The Losses Mount
I never knew Ted Kennedy other than by reputation, but my first awareness of him other than as Jack's and RFK's younger brother came at the time he and I were both new in our jobs and working towards the same goal: justice for American minorities in terms of those most basic of needs: health, education, and welfare. I was working for Kenneth B. Clark at the Metropolitan Applied Research Center in New York City. It was 1969, and I was a young idealist and Conscientious Objector to the war in Vietnam, and as a birthright Quaker, had taken a position with an NGO for my so-called Alternative Service in lieu of military action. This required (and I received) permission from the office of the President, who at the time was Nixon, whose mother had been a Quaker herself.
At that time Dr. Clark had hired another white person besides myself for his Harlem-based research and educational development programs: the indominable Jeanette Hopkins, one of two venerable, powerful women pioneers I would work for in my lifetime in the publishing world (the other would be Ruth Cavin at St. Martin's Press). Jeanette Hopkins was a senior editor for Harper & Row, on leave to prepare a series of books for M.A.R.C. Corporation to design and present specific programs intended to breach the education gap in the black community (which remains as big a problem today, sadly, as it was then).
I had managed to support myself with a grant from the Ford Foundation, called a Junior Fellowship. As I had been drafted right out of college (Syracuse) in 1968, and had no opportunity to go on to graduate school, this fellowship was designed just for me, as I could not qualify with only a Bachelors for a Ford Fellowship. With that modest funding paying my rent, with Jeannette's and Dr. Clark's backing, we were working on two books, and one of them touched on the problem of health care in the so-called 'ghettos' of America. I'm sad to say, much like Kenneth Clark's other vaunted achievement in his life (as consultant to Thurgood Marshall and key witness in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954), while many outstanding African-American scholars, leaders and writers have emerged from that era (our recently elected President Obama comes to mind) and perhaps were even encouraged by our efforts, in the larger sense, as with health care in America, nothing much has changed.
That said, go in peace, Ted Kennedy. You fought the good fight, and it may yet prove not to have been in vain. In the meantime, however, it is with a great sense of sadness and irony to note that Kennedy's dream has still not been fulfilled, and was not to be in his lifetime. But then, neither has Dr. Clark's, who I think never even dreamed that a black man might become President.
Which leads me to another death on the same day, of another significant contributor to American life and literature. And this one was, for a time, a friend of mine: Dominick Dunne.
I first met Nick Dunne (and here's where these two events merge) while essentially living two lives. When I first started working for Dr. Clark in Harlem I was a young idealist, living in Soho (at 154 Spring Street, to be exact) sharing two artists' lofts with three other filmmakers. Across the street was the studio of a West Indian jazz artist of great talent named George Braithwaite. One weekend around 1971, George had invited me to his basement studio to hear a singer from India he was recording with named Asha Puthli. Asha was at the time also making an album with Ornette Coleman for CBS records. George was recording his own album for CBS Records, and his producer was the legendary John Hammond, who I also met. Asha's producer was the equally legendary Clive Davis.
To make a long story short, Asha and I became an item, and I left Spring Street for her penthouse on East 36th Street, where I was to soon be hobnobbing with the rich and famous of the era who enjoyed associating with artists: among them Dominick Dunne, fresh off the success of his second feature film, Panic in Needle Park, starring the then still-unknown Al Pacino. Together with one of the lead players in his earlier ensemble film The Boys in the Band, Frederick Coombs, Nick was a good enough sport to make a guest appearance, literally, in my infamous tribute to our newly mutual acquaintance Andy Warhol starring his superstar Holly Woodlawn, Asha herself, Frederick Coombs, and then Park Avenue engenue and debutante Gillian Fuller. This film, made over a weekend--literally--at Gill's parents home in Southampton, was shown only once: at the Guggenheim Museum, which debut was attended by Andy Warhol himself. Originally titled "Bad Marion's Last Year," this film got its fifteen minutes of fame (along with its director, yours truly) and was then rightly shelved forever. I later redubbed it, to humor Asha and Holly, as "Andy Warhol's Tacky Women." A badly made copy of it exists, I believe, among the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art, whose curators are still scratching their heads as to its meaning and merits, if any, to this day.
Anyway, here's to Dominick Dunne, whose second novel actually lambasted another Kenndy family member's darker side, who once introduced me to Hollywood, and even to his lamented murdered daughter Dominique, and who gave me my first Hollywood job proofreading his very fist novel, which will not be named here. The terrible murder of Dominick's daughter later on might have influenced my eventual decision to become a mystery writer in order to seek and render justice on paper where it could not be found in real life. Dominick Dunne, I salute you. Your daughter awaits you in one place where justice truly prevails. Zaijian.
At that time Dr. Clark had hired another white person besides myself for his Harlem-based research and educational development programs: the indominable Jeanette Hopkins, one of two venerable, powerful women pioneers I would work for in my lifetime in the publishing world (the other would be Ruth Cavin at St. Martin's Press). Jeanette Hopkins was a senior editor for Harper & Row, on leave to prepare a series of books for M.A.R.C. Corporation to design and present specific programs intended to breach the education gap in the black community (which remains as big a problem today, sadly, as it was then).
I had managed to support myself with a grant from the Ford Foundation, called a Junior Fellowship. As I had been drafted right out of college (Syracuse) in 1968, and had no opportunity to go on to graduate school, this fellowship was designed just for me, as I could not qualify with only a Bachelors for a Ford Fellowship. With that modest funding paying my rent, with Jeannette's and Dr. Clark's backing, we were working on two books, and one of them touched on the problem of health care in the so-called 'ghettos' of America. I'm sad to say, much like Kenneth Clark's other vaunted achievement in his life (as consultant to Thurgood Marshall and key witness in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954), while many outstanding African-American scholars, leaders and writers have emerged from that era (our recently elected President Obama comes to mind) and perhaps were even encouraged by our efforts, in the larger sense, as with health care in America, nothing much has changed.
That said, go in peace, Ted Kennedy. You fought the good fight, and it may yet prove not to have been in vain. In the meantime, however, it is with a great sense of sadness and irony to note that Kennedy's dream has still not been fulfilled, and was not to be in his lifetime. But then, neither has Dr. Clark's, who I think never even dreamed that a black man might become President.
Which leads me to another death on the same day, of another significant contributor to American life and literature. And this one was, for a time, a friend of mine: Dominick Dunne.
I first met Nick Dunne (and here's where these two events merge) while essentially living two lives. When I first started working for Dr. Clark in Harlem I was a young idealist, living in Soho (at 154 Spring Street, to be exact) sharing two artists' lofts with three other filmmakers. Across the street was the studio of a West Indian jazz artist of great talent named George Braithwaite. One weekend around 1971, George had invited me to his basement studio to hear a singer from India he was recording with named Asha Puthli. Asha was at the time also making an album with Ornette Coleman for CBS records. George was recording his own album for CBS Records, and his producer was the legendary John Hammond, who I also met. Asha's producer was the equally legendary Clive Davis.
To make a long story short, Asha and I became an item, and I left Spring Street for her penthouse on East 36th Street, where I was to soon be hobnobbing with the rich and famous of the era who enjoyed associating with artists: among them Dominick Dunne, fresh off the success of his second feature film, Panic in Needle Park, starring the then still-unknown Al Pacino. Together with one of the lead players in his earlier ensemble film The Boys in the Band, Frederick Coombs, Nick was a good enough sport to make a guest appearance, literally, in my infamous tribute to our newly mutual acquaintance Andy Warhol starring his superstar Holly Woodlawn, Asha herself, Frederick Coombs, and then Park Avenue engenue and debutante Gillian Fuller. This film, made over a weekend--literally--at Gill's parents home in Southampton, was shown only once: at the Guggenheim Museum, which debut was attended by Andy Warhol himself. Originally titled "Bad Marion's Last Year," this film got its fifteen minutes of fame (along with its director, yours truly) and was then rightly shelved forever. I later redubbed it, to humor Asha and Holly, as "Andy Warhol's Tacky Women." A badly made copy of it exists, I believe, among the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art, whose curators are still scratching their heads as to its meaning and merits, if any, to this day.
Anyway, here's to Dominick Dunne, whose second novel actually lambasted another Kenndy family member's darker side, who once introduced me to Hollywood, and even to his lamented murdered daughter Dominique, and who gave me my first Hollywood job proofreading his very fist novel, which will not be named here. The terrible murder of Dominick's daughter later on might have influenced my eventual decision to become a mystery writer in order to seek and render justice on paper where it could not be found in real life. Dominick Dunne, I salute you. Your daughter awaits you in one place where justice truly prevails. Zaijian.
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