, stacks of chairs, coiled-up cables, equipment cases,
electricians, stagehands, and other potential obstacles. The memory of coiled rubber cables in Dublin flickers in my mind, then just as quickly disappears. Slice is on it. I’m safe.

The rest of my walk through the backstage area is illuminated by Slice’s flashlight and minuscule bulbs emitting just enough light that each crew member can see what he or she is doing. On the opposite side of the stage I see “Rasta” Jon Schimke moving faders on the monitor to set the opening levels. The glow from the mixing board illuminates, with a ghostly light, Rasta’s face and the dreadlocks he has cultivated over many years. At the top of his list is keeping his eye on me at all times when I’m onstage so he can make an immediate adjustment should I indicate a need using universally understood sign language. If I point to my mouth and then point up, Rasta knows to raise the level of my vocal. And so on. Rasta also watches Rudy and Gary and makes adjustments for them. If we can hear the music in a good balance, it’ll feel right when we play it. We don’t hear what the audience hears, but their reaction tells us that Christian Walsh’s front-of-house mix is everything it needs to be.

Slice delivers me to my holding position and turns off his light. Black curtains intrude just enough on each side of the stage to hide backstage activity from the audience. A scrim hangs at the back of the set to enhance Joe Cardosi’s lighting design. There is no front curtain. The set is visible to the audience as they enter. It’s an arrangement of furniture softly lit with several lamps. There are several rugs, plants, a couch, a coffee table, photos and books, a grand piano with a small lamp on it, and a wedge monitor to the left of the piano bench. Notwithstanding the presence of a couple of stools, microphones, and wedges for Rudy and Gary, the audience knows that the set is a living room.

From the wings I see people chatting animatedly, visiting, milling around, looking for their seats, and doing what audiences have
done before shows since they came to see Ugg wrestle Krog for the tusk of a newly killed mammoth.