Being nice for the holidays

It's always bugged me that there are certain people, a lot of them in fact, who are nice to me around the holidays and hardly give me the time of day the rest of the year. I've often wondered if they were just fishing for a gift or looking for a holiday way to handle their guilt. Is it something that's learned, automatic or what?

I think the idea of giving gifts is real nice but I have the greatest admiration for those who give when and because they want to and not because they're intimidated to by the season and tradition. The media almost frightens us into rushing to the mall lest the economy goes into the poopers and the country goes bankrupt. It's like our trumped up holiday generosity is holding up the entire world financial market.

There are many people who call me at Christmas time...who send me cards...who won't even return my calls any other time. So if I have to say something to them during the year I write it down and have it handy when they call in December. Their end-of-year niceness actually seems sincere. It's almost like the holiday sweetness is programmed into their genes.

I've even thought I ought to return their phoniness by asking them for some kind of favor...right around Christmas when the rules of etiquette forbid such requests from being turned down. I mean, who could say "NO" to somebody who asks to borrow $50 the day before Christmas? It seems that would be a sure way of getting them to call, perhaps repeatedly, throughout the year if the debt wasn't paid timely.

The media has done a lot to set our minds on giving gifts and seeing friends at Christmas time. But isn't it sad that we need this kind of prodding to do something we surely ought to be doing by our own nature all the time?

A good friend of mine and popular Tampa Bay area radio personality Jack Harris began (and ended) a celebration in 1976 he called "Leon" - that's Noel spelled backwards. He decided it ought to be on June 25 of each year since it was at an equal distance BEFORE and AFTER December 25. He actually played Christmas carols on his program. His several listeners dropped to ZERO quickly and by the middle of his shift he had given up the idea, taken off his winter coat and went back to playing "Bridge over Troubled Waters."

What Jack didn't know at the time was that the Christmas spirit ONLY takes place during a few weeks in December, by genetic mandate. People so inclined will resist being nice and thinking about giving any other time of year no matter what the day, Christmas Carols or any other reminder be damned.

I'm willing to go along with all of this. But I'd like for all of us to be totally honest about it. Let's accept reality but also tell the truth. Christmas is a time for giving because a whole lot of us don't feel like being forced to part with our riches any other time of year. The holiday season is a time for goodwill towards men because there are so many people we don't like it just takes too much energy to be kind and generous all year 'round. To be fair, there are a LOT of extraordinarilly giving people who are that way all the time.

It's also a time we don't have to remember we are the most obese nation in the world and a third of us will die prematurely from abdominal fat. Dieting during the holidays is like driving the wrong way on the expressway. It just isn't done. The holidays have become a boon for the multibillion dollar diet industry which begins cashing in right after the department stores close their books on the Yule season.

If I have to be nice all the time because Santa is watching and making a list of my misbehaviour I'm just going to count on Santa feeling guilty about leaving me out on December 25 even though I've been an asshole the previous eleven months.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to ask Santa to look into his reindeer situation. I mean he's got a LOT of those animals that pull his sleigh who are certified hypocrites. They had totally nothing to do with Rudolph, wouldn't even give him the time of day, until one foggy Christmas eve Santa asked him to guide the sleigh. Yeah, right. THEN all the reindeer loved him. Hell, how much more fake can you get than that?

My friend, Hugh Smith

Hugh Smith, who anchored the local evening news on Tampa's WTVT for almost 30 years, died Sunday. I'm a little pissed at him about that.

Hugh and I talked on the phone regularly for the last 15 years. Though he had been in treatment for stage four melanoma (a deadly form of cancer) for about ten months he never said a word to me about it during our monthly telephone conversations that usually lasted at least an hour.

We always talked about the TV business, speculated on how long it would be before Katie Couric would be relegated to doing voiceovers for Saturday morning cartoon programs, discussed personnel changes at Tampa area broadcast outlets and reflected on times past. I had lots of chances to ask him about things he did when I worked for him that I really didn't understand. Some of the reasons he related I believed, others I took for a lapse in his memory.

I grew to become very fond of the post-broadcast Hugh Smith. That he never once discussed his illness torks me. But then again he was a very private person and held some things private even from his good friends. That doesn't make me any less peeved.

My first meeting with Hugh took place in 1965. A high school student, I walked into the newsroom at WTVT on a Saturday in March with a Bolex 16mm movie camera I had borrowed from a friend. I had shot several stories for his 6p.m. newscast after arranging to be accepted as a stringer at the station. He accepted me graciously. All alone in the small newsroom, he seemed very happy to have company. I couldn't go far because once I got off the city bus in front of the station there I was stuck for an hour or so until another passed going the other direction. Hugh thought I had a car...haha!

He was very respectful to this pimple-faced teenager who knew almost nothing about writing a TV news script and only slightly more about shooting film. He took the time to teach me about panning, cut shots, in-camera editing and all the things he felt I needed to know to make my life as a stringer easier...and his as an anchor easier as well. Being around him felt good. He knew I only got paid fifty cents per foot of film used so he lengthened my scripts a bit to ensure me some profit. Thirty second stories equaled about 18 feet of film.

After three or four months at WTVT, I moved over to WFLA. It was closer to downtown where I had more of a choice of buses and they came more often. It was also near The Tampa Tribune, for which I served as free lance photographer. Later I went on staff full time.

Once while I was working at The Tampa Tribune, he called and asked me to come see him. He offered me a job making a lot more money than I was getting at the paper. Hell yeah Hugh, I'll come to work for you. I'd love to be a big TV news star! I went back to the paper and told my managing editor, Doyle Harville, about the offer and that I was giving my two-week notice. He wouldn't have it. Doyle asked me what I was being offered, I told him, and he matched it plus a few dollars to make up for the fact that I was giving up TV stardom.

Harville pissed me off at that point because he had always poor mouthed the paper when I started talking money. Now I was fixing to leave to become a big time TV newsman and suddenly money's gushing out the elevator. I called Hugh and told him I had to rescind my acceptance of the job and explained that I just couldn't leave the paper. He got mad....real, real mad. He thought I had simply used his offer to negotiate a better deal at the newspaper. He didn't talk to me for a number of years. Time does heal.

Years later after I had graduated college and left the newspaper business, he was once again gracious to me. I never understood why some in the newsroom squirmed when he came near, others were fearful of him and some just did their jobs and avoided contact with him. On the other side of the spectrum, there were those who stood up to him and who challenged him and his authority. They always lost.

I remember one day in 1978 we came into the newsroom and learned he had fired our beloved assignment editor (Chip Collins) and another top banana or two. He said he wanted a new newsroom backbone and the firings were backed by station management. The entire news department was shaken by the loss of friends...and by the inexplicable action Hugh had taken. It was explained to us in a meeting but to this day few of us totally understand his reasoning.

One of our conversations before his death was about that incident. He was too weak to recall much detail. I still didn't get many answers. He couldn't say much between coughs. I asked him if he was OK and he said he had a bad cold. Bull shxt, Hugh. You were fixing to croak on me.

He was my good friend. I simply can't understand why somebody who I had known very well for most of my lifetime would not at least help me prepare for what was going to happen. If you're around here somewhere, Hugh, I can forgive you for a lot of things but...... I guess you are entitled to your privacy and you have it now. Hell, your family's being tight lipped about funeral or memorial service arrangements. Maybe you just wanted to skip that part. OK, have it your way!

We'll miss you.

The Kennedys, Thanksgiving and Novembers...

Occasionally, Thanksgiving falls on November 22. Though I have a lot to be thankful for and look forward to turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce as much as anybody, November 22 is always a very reflective day for me. It was one of the most emotional days of my life some 44 years ago. It was on that day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

That day was just two days after his brother Robert's 38th birthday. JFK's funeral was held on JFK, Jr.'s birthday. Junior's famous salute to his father's passing casket was burned into the psyche of the time on that day. I had shaken President Kennedy's hand and photographed him during his visit to Tampa just four days before he was killed. It seemed like so much, good and bad, happened to the Kennedys toward the end of November.

Enough for November. I try every year to have the best time I can on Thanksgiving. I don't get home cooking a whole lot so it's one day I let myself be consumed in a culinary way at the expense of friends kind enough to invite me over. However, when Thanksgiving is on November 22 my thoughts often pause and wonder just how tough this time was...or still is...for the Kennedy family - a family that sustained so much pain and loss around this time.

I hope there will be joy flowing to the Kennedys this year and to all other persons in our country. With people losing their jobs, having their homes foreclosed on, having to decide between buying gasoline or medicine, etc., I know I have a whole lot to be thankful for no matter what my circumstances.

It wouldn't be right for me to omit our military people overseas from my thoughts. They're having to spend Thanksgiving far away from their families and in very close proximity to bombs and artillery that could end their lives at any time. Their Thanksgiving is at the end of each day they remain alive.

Somehow, it seems like what many others are going through makes my troubles trivial and should enrich my holiday knowing there are so many people more broke, more lonely, more endangered and just plain worse off than me. I think I'd like to give them all my Thanksgiving pass and just have a nice meal today and return to my Weight Watcher's meetings next week.

Stairway to obesity

I manage an office building in West Tampa for a jewelry genius and great guy, Mark Oliva. It's on West Columbus Drive in Tampa. It's in a super location...quite spacious...lots of parking. One big problem: It has no elevator. It was built some 40 years ago when people didn't mind moving around, climbing stairs. Some people actually ran up and down them. That's when lawsuits weren't subliminally programmed in people's minds. The times were lighter, the earth weighed much less.

Most people these days don't want to climb stairs to get to their offices. Matter of fact, they almost demand they be carried on and off an elevator and placed neatly in their desk chairs. I suppose we'd do that for a surcharge on the rent.

When the Columbus office building was constructed, there was no obesity epidemic. People hastened up and down stairs because they were thinner and able to move better. Forty years ago, if people fell on stairs they rushed to wash their wounds, dabbed on some hydrogen peroxide and returned to work. Today, they hope their attorney's office has a first aid kit because that's where they go first.

People used to hold at a decent weight because they used their bodies as intended. I don't really think people are too lazy to go up and down stairs now...they simply can't. It's got a lot to do with gravity. Trotting upwards is difficult when you're carrying a briefcase, a laptop and a hundred or so extra pounds on your belly. Sometimes the dropping skin can intrude on first floor tenants.

Sections of first floors used to be saved for the physically handicapped. That was voluntary as building codes did not require them to be accomodated. These days, if someone in a wheelchair drives up to your building and can't get to the office they need there's a special 800 number they can call or, bettter yet, they just take their fat time filling out a few short forms on the Internet at www.Let'sSueTheBastards.com.

I like the idea of making buildings accessible to those who are physically challenged but it's often cost prohibitive to modify old structures for that purpose. I think it would be much easier for me to ask prospective tenants to get off their butts, lose some weight and move it. But Mark is not like that and would probably object.

There are prospective tenants who back down from renting because of the fear that one day they will lose a client who may be handicapped. Here I am, nearly willing to pay them to move onto the second floor and they're worried about losing a client. When I tell them they can come downstairs to meet with those people, they balk. I personally have a problem with heights and many times I've had big, important people come down 42 floors to meet me in the lobby.

In any case, the second floor is nice because it creates a whole new dimension in insulation for the first floor. If it weren't for that, the aged air conditioning units would have pooped out 15 years ago. The first floor is rented out entirely and there are even people willing to rent a tiny portion of that space from the people who are already there.

There are a couple of clients on the second floor and they deserve credit for taking the space. One is a computer firm that felt there was little chance of them being bothered by solicitors. The other is a church group and the second floor puts them 15 feet closer to heaven and at a very good rental rate.

I've actually thought about renting just the stairways...to physical fitness buffs. Hell, my rate would be much cheaper than a gym. I used to think having a basement would have made leasing much easier but I realized that people would have to climb up from it. That wouldn't work either.

Our leasing agent is Robert Romano, hired because of his slender build and willingness to climb stairs. But we have to pay him by the step.

I'm over it. The Columbus building will now have two first floors, one just above the other. We'll just take the problem of getting leases to a whole new level. Next year, we'll charge for space by weight. The lighter our clients, the cheaper their rent. That ought to help motivate some to get lean and climb the stairs.

My friends would all agree I need to lose some weight myself. Mark has no idea, but when I personally show the property I give prospects a master key, point to the second floor, get back in my car, turn on the air conditioning and listen to 94.1FM while sipping a Coke and praying nobody falls down the stairs.

Robert Kennedy turns 82

I met Robert Kennedy when I was 16, he was 38 at the time. The occasion was the presentation of photos I had taken of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, exactly nine months earlier while the President was visiting Tampa, Florida. Forty-four years later and nearly 40 years after Robert's death by assassination, I am thinking about what it would have been like had he lived on...until now.

I'm not the only one, I'm sure. My friend, Ed Guthman, who as press secretary got me the audience with RFK, then U.S. Attorney General, told me not a day has gone by in all these years that he hasn't though about his former employer and dear friend.

My involvement with the Kennedy family was an unlikely event, triggered only by the fact that I was only 16, I took celebrated photos of JFK just four days before his assassination in Dallas and I was able to make the connection with Mr. Guthman many years later.

There's so much I could write about very serendipitous events which have surrounded my association with President Kennedy's friends, associates and family. The people I've met through this experience have been some of the best. Suffice it to say that nobody has been more in awe than myself. One man of the Kennedy era was Mr. Guthman, the greatest guy you could ever know. He's nearly 88 now; is a decorated WWII veteran with Purple Hearts, etc.; won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for investigative reporting.

He was number three on Richard Nixon's Enemies List; accompanied RFK several times when the Attorney General had to drive a tipsy Marilyn Monroe to her home; was an editor at both the Philadelphia Inquirer (where I once interned) and the Los Angeles Times; until this year, was a lecturer at The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California at LA; and we could keep right on going.

He was also featured in Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation." Brokaw, a legendary NBC news anchor, attended Guthman's retirement ceremony at USC earlier this year.

There's always a smile on my face when I see Mr. Guthman's username pop up on my instant messenger buddy list. If only John and Bob's could be there!

I take this day to give thoughts to Robert, to celebrate his legacy and the great work he did in public service. My only regret was that I was not old enough at the time he was alive to appreciate the real impact his life would have on future generations. Of course, had I not been a young person I may not have gotten the appointment to see him at all.

If you'd like to view my photos of President Kennedy's visit to Tampa, which also contains a skimpy but adequate narrative of that special day many years ago, click on link below:

http://www.big13.net/JFK%20In%20Tampa/JFK%20Tampa1.htm