1 post tagged “birthdays”
Katie is #11 on Richard Blackwell’s “10 Worst Dressed Women” list for 1989. When she was a year old, I wrote to about 160 celebrities in a variety of fields: entertainment, sports, law, science, medicine, music, etc. and asked them to send her birthday greetings, since a first birthday is a major milestone in her life, but not one she’s likely to remember. Over half of them wrote back. My parents had been on two cruises with Mr. Blackwell, and he asked which list we thought Katie would like to be on: Best Dressed, or Worst. Well, who remembers who’s on the BEST Dressed list?
Mr. Blackwell, what do you think now? Erma Bombeck wrote one of my favorite letters to Katie:
Of course, I made sure to tell Katie all about this album and all about Erma, but I guess it didn’t register. Not really. But at 19, she’s in college, and some of the names are starting to mean something to her. So this afternoon, I was helping her with her speech, “A Brush with Greatness,” and I reminded her about the album and all the celebrities who had taken a few minutes to wish her a happy birthday. I started to tell her about this letter, and she blurted out, right on cue: “Who the heck is Erma Bombeck?” See? Erma really did know everything.
Now there’s a little slice of history; it’s particularly appropriate now that Katie is old enough to vote, and we have our first female candidate for President of the United States.
This is the one I was so sure wouldn’t answer, and yet…he did. Federico Fellini. I was utterly amazed when I opened this envelope and tucked it into my daughter’s birthday scrapbook. There are so many more: Jonas Salk, Theodore Geisel, Hank Ketchum, Lillian Gish…amazing.
One thing I learned through this labor of love: the bigger they are, the nicer they are. It might have been prophetic - I never did get a response from Michael Jackson. But from Bob Hope, Michael DeBakey, Arnold Palmer, Larry Holmes - I got personal notes or autographed photos (sometimes both!). Past Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Prime Ministers, and Ladies in Waiting all took time to reply.
It truly was a first birthday to remember, and a gift to cherish for a lifetime.
