THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR

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WPCNR THE SUNDAY  BAILEY. By John F. Bailey. Republished from The CitizeNetReporter of June 17, 2007:

My father gave me four pieces of advice in life: Always drive an air-conditioned car. Always centrally air-condition your home. Stay out of court.

And don’t sit in traffic.

Always take the service road on the Long Island Expressway. (He would have loved a Garmin.)

In retrospect, his advice has served me well.  I am always comfortable. I sit out traffic delays in comfort. I have not made lawyers rich.

He was not an emotional man. He was a banker and always wore suits to work. I have fond memories of going to meet him when he got off the train in Pleasantville – when  the train tracks were at grade with Manville Road.

I was most impressed as a young child by how he always smelled of coal cinders when he got off the train – lcommuter’s cologne.

Sadly on today’s electric trains you do not get that. You always heard those steam engines coming. You could see them: Clouds of very busy and industrious black smoke streaming at the horizon down the line. He’d get off the train.

My mother would move over and he’d drive the old Hudson Hornet home. He always spoke quietly. Never raised his voice. Drank scotch and soda in the winter. Gin and Tonics in the summer and he smoked Philip Morris’s, Marlboros, then Kents.

He set up a Lionel train set in our basement – perhaps our unspoken connection. When I was sent in by train for the first time to meet him at the office during Christmas time, He’d have his secretary greet me at Grand Central Terminal which still is a very big and scary place to me.

He would take me to lunch at Jack’s Monte Rosa restaurant on 49th Street – which I thought was a very great place. When I first went to it with him, I was a little disappointed that it was not more glamorous but I was really impressed that Jack the owner greeted him by name. I thought that was great that my Dad was greeted with respect.

When I first started working in Washington, D.C. in 1968 I ate regularly at a restaurant below the television station WMAL-TV where I worked, it was called Marty’s Italian Village.  Marty, the owner (who looked like Humphrey Bogart, the only thing missing was the white sport coat) started calling me when I came in around 7 PM, ‘Hi John, how are you?” People would look at me. They thought I was big.  I liked that. Feeling big in my small world.

When my father came to visit me in Washington where I worked. I took him around town. I told him when he got off the plane. “Hi, Dad, welcome to my town.” I wanted to impress him. (I can’t say that was original, I borrowed that from the WMAL midnight to 6 disc jockey.)

We’re always trying to impress our fathers.

Another Father time was when my Dad came out for Dad’s Day at college. I mean this was a big thing to me. He watched me do play-by-play of a football game from atop the press box in 15 degree weather. It was cold. But he watched. Acted impressed. He hated cold weather.

Another time he impressed when I lost a job where I was working at the television station that I had been being considered for. And I told him how unfair it was, he put things in perspective:

“Puggy,” he said,  “The film manager wasn’t going to put you in as his Assistant if you were going to be bucking him all the time.” It put things in perspective. No false sentiment. No making me feel better, he was tough enough to teach by being realistic while telling me not to feel sorry for myself.

Then later in my career when I was fired out of a job completely blindsided. He again intervened, saying to me he thought what the agency head had done was a terrible thing. I needed that at the time.

He also, in a very supportive move, told me if I could make $1,000 a night writing a free lance direct mail package, I should keep trying to do that. It was the launch of a career where I worked for nobody, my time was my own, and enabled me to be a better parent.

Dads are there to say the right things to you at the right time–if you’re lucky. Sometimes it is not always the right thing, but they try. Often, if you’re lucky, as I was, they say the right thing. And not the wrong thing.

With my father, who was not really my father, since I was an adopted child, it was never all about him, it was all about you.

When I bought my first house in White Plains. He never criticized the house. But when I sold it, he complimented me, “I think it’s great how you came out of it (the crummy first house).” They’re personal trainers.

The good ones  train you to run a race. If you stumble, no one hurts more than they do. When you succeed, no one is prouder.

They know what you should do, but they can’t tell you, because you won’t do it if you’re a kid.

But the more subtler of them tell you any way in hopes it will sink in to the rebellious offspring mind. My dad was subtle.

Another fond memory: My father took me camping once at a friend’s cabin in Pennsylvania. Funny thing was there was such a great comic collection we wound up sleeping in sleeping bags on the porch of the cabin. That was funny.

Another time when I was being threatened in college over a position at the radio station, I asked him if I should just abdicate and assign a play-by-play position to the person who was being forced on me. He advised me to “stick to your guns,” so I reported the threat to the Dean.

That ended the physical threats.

The position was compromised, but I was never threatened again.  He never shared my love for baseball and sports. In fact he never played catch with me all that well.

But one night he took me to the Yankee-Tiger game on September 1, 1961. It was 95 degrees and humid at the 8 PM first pitch at the big ball park, 65,000 in the grand towering stands. The Tigers and Yankees were tied for first place. Into the night the teams battled in a scoreless game. The Taggas kept getting into threats. Whitey Ford did not have it. Casey kept changing pitchers to put out Detroit threats. It was three stifling, sweating hours later and it was still 0-0. Then the Yankees strung two singles and Moose Skowron won it with a clear sharp single. My father hated hot weather. He stayed to the end.

I mean I could have made the big leagues (pipe dream) if he played catch with me more. But that’s a small criticism.  I wish I had more of his financial acumen. But I do not.

As you grow into your 30s and 40s, little things they say to you you begin to understand. My father never struck me, but always disciplined me with quiet words. I have not always been that way as a parent myself, being somewhat volatile. I wish I had his even temperament. He always asked me to take care of my mother. And the only time he really got mad at me was when I had made my mother upset with me.

He was a little like John Wayne in movie roles in the way he disciplined. But my Dad was real.

I remember he would say admonitions quietly. Such as when I got an F in an English course at college. He told me, that was the last F I would get at Ohio Wesleyan, because the next one he would stop paying my tuition.

That had an effect. And that was when tuition was only $3,000 a year.

So, on Father’s Day, I think of him as I do every day of my life. I become more like him every day. He is always lingering in the background of my thoughts. I do not know what he would think of what I am doing now.  But, he’d say — “If that’s what you want to do. Do it.”

He also would say, “You have to make yourself happy.”

How true.

I also think, even today of what advice (laconic as always) he’d give me in a situation. And I wish I could discuss property taxes with him.

I especially have to salute him, because I am an adopted child. That alone makes me appreciate his love and acceptance with a sense of awe to this day.

You never outgrow your need for Dad.

You miss him and appreciate him always.

Your Dad is immortal.

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WPCNR WESTCHESTER WIRE. From Westchester County Legislator, Benjamin Boykin. June 17, 2022: This Sunday marks the second time that Juneteenth is being celebrated as a federal holiday.Across Westchester, what is often called America’s “second independence day,” will be observed in public and private celebrations, concerts, art exhibits, church services, street fairs and cook outs — the sort of joyful group festivities that have characterized Juneteenth celebrations since the holiday’s origins in south Texas more than 150 years ago. We will, of course, be reminded of the holiday’s origins — in the arrival of the Union Army in Galveston, Texas on the morning of June 19, 1865, finally enforcing the freedom of the enslaved people there more than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. But Juneteenth is more than just a celebration of something that happened a long time ago. Like our other public holidays, Juneteenth offers us a welcome chance to celebrate and enjoy ourselves with friends and family, but also an opportunity for serious reflection — on the forced sacrifice of generations of enslaved Africans whose labor built this country, on the foundations of our shared culture erected by African Americans, and on our continuing obligation to work ceaselessly to live up to our American ideals of equality, liberty and justice .Early Voting Begins The early celebrations of Juneteenth in the years immediately after the Civil War were often opportunities to provide voting information to newly freed Americans who had been disenfranchised for generations. This Juneteenth weekend, voters in Westchester fittingly will have an opportunity to exercise their voting rights.Early voting begins Saturday, June 18 for the June 28 Primary for all local, state and federal offices other than State Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. (The primaries for State Senate and U.S. House of Representatives will be held August 23.) Registered voters eligible to vote in their party’s primary will be able to cast their ballot at any of the County’s 23 designated early voting locations during nine-day early voting period.  For a list of early voting locations and poll opening and closing times please visit the Westchester County  Board of Elections website at https://citizenparticipation.westchestergov.com/voting/early-voting-2022

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WE TAKE YOU OUT TO THE BALLGAME!

THE SEASON SO FAR TO THE ALL-STAR BREAK

CONTENDAS AND PRETENDAS–THE GATHERING POSSE

THE SEASON OF STREAKS — WHEN WILL THEY END?

CAN THE YANKS HOLD ON AGAINST THE RED SOX SURGE?

CAN THE METS HOLD OFF THE NEW PHILS AND BRAVOS

THE COMPLETE STANDINGS ANALYZED AS OF TODAY

THE NEW RULES

DEFENDING THE “GHOST RUNNER” EXTRA INNING.

SHOWALTER VS. BOONE–HOW ARE THEY DOIN’?

HOW PITCHERS ARE GETTING THE HITTERS OUT?

WILL THE BULLPENS LAST?

THE JOY OF THE MINOR LEAGUES

THE NEW ANTI-TRUST SUIT

AND MORE AT MIDWAY OF THE SUMMER GAME

PULL UP A CHAIR WE’RE JUST UNDER WAY…

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WPCNR DOINGS DOING DOWNTOWN. From Ellen Berger, White Plains Democratic City Committee. june 14, 2022:

The White Plains Democratic City Committee, and the Greenburgh NAACP are presenting the photography Exhibition Countdown to Eternity displaying the photographs taken by Bernard Fernandez, as a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr.

A distinguished educator, Mr. Fernandez established the Photography Departments at The New School and Parsons School of Design. He created the Medal of Excellence, received numerous awards including The Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships and published a number of books.

“Countdown to Eternity” in its entirety has traveled around the world including Europe, Moscow, and Africa. Mr. Fernandez’s photographs are in the collection of The Smithsonian, The Museum of the City of New York, MOMA, and haven been shown in universities and galleries around the country.

While photographing a Civil Rights March in Central Park in 1967, Benedict met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., became friends and eventually became one of the only photographers invited to photograph King at home with his wife and family.

T he will be on view at the White Plains Public Library in the gallery upstairs on the second floor of the library from June 16 to July 30.