The Icons Of America: Farewell To Helen Reddy (1941-2020)

Warning: this post contains triggers and graphic content that some will find disturbing. Please read carefully and feel free to stop any time.

I grew up with heroes, favorite celebrities and popular culture icons. Like you, I had my own favourites, and, like you, my own secret ones, the ones I couldn’t talk to anyone about.

I could talk about General George Patton. When the film came out, I had a lifelong hero and an interest in history.

George S. Patton was a true soldier, leader and a strict adherent to discipline and lots of cussing. He did not like his voice. His way of compensating was to swear his goddamn ass off. It worked. He was all but worshipped by his men, some of whom hated him but yet respected him above all leaders in World War Two. What happened during the battle of the Ardennes is the stuff of legend, but it is all true. Patton really did attack with three divisions after a forced march, adding critical pressure on the Germans. He really did order a chaplain to write a prayer for the weather to clear so fighter and reconnaissance aircraft could fly, and the prayer was passed out to the troops who followed orders and read it aloud. And yes, the fighters were up and flying in short order. The battle is still the single biggest and costliest ever fought by the United States of America and when it was over, the march to the Rhine was on while Soviet troops were attacking from the east. George Patton really did fulfill a promise to “piss in the Rhine” and cameras recorded the victorious show of superiority. He secretly admired the tenacity of the fighting men of Nazi Germany but couldn’t say it. He did say that they were fanatics.

Patton survived the war and died in the hospital after a traffic accident some say was suspicious. The man who believed he’d lived past lives was just gone after outliving his one true reason for being. Has he ever returned?

I don’t think much about reincarnation, but I can’t explain a little girl sitting at play while her parents watched a 15th anniversary special on the September 11th attacks, who looked up at the TV and said, “I died that day”, or why she later reacted to a video on the same subject by saying, “I don’t want to see this.”

And I can’t explain a little boy who watched the same thing with his parents and said he was there that day, he was a firefighter who tried to help people but was buried when the towers fell and that he was still buried beneath Ground Zero. Nor, more importantly, can I explain how that same boy, at about 6-years-old, was taken to a firehouse by his parents and was able to identify every single piece of equipment and in which compartments a fire engine carried them.

Perhaps George Patton will ride again. Who can say?

I have had lots of heroes. Tonight, we mourn the loss of Australian-American singer and actor Helen Reddy, who was born before Halloween of 1941, before Pearl Harbor. Before both countries she would claim were at war. To me, a guy growing up at a time when women were supposed to have dinner on the table at five or six and were also expected to be pregnant nine months out of every year, a time when men ruled America, Helen’s music and her fight for equality was unsettling. On the one hand it all made me insecure. Boys were just raised that way. But then again, I found her beautiful and sexy, alluring in ways I could not understand or shake. She made the braless formal evening gown look good. Acceptable, and a demonstration of feminine power and empowerment, and it was actually a thing back in ’71 and ’72, which to be honest was just one small step in our long fight for equality, a fight that isn’t even close to being over.

Helen sang wonderfully and was part of our history, and not only in the music world. Around the time she sang and charted Delta Dawn and Leave Me Alone, a cretin named Bobby Riggs either challenged or accepted a challenge from Billie Jean King. It was a tennis match billed as “The Battle of the Sexes” and Bobby Riggs lost it. You have no idea how hostile men were to both of them. They had to hear shit from wives and daughters for months. Girls had posters on their walls of King that said “Billie Jean Power” or something to that effect. That’s exactly what I heard from Laurie Lawrence as I walked ahead of her from the bus stop. God I hated her. She used to call me “Bambi” and yelling past me to a girl up the street was meant to insult me.

But it did not insult me at all, and I thought the attempt was kind of neat. Laurie was always reminding me of a goddamn Gemini, but after that, I really liked her. I took her insults as compliments. Whether she hated me, I can’t say. But she paid attention to me. Not a lot of people did. As for Helen Reddy, I couldn’t tell my buds I loved her.

I couldn’t say a lot of things. Like Gloria Steinem was not just beautiful but strong, and damned smart. I couldn’t say that women were generally smarter than men, which was what I had come to believe with the help of Robert Palmer.

Raised to be a racist and sexist, the abuse naturally made me question the righteousness of it all, and I found nothing righteous in any of it. The more I learned, the more I secretly loved people of color like singers and actors. I wasn’t–it wasn’t–typical in our house to have the TV tuned to Sanford and Son or Flip Wilson, who was genuinely funny, and whose time slot was taken over by, coincidentally, the Helen Reddy show.

My feelings caused confusion and conflict in me. But I was still young. Unable to work things out.

My father liked watching the title fights with Muhammad Ali. Why, I don’t know. In 1968, his racist phobia prompted him to clean and oil his piece of shit .22 revolver and declare that if any n***** stepped foot on his lawn, he would shoot the son of a bitch. The ’68 Baltimore riot never spilled into the suburbs. His fear was irrational based on his ignorance of the situation and my mother’s experience when he sent her into the city. I was with her and she told me to get down on the floorboard when some people shoved crates in front of the car to stop her. It scared her, but hearing abot it scared him more. He was irrational and hysterical. So naturally, I was too.

There was only one black girl in our school. We all gave her more than her share of hatred. I layed off but wasn’t above a cruel word or two. Years went by. Same girl pops out at me. I’m reading a local newspaper and her name is right there in one of the most graphic and terrible articles I’ve ever read. The following is disturbing.

She was babysitting. The baby would not stop crying. She prepared a bath for it. The water caused first degree burns. She sought to hide the burns with fingernail polish. The baby still cried. So she began putting out cigarettes on it. Realizing that those burns showed more than the scalding burns; more fingernail polish covered them, and the baby was rushed to the hospital as soon as her mother came home. But the baby would not survive and the sitter went to prison.

I thought back to second grade, on through sixth grade, and I knew that the hatred and abuse had taken a terrible, horrifying toll on the girl. I have never been able to forgive myself. Maybe, my quietness and gentle nature made the things I said more hurtful than those of the other kids who tormented her no end. That happens, you know? Hurtful things said by the people you’d least expect them from, they wound far more deeply than do those said by the ones you know to be assholes.

But I felt bad about long before I read that article. I always did, right after I had said them. It just wasn’t me. I was damaged and an asshole, but I couldn’t bear being a monster. Truth is, I never forgot her. She was on my conscience. Later I learned how much the words I’d said had mattered.

So black lives matter to me. Words matter. Black leaders are critical and always were. Always will be, because racism won’t go away. And that’s the ugly truth.

And those leaders are heroes, a blessing, and a treasure. Just this evening Trump refused to denounce white supremacists. This is the second election he’s failed to do that, and this time what he said was to call for them to get ready. That one moment did more damage than he’s capable of knowing. In the end, no matter how the election turns out, a monster such as he will reap the whirlwind. His entire family will as well.

The Years Go By So Fast

Over the years, I had lots of other people I admired. Vietnam veterans who came home scary as all hell. I began to learn what they had been through. My god, the evening news could not even touch what they endured. I asked questions. Some found me easy to talk to. I missed that war; to this day I feel guilty about it. To this day I wish I had been there, yet feel blessed that I was not.

Soldiers and marines and others were heroes to me. Still are. I met a man who was at Con Thien and whereas some rare sources do indicate that on patrols, an extensive network of bunkers and tunnels were found, all of them presumably NVA because the Vietcong were thought to be further south at the time, nothing is ever said about anything done to deal with the network. Well, the marine I met told me they brought in water trucks and attempted to flood the tunnels. He claimed that when it was over, the tunnel rats dragged a thousand bodies out.

An extraordinary claim, perhaps. But I’m inclined to believe it. The men and women who served in Vietnam never got their due. In fact we have never treated our veterans with anything near the respect or given them the help they have earned. Barack Obama’s another hero of mine. He used to meet the planes coming in bearing the bodies of our fallen. He saw it as a duty and a responsibility. He often made notable efforts to right the wrongs done to veterans and was most proud of decorating veterans with medals in touching ceremonies. After Sandy Hook, he flew up to the town with no press, no fanfare. He was there all night meeting separately with parents and the siblings of the victims. He was determined that, as president, it was his job to help, to offer support, to give heartfelt hugs, to help in any way he could. You won’t get that from Donald Trump, who allowed a non-response to the shocking news that Russia had put a bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan and that killings had been done and money paid. Obama would have Putin too pissy-ass scared to do that. He loved our country and its soldiers, and those who didn’t listen to the lies about him loved him back.

Who we call heroes can tell a lot about us. I always loved our Apollo astronauts. In July 1969, wow. I consider that time a proud and exciting moment in history and despise the conspiracy theories that Stanley Kubric filmed it on a soundstage.

I loved the Beatles, the Stones, Melanie, Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, Peter, Paul and Mary, but anyone who could move me with music I was always going to love. One hit wonders to Three Dog Night to McCartney and Wings to the Carpenters, I don’t care. I’ll always love them. During terrible times, music has given us salve for our wounds and allowed us to grieve, to dream, to spend a few minutes in our own cocoon to heal, escape.

As I grew older I found I had fewer heroes. Fewer people to idolize or even to love. I became bitter, stopped listening to music, lost interest in movies and went dark. I hated and was hated. I wounded and was wounded. I withdrew and people didn’t mind. I don’t know how long that was.

I met Jane, her mother Margaret and Pelauria, Kate, Lisa and so many other great women on MySpace in 2008. They changed me. I gained an interest in and an understanding of politics that have made me more open to learning and to the feelings and the plight of other people. Overcoming terrible losses and horrific ordeals, these extraordinary women taught me lessons in life, are still teaching me. They are my heroes.

They have also reinforced one thing I already knew. That the human spirit is resistant, resilient and indomitable. That the beauty of one’s soul can shine through anything. That trauma can be lived with and however difficult, can be a source of great strength, of growing wiser and accepting that life is a gift, but never very fair. That to live with one’s demons and to accept that death is inevitable is to truly become free. To begin to really live.

That kind of freedom doesn’t come cheap. You pay for it in blood and heartbreak. You have to learn to let go of the fear of being hurt, and love freely. Life means nothing without love. It’s empty and sad. It’s not really life at all.

On social media I’ve unfriended or blocked lots of people. Some because they were unreasonable. Some because I misunderstood some comment that was really a reflex to my fear of being hurt. I therefore am not, never have been and never will be a hero. I’m not particularly bothered by that; I accept it. I have regrets but not being a man of note isn’t one of them. At age 60, I’ll settle for just being a man. A survivor who has been saved from death dozens of times by something I can’t explain unless I include God.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a hero. A woman who could be a role model for anyone. We lost her this month. Growing old isn’t fun for me. My heroes are leaving us. People who shaped the nation which Donald Trump hates so much are all people we could not afford to lose. Without them, we lose part of ourselves. RBG, as she was affectionately called, leaves us all a bit sadder, weaker and yet she leaves behind a legacy, a life well lived, a path for us to follow.

Losing a very personal hero hurts. Last year we said goodbye to Elijah Cummings. Of all my heroes, nobody’s passing hurts so much as his. I can scarce believe it has been a year. I loved that man. His shouts of “We’re better than this!” made me proud that Maryland had such a man. He was speaking to the whole country when he said this several times. He reminded us that we were watching great injustice and not doing anything to stop it. You can’t ask a man to be more honest or patriotic than that.

Goodbye, Helen. How I loved you so. Rest in peace.

May your day be peaceful and see you in good health. Thanks for reading.