Lawrence emailed an obit for C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for George Bush and long-time advisor to other presidents. NYT (archived).
Rick Wolff. Interesting guy. He was a radio host on WFAN. Before that, he was the “psychological coach” for the Cleveland Indians: one of the first sports psychologists hired by a major league team.
Even though sports psychology was rare in baseball, Mr. Wolff said on his show last year, Cleveland’s players “took the mental side of the game seriously” and within a few years were a “powerhouse in the American League.”
The idea caught on, he added, and “these days it’s the rare, rare sports team or professional or college organization that doesn’t have at least one sports psychologist on their staff.”
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Rick Hoyt, marathon runner with his father Dick Hoyt. I wrote about the Hoyts when Dick Hoyt passed away in 2021, so I’ll point you back to that obit and to the Rick Reilly essay.
The pair competed nearly every year in the Boston Marathon from 1980 through 2014. In 2013, Dick and Rick Hoyt were honored with a bronze statue near the race’s starting line.
They completed more than 1,100 races together, including marathons, triathlons and duathlons, a combination of biking and running.
Ray Stevenson, actor. IMDB.
“Kill the Irishman” is an interesting movie that I have a sentimental fondness for (because Cleveland) and he was good as Danny Greene. But the movie could have been a lot better than it actually was.
Rolf Harris, “Australian-born, UK-resident presenter, actor and convicted sex offender” (stealing Lawrence‘s blurb). IMDB.
Helmut Berger, actor noted for his work with Luchino Visconti. IMDB. (He was also in “Victory at Entebbe” and “The Godfather Part III”.)
I read the book Victory at Entebbe, on third shift, on breaks at work. It has to have been well over 25 years ago now. My job at the time had a lot of down time, due to us working on developing new processes, and while I was involved with writing some of them, many of them were downstream of my job, so I had a lot of waiting for them, so I had a lot of 10-20 minute breaks per shift, for a week or two.
That was actually my first exposure to Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, Yonni(sp) and just how revered he is in Israel. I also read a book whose name I cannot remember, that discussed the dropping of the bombs on Japan, and how Truman didn’t really want to, but was forced to politically. And it went into the reasons why America didn’t need to do so, according to the author. The more I learn, it is a much more tough call, in my opinion. The fire bombing of Tokyo was actually more destructive and caused more deaths than the two cities that were bombed via nuclear bombs.
My wife and I are up in the little finger of Michigan for a couple of days. Just a quick getaway, before the official start of summer. It was a 2.5 hour drive, and on the way, my wife wanted to use the restroom, so we stopped at a casino, in a town called Manistee. We don’t typically go to casinos, so after she used the restroom, we played the slot machines, with the 5 single dollars my wife had, and the 2 singles I had. In around 15 minutes, we won 22 dollars, and left. There are a number of casinos in Michigan, but we never got into them. I just could not stand the thought of watching my money go away, when I had to work so hard to earn it.
As always, have a great week. Tomorrow we head home, via Traverse City, where we will spend a few hours wandering about. The west side of the state has a frost/freeze warning for tonight. I guess that is why we usually wait to plant our gardens until Memorial Day.