A good day for a good book

A picture of Roger Mudd is on the cover of his 2008 book, "The Place to Be" (detail).

Snow fell on Richmond for most of this day after Christmas. It was a good time for a fire in the fireplace, a glass of eggnog and a good book. My choice was TV journalist Roger Mudd's "The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News."

CBS News was really the place to be during the event-packed 1960s and 70s. I have long admired Mudd, whose career at CBS roughly coincided with mine at WTVR News. At WTVR, I met Mudd a few times when his assignments brought him to Richmond. Later, I ran into him occasionally at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I wound up having lunch with him one day when a crowded museum Café meant we had to share a table. (Mudd was a trustee of the Virginia Historical Society, the museum's neighbor. VMFA had a cafeteria; VHS did not.)

Mudd's book is a great read. He writes well, and the stories he tells of the heyday of network news are fascinating.

My favorite Mudd anecdote is one that will resonate with those who lived through the 1970s. It reveals so much about Richard Nixon, the president we young people loved to hate in those days. It happened at an annual meeting of the Radio-Television Correspondents Association. Mudd, who was the group's president at the time, was seated next to the president as singer Diana Ross performed after dinner.

Mudd wrote, "Believe it or not, the president turned to me during one of her songs and said, 'They really do have a sense of rhythm, don't they?'"

"The Place to Be" is an interesting look back at two turbulent decades in Washington politics and journalism. Only the need to stoke the fire and warm up a ham biscuit for lunch tore me away from it today.

Christmas 2010

Lucy was the youngest member of the family on hand for Christmas at my nephew's house today.

What would Christmas morning be without kids?

Leaving aside the messages of peace and good will that all of us adults should be thinking about first today, Christmas is for those young enough to still accept without question the magic of it all. "Look what Santa brought me!"

There were four children as the family gathered at my nephew's house today -- Lucy, who is 1, Rowan and Milagros, who are 3, and Carlos, who is 6. Carlos and Milagros are my great nephew and great niece. Lucy and Rowan are my great-great nieces. They opened so many presents that they didn't know what to play with first.

I'm grateful to be welcomed into my nephew's home each holiday season, and I'm especially grateful to my nephew's wife for working all morning in the kitchen. (She got up at 4 a.m. to put a roast in the oven!)

Tonight it's snowing lightly in Richmond, with more expected tomorrow, so we're having a white Christmas, even if the big day is almost over as the flakes begin to fall.

Today was like Christmas should be for all -- with family and friends, with good will towards all, and with children who truly believe in the holiday's enchantment.

PS to Becky: the roast was delicious!

Santaland secrets

My sister Dianne was photographed with Santa at Miller & Rhoads in 1950. She, like all of the kids, was surprised that Santa knew her name.

I ran into the Snow Queen yesterday.

I was at the Library of Virginia for a tour of an exhibition with my friend Barbara. When the tour ended we dropped by the gift shop. There, in her attractive white gown, was the Snow Queen, autographing copies of her book "Christmas at Miller & Rhoads: Memoirs of a Snow Queen."

Last year, Donna Deekens wrote about her years working with Santa from 1971 until the store closed in 1990.

Business was slow in the bookstore, so Barbara and I introduced ourselves. Donna reminded me that we had met before, in the early 1970s, when I was working on a Christmas story for WTVR TV News. I told her that my family's connection with Miller & Rhoads went way back. My sister and I visited Santa at Miller & Rhoads in the late 1940s and early 50s. My mom worked at Miller & Rhoads beginning in about 1955. I worked at the downtown store for a year when I was in college, and my niece Terry later worked at the Willow Lawn branch.

Donna is too young to have been the Snow Queen when I was a kid. She was still in college when she heard about the opening for a new Snow Queen at Miller & Rhoads. She told me one fascinating tidbit I had never known. The Miller & Rhoads Santa on whose knee my sister Dianne and I had sat, was William C. Strother, a former Hollywood stuntman who had retired to Petersburg and answered a Miller & Rhoads help-wanted ad in 1942, the year I was born.

Strother used his Hollywood background to make the Miller & Rhoads Santa Claus into a legend. Max Factor designed his makeup, which took about two hours to apply. Strother turned the store's seventh-floor Santaland into a holiday fantasy. He came up with an act in which he arrived in Santaland by appearing out of a chimney.

The Snow Queen was an integral part of the Santa magic. Santa listened through an earpiece as she greeted each child in line using a concealed microphone. When the children got to Santa's lap, he already knew their names. Strother became so famous as Santa that he was featured in an article in the Saturday Evening Post.

Donna, who was from Portsmouth, told me she had come to Richmond as a child to visit the Miller & Rhoads Santa in 1956 when she was 5. It was to be Strother's last season on Santa's throne at Miller & Rhoads.

Donna urged Barbara and me to read her book, and we told her we would. A few more people came into the gift shop, and Barbara and I said our goodbyes. We walked out into the blustery cold on a sunny December morning on Broad Street. It felt even more like Christmas.

Kick-starting Christmas

(Don Dale 2010 photo)

I started to really get the Christmas spirit Friday night.

I've already done most of the necessary shopping, and the plans for Christmas and New Year's Eve are in place. But I hadn't started to feel the memories of Christmases past that usually kick-start my enjoyment of the holidays.

My nephew and I had planned to grab dinner Friday night. He called me to tell me that he'd be a little late. He'd just learned that his 3-year-old granddaughter's -- my great-great-niece's -- pre-school holiday program was being streamed live on the Internet at 7 p.m. Rowan and her family live in Northern Virginia. The Internet video feed was originating in Arlington.

A few minutes later, I called my nephew back and asked him to send me the Internet address so that I could watch too.

At 7 p.m., I settled in to see the first children's holiday presentation I've seen in ... oh, maybe, 50 years.

The picture was a little fuzzy, and the sound was hit and miss, but "adorable" is the best word to summon up the performance. Watching Rowan and her friends caught up in the excitement that only children can really feel at Christmas started to put me in the holiday mood.

This morning, I woke up to snow falling and a light dusting already on the ground. The snow really cinched the deal. By 10 o'clock, it had stopped. It was just the kind of snow I like -- not enough to disrupt life much but enough to suggest a winter wonderland.

Christmas madrigals are playing on the radio now, and I picked up a quart of eggnog on the way home from fitness class. Tonight I'll probably drag out the DVD of "Christmas in Connecticut," which is one of my favorite holiday movies. Maybe I'll even wrap a few Christmas presents.

Sometimes the Christmas feeling hits me early, and at other times I don't really get in touch with the holidays until Christmas Day itself. This year, it came early.

Kids and snow. It's an unbeatable combination for ramping up the Christmas spirit.

Some thoughts on theater

Poster art for the Richmond Triangle Players production of "Comfort and Joy"

One of the things I enjoyed most about my job at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was working with the Virginia Museum Theater.

When I was a kid, I used to enjoy theater from an acting perspective. Looking for a means of breaking free and expressing myself, I wanted to perform. In junior high, I declaimed Patrick Henry's famous speech at the Mosque as part of the city school system's celebration of something or the other, and in high school I played the sycophantic Mr. Collins in "Pride and Prejudice," our senior play. I played a few roles in Dogwood Dell productions and was cast in minor parts in three VMT productions when the theater was still all-volunteer.

By the time I went to work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts many years later, I was much more interested in the process of the theater -- how it worked, what worked and why it worked. I was assigned to handle public relations, and the managing director of the theater company was kind enough to keep me involved in every production from the planning stages through opening night.

Thus, I learned what the audience doesn't see and isn't meant to see: the nuts and bolts of mounting a theatrical production -- everything from acquiring the rights to a script, casting, rehearsals, and artistic temperaments to opening nights and the next day's newspaper reviews. The costume designers, the prop masters, the carpenters and the box-office people were all my friends. They recognized a genuine interest, and they took valuable time to explain how they did what they did and how to make illusion look real.

Today I have no connection to a theater, either on- or off-stage, but I still believe there's something unique about live theater that no other form of entertainment can supply. I saw a production with my niece Terry this week of "Comfort and Joy" by the Richmond Triangle Players. It was funny and touching and thoroughly entertaining. I've seen a half-dozen shows at as many theaters this year, and each one entertained me, made me think, and provided some insight into my life or the lives of others.

A good movie or a good television show can provide much the same thing, but with one important difference. There's always, inevitably, an element of risk in live theater -- simply because it's live. If you're willing to suspend disbelief, you can get swept up in the thrill of seeing real people tell a riveting story right in front of you. The show you're seeing might have been performed by the same cast 25 times already, but it's still live, and the actors -- and in some ways, the audience -- are taking a risk. Will it work this time? Hopes are always high on both sides of the footlights.

And risks often bring rewards.

The word drama is from the Greek for action, which is, in turn, derived from the Greek verb to do. When cast and audience are totally in sync, the risks that are taken on stage leave the audience with a greater understanding of other perspectives, other ways of seeing themselves, and other methods, to refer back to the Greek, of making and doing.

By any light, especially a spotlight, that's altogether a good thing.

Live from the Eifel

http://www.webcam.bitburg.net/

On this December 1, there's already snow on the ground in Bitburg, Germany. That's the little town in the Eifel Mountains, near the Luxembourg border, where I was stationed from 1966 to 1969 in the U.S. Air Force.

Chuck Minx, who served at AFTV with me, sent me this link the other day in an e-mail. I already had it, but it had been about a year since I last took a look. Check out the site and you'll see live webcam images from downtown Bitburg. (Remember that Germany is 6 hours ahead of East Coast U.S. time, so when it's the middle of the day here in Richmond it's already dark in Bitburg.)

Bitburg, population 14,000, is already decorated for Christmas, with white stars strung from one side of the street to the other. The Web camera is looking down one of the main streets toward the town's center.

There are a few thousand more people in Bitburg now than there were when I was there. That's actually more impressive than it sounds. Before the Cold War ended, thousands of American military personnel and their dependents lived, ate, or shopped off base -- "on the economy," as we called it -- and pumped money into the region's coffers. The town has survived the loss of those GIs and their American dollars, at the same time adapting to change and growing. Bitburg survived the drawdown of U.S. troops well.

Part of Bitburg's success is due to the Simonbrau brewery, which was merely a regional operation when I was there but is now internationally known for its excellent Bitburger Pilsner beer.

Bitburg is nestled in the Eifel's green, rolling hills and gentle mountains. This is farm country, home to plain folks with few ostentatious tastes. You can find most of what you need in Bitburg, including good beer, superb Mosel wine and marvelous food. When I lived there, the town had six Italian restaurants, all of which provided free pizza delivery to the air base.

Bitburg's street food is also delectable. I like a mettwurst sausage on a bun, or shashlik on a skewer with pommes frites and lots of rich gravy. If you're looking for a department store or what we'd call a big-box store, you won't find one in Bitburg: You'll have to travel 25 kilometers to Trier, Germany's oldest city (population 104,000).

Bitburg's small-town look hasn't changed much in 40 years, and watching the live webcam can still fill me with nostalgia.

Christmas oranges

I saw an orange in a bowl of fruit on Thanksgiving day.

It made me think about stories of the Depression told by my mother when I was little. In turn, that led me to a picture of where my grandmother worked during those hard times.

There was always an orange in my Christmas stocking when I was a kid. I was never overly impressed by the orange. As I turned the stocking upside down to shake out the contents each Christmas morning, my mother would inevitably tell me how a fresh orange was a real treat for her and her brother and sisters at Christmastime during the Depression.

But by the time I was a kid in the late 1940s, oranges were much more plentiful, even in the dead of winter. It would be years before I learned exactly what the Depression meant and before I could appreciate that, back then, wintertime oranges were scarce -- and therefore highly valued.

For my mom, in the midst of tougher times than I had ever known, the orange in her stocking was a prized present because it was meant purely to be enjoyed. It was an indulgence to be savored when what few other Christmas presents she got were practical: socks, underwear, shoes, or a new dress sewn by my grandmother.

Times in Richmond during the Depression were hard, although not as tough as in some other areas of the country. Both of my mother's parents were fortunate enough to have jobs. Her father worked for the C&O railroad. My grandmother, after her five children were older, worked as a seamstress. The sewing skills she had learned from her mother and used to clothe her own brood stood her in good stead. In the 1930s, she was employed by the Friedman-Marks Clothing Co. The company survived, even thrived, during the Depression. Friedman-Marks, the tobacco industry, and the DuPont plant helped to keep Richmond's economy afloat.

(If you're old enough, you might remember the Rockingham men's-clothing store near Sears on Broad Street. Rockingham was a Friedman-Marks trademark. The company went out of business a few decades ago.)

As I grew to be an adult, I finally got it: I realized that my mom was putting those oranges in my Christmas stocking each year as a reminder to herself, and as a lesson to me, about scarcity and value.

Yesterday, I was still thinking about that orange I saw in a bowl of fruit on Thanksgiving day. My curiosity led me online to find out more about the Great Depression and its effect on Richmond. That's where I learned that the Friedman Marks Clothing Co. had been an economic mainstay for so many Richmond families.

And I found a picture of all of the company's employees, taken sometime in the 1930s. They're all standing outside the Friedman Marks factory in Richmond. There are so many of them, and their faces in the picture are small. It's hard to recognize anyone specific.

But my grandmother is likely one of those hard-working seamstresses.

She used her sewing skills during the Depression to help my grandfather put food on the table and to buy what they couldn't make for themselves.

And to buy oranges in wintertime to put in their children's stockings for Christmas morning.

The four seasons

I like living in a place with four distinct seasons.

It means that no matter what kind of weather you prefer, you'll inevitably get your wish.

Sooner or later.

It seems to me that the changing leaves have been spectacular in Richmond this fall -- richer in color than they have been in recent years. I passed this tree on Monument Avenue this morning on my way home from fitness class. If the color of its leaves were any more intense, it would be considered "showy." And we all know that Richmond doesn't do "showy."

Some people are looking forward to winter. Not me. Rest assured, I'm glad that we get the occasional foot of snow. And the city is beautiful on the sparkling sunny mornings that seem to follow ice storms. But the price that snow and ice exact is high. Trying to cope in a house without power or heat or lights on a cold January night can be, as my Grandfather Nichols used to say, rougher than a cob.

I usually cope with winter by hunkering down, laying in a supply of firewood, checking the batteries in the flashlights and radios, making sure I have kerosene for the lamps and becoming obsessed by the weather channel.

Spring is my favorite season -- or, more specifically, late spring, when the dogwoods and azaleas bloom. Spring is a season that tantalizes the senses. Spring seems to hint that we might get life right this time.

Sitting in the jury box

"Justice? You get justice in the next world; in this world you have the law."

--American novelist William Gaddis (1922-1998)

In real life, court trials are not all about DNA.

They're more about common sense.

If real life were like TV drama, there wouldn't be so many trials down at the John Marshall Courts Building. If the defendant's body fluids are all over the crime scene, where's the doubt? If immutable testimony puts the accused on the scene with a bloody knife in his hand, what's the issue? When the facts are black and white, who needs a jury? Clear-cut cases most often end in plea bargains.

A few years ago, I was summoned for jury duty and served in two trials. Both cases involved thoughtful consideration of the nuances of the testimony and the evidence.

The forensic scientist who testified in the first case, which was about a grim double murder, wasn't much help. The key to the case turned out to be a dumb mistake made by the defendant. In the second, a traffic case, it was one man's word against another's.

Sitting in the jury box is often confounding. But it seems to me that the really important thing to remember is that you're not supposed to leave your common sense at the jury-room door.

The two-day murder trial was about two brutal drug-related killings in a parked car, at night, on the city's Northside. In his rush to get away, the killer had left his cell phone in the car's back seat. Guilt or innocence hinged on cell-phone records that took up hours of the prosecution case. Testimony was confusing. It was up to the jury to sort it out and connect the dots. We did, using our common sense. Without too much dithering we found the defendant guilty and sentenced him to 40 years.

The second case was about an automobile accident, and both sides admitted that there was no way for us to really know who was telling the truth. Two cars crashed at an intersection. Both drivers claimed their light was green. There were no other witnesses. Both sides were equally credible. Again, those of us on the jury used our common sense: we compromised. The man who had been injured in the crash was awarded his minimum medical expenses but nothing more.

Did we mete out justice?

I'll never know with certainty.

But in both cases we thought we were as fair as we could be -- using our common sense.

Into the wild blue yonder

Virginia War Memorial (2010 Don Dale photo)

My friend Bill was the first person to take me flying.

Airplanes were always his thing. He hung around the old Northfield Airport in Hanover County when he was a very young teenager and eventually snagged a job. He traded his meager paycheck for flying lessons, and by the time we were in high school together he was routinely flying solo. He was as happy a kid as you'd want to know, especially when he was in the air.

He took a couple of us up in a pint-size plane one afternoon during high school graduation week for the class of 1960. That sunny June afternoon was the first time I had ever flown, and I loved it.

Bill and I were both accepted at the University of Richmond, and we hung out together there, too, in the Slop Shop between classes, in the Student Center and at freshman mixers. When fraternity rush started, we explored maybe half of the dozen or so houses on campus and decided that the one we really wanted was Phi Delta Theta.

The brothers at the house on the hill did issue us a bid, and we both accepted. Bill and I became not merely friends, but brothers among Phi Delts who prized "sound learning and rectitude." (Phi Delts also prized raucous parties at the house on the hill, preferably with a bottle of Virginia Gentleman hidden away in the kitchen because the university forbade alcohol.)

In his spare time, Bill continued to perfect his skill at piloting small planes, while I devoted my energies to campus journalism.

In the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was raging and Bill and I were both in the Air Force. Bill joined after graduation and became a fighter pilot. His squadron was stationed near Dallas. I was in basic medical training school at Wichita Fall, Texas. We got together for a weekend to catch up. It was especially important to be able to spend time with an old friend when we were both far from Richmond.

I wound up as a surgery tech at a small hospital in Bitburg, Germany. Bill's squadron of fighter jocks wound up in Vietnam. I got a letter from home one day. Bill was dead. His plane was shot down in a dogfight over the South China Sea.

Bill was the first person I knew personally who was killed in Vietnam. He was not to be the last.

I got to thinking about Bill on Thursday, Veterans Day. Yesterday, I spent some time at the Virginia War Memorial thinking about what it all means.

A commonplace observation

Pansies planted yesterday in two urns next to the front steps have already found the sun. (Don Dale 2010 photo)

Fall planting is an act of faith -- a demonstrated conviction that we'll survive the coming winter to appreciate spring anew.

Planting is always an act of faith. Ask the farmer who earns his living in his fields or the gardener who takes pleasure in getting his hands dirty. Both put things in the ground with the hope that they'll survive and flourish. All the while, they know it's a crap shoot.

I completed the last of the fall planting yesterday. I've put down grass seed front and back, added a pink crape myrtle to bring some color next summer to a spot along the fence in the back yard, added to a row of yellow and red tulips along the front walkway, filled in a few bare spots in the daffodil bed under the big maple in the back, and replaced the impatiens with pansies in two urns on either side of the front-porch steps. The pansies, which bloom even through snowstorms, will provide winter cheer. They'll tide me over when the days are ragged and short.

Sure, there are those who will say that rattling on about investing in springtime is trite. They're right. It's trite because it's commonplace, because everybody who plants is moved to express the agreeable emotions that accompany the act. So call me trite.

But call me next spring, too, when my tulips and daffodils are in bloom, and I'll tell you how much I'm enjoying the display of color. Faith in the future -- even though it's demonstrated with just a few seeds, bulbs, plants and shrubs -- distinguishes us as a species.

One engine and a prayer

The interior of a working Gooney Bird was Spartan, but the plane, which was the military version of the DC-3 airliner, was a workhorse. (U.S.A.F. undated photo)

TV news coverage this week of the engine troubles on board an Airbus A380 with 440 passengers over the Pacific reminded me of a white-knuckle flight in an Air Force Gooney Bird in the late 1960s.

The Bitburg Air Base football team needed a medic to work its practices and games in 1967. I was working as a surgery tech at the Bitburg hospital. The team had a couple of away games that year, one at a Royal Air Force base in Mildenhall, England, and another in Naples, Italy. Being the team medic was a volunteer job. I took it. For me, the payback was the free plane trips.

The Bitburg Gooney Bird was an adventure in itself. The Gooney Bird -- so nicknamed because of the way the nose sits high up in the air when the plane is on the ground -- was Bitburg's small, general-purpose, work-horse troop and cargo transport. It had been around since World War II. The interior was Spartan -- stripped-down seats and no passenger amenities. Known officially as the C-47 Skytrain, the Gooney Bird was the military version of the commercial DC-3 airliner, but with a cargo door and a reinforced floor.

The two-engine, propeller-driven C-47 had been a mainstay during World War II. Gooney Birds dropped supplies to American forces who were surrounded by the Germans at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. They also famously flew over "The Hump" from India into China. They played a major role in the early stages of the post-war Berlin Airlift.

By the late 1960s, the Gooney Bird was far from being state-of-the-art, but it was such a reliable and sturdy plane that many were still in service then. A few are still flying today.

The football team's flight to Naples was noisier, longer and rougher than the trip would have been on a commercial airliner, but it was uneventful -- until we were about 30 minutes away from landing. We heard a boom. We looked out the window and saw flames and smoke pouring from the back of the right engine. Lots of flames. And lots of smoke.

Heck yes, we were scared. One of our two engines was on fire in a plane that was older than we were. But we were Air Force troops, and coming in on one engine and a prayer was something we had to be cool about. So we stayed calm. The pilot sent back word that all was under control and we'd be on the ground shortly.

Yeah. Right.

The flames coming from the engine grew larger and smoke continued to billow. Eventually the propeller stopped turning, the engine fire-suppression system kicked in, and the heavy black smoke tapered off.

We did land safely on our one good engine, although touchdown was rough. Keeping the plane flying level and straight wasn't easy under the circumstances.

On the ground, firemen in flame-retardant suits and headgear raced to meet us and sprayed foam on the dead engine. We all watched through the windows and applauded. When the pilot walked back to tell us that it was safe to disembark, we applauded him, too.

The engine was still smoking as we filed down the steps to terra firma.

At least one football team member kissed the Naples runway.

And the pilot told us that it was a good landing: "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing."

All Hallows' Eve

A walk through Hollywood Cemetery is a journey through Richmond's past. Today I happened upon J.E.B. Stuart's grave (above) and the tomb of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Ellen Glasgow. (Don Dale photo, 2010)

Richmond's favorite cemetery wasn't very spooky this afternoon.

Perhaps it was just because it was Halloween, but for whatever reason I decided to take a break and spend a quiet hour or so walking through Hollywood Cemetery. It was a peaceful way to spend part of a sunny afternoon.

In my ramble, I happened upon J.E.B. Stuart's grave with its small Confederate flags and large obelisk. I heard a low voice from the other side of a bush. When I backed up to take a picture of Stuart's grave, I saw the middle-aged bicyclist who had stopped to use his cell phone.

In front of a mausoleum a few yards away, a gray-haired couple sat on a bench in the sun, admiring fresh flowers on a grave. Members of a walking tour murmured in the distance as they followed their guide. A family with two small children spread a blanket beside one of Hollywood's winding roadways. They had a picnic, with a large bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Below, the James River caught the sun.

Hollywood Cemetery wasn't named for the town in Southern California. It predates the movies by a half century. The name came from the holly trees that covered a commanding bluff overlooking the James River.

A little history:

Richmond's cemeteries were filling up. Hollywood was meant to solve two problems: the need for burial space and a yearning for green space. Designed in 1847, the cemetery was not without opposition. Those against it said it would hold back the city's westward expansion. Others feared that runoff from decaying corpses would foul the city's water supply. Neither of those potential consequences has occurred.

A century and a half later, the cemetery celebrates nature. Mature trees and shrubbery are everywhere, and a story that wants to be told seems to materialize at every turn. Paths wind through markers that approach the heights of fine art.

More than 75,000 people are buried at Hollywood, including three presidents (Monroe, Tyler and Davis). Other tombs, no less grand, bear names known now mostly to historians: Douglas Freeman, Lewis Powell, Mary Munford, Virginius Dabney, Ellen Glasgow and James Branch Cabell. Lewis Ginter, the tobacco magnate who is as big in death as he was in life, is buried in Hollywood's largest mausoleum. His tomb has windows made by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Some graves are more recent, and a very few are fresh.

Hollywood Cemetery on this quiet Sunday afternoon was a good place for a walk. This garden of stone is as much a place for the living as for the dead.

NOTE: Those of you who remember Mae, the blind cat I wrote about on Oct. 11, will be happy to hear she has a new home. Tamsen at the SPCA e-mailed me last week with the good news.

The fashion parade

My mom used Simplicity patterns to make clothes for my sister and me when we were kids.

I was never all that interested in clothes. I didn't start to make decisions about what to wear, really, until I started college.

My mom came from a long line of Appalachian women who sewed. I wore homemade shirts until I was about 7 or 8. Her family came from a time and place in Virginia where store-bought was a luxury.

My mom would follow Simplicity patterns and find material where she could: When I was really young, in the 1940s, our neighborhood grocer still sold chicken-feed from a bag in a barrel. He would save the feed bags and sell them to customers. Yes, the feed manufacturers knew that the bags might wind up as clothes, so feed sacks came in plaid, stripes, and other decorative patterns. (And yes, some of our neighbors kept chickens in their back yards. We had a bantam hen and rooster for a time in our yard on Church Hill.)

My grandmother, who taught my mom to sew, put her own skills to work professionally when her kids were older. Granny went to work for Friedman-Marks, hand-stitching and machine-sewing suits for men. You could buy the suits at Rockingham Clothes at 1800 W. Broad St., near the Sears store.

My mom didn't sew jackets or pants for me, so when I was old enough to wear suits, she bought them at Rockingham. My grandmother would make necessary alterations by hand. Nobody asked me what I preferred. I wore what my mom bought, and factors like durability, price and "room to grow" were what counted.

When I was a teenager, my mom went to work at Miller & Rhoads. She took great advantage of the store's sales: She bought all of my clothes there until I was in high school, most often without my even being present. Her thrifty shopping made me look like I was always one step behind and trying to catch up.

I didn't care.

I didn't pay any attention to what I wore in junior high or high school, and many of my friends didn't either. There were girls who wore Villager blouses and guys who wore Gant shirts, but fashion didn't rule.

That changed dramatically when I went to the University of Richmond.

U.R. tradition dictated that we wear a coat and tie to class. I began to insist on some say in what I wore, and I started shopping for myself. It took me a while, but I assembled a wardrobe of blazers, white button-down Oxford shirts, conservative ties, khaki pants, wool crewneck sweaters, and Bass Weejuns loafers. I chose my clothes as student camouflage: I wanted to look like everybody else.

My four years in the Air Force in Germany were lost fashion years. Mostly we wore uniforms, and the only place to buy off-duty clothes was the Base Exchange, where the choices were limited.

When I came back to Richmond, I had to buy new clothes. I relied on the basics -- meaning I updated the U.R. look with contemporary touches because I was working in television. I did take some chances. I bought a red blazer that my dad said made me look like a waiter. (It probably did, but it looked good on TV.) And to add variety to the navy or camel-hair blazers and blue shirts, I began to wear brighter ties to bring some color to the screen. I stuck with that for the next four decades.

Today, after a second career in an art museum, color rules what I wear. To heck with the conservative look. I wore a purple T-shirt to fitness class this morning. My hair is gray now, and I can wear more color than I ever could before. I have knit shirts and dress shirts in every hue of the rainbow including "grape sherbet" and "mango." In the winter, I pair them with equally colorful sweaters.

Late in life, I have discovered that I like color -- and lots of it. It's very liberating. The opinion that counts now is mine. I can indulge myself. Forget durability, price, and "room to grow."

In my closet, however, cleaned and pressed for when a grown-up, dress-up occasion arises, are a blue wool blazer, a white Oxford shirt, gray flannel pants, a blue-and-red repp tie, and a pair of Weejuns. I haven't completely let go of my roots.

Hidden links

Eve Arden

Here’s a history exercise. Some of the names below you’ll know, and some you won’t. They all have something in common. Most of you will easily figure out what links them generally, probably long before you get to the end. But there’s also something more specific you can say about them. It’ll be interesting to see whether you can get that part. (Where possible, each name is a clickable link so that you can check an Internet resource if you’re completely stuck.)

Rosemary Rice
Milton Berle
Frank Gallop
Tallulah Bankhead
Sid Caesar
Kirby Grant
Ted Mack
Jackie Gleason
Bea Benaderet
William Frawley
Dagmar
Harry Von Zell
Dorothy Kilgallen
Eddie Cantor
Imogene Coca
Arthur Godfrey
Gale Gordon
Robert Montgomery
Rex Marshall
Ralph Edwards
Joan Davis
Don DeFore
Spencer Williams
Ben Alexander
Eve Arden
Barbara Britton
Georgiana Carhart

Highlight the following paragraph, and the answer will be revealed.

All of the people listed are ... people I remember seeing on national TV in 1952, the year I turned 10 years old. Commercial television started in 1946, and Richmond’s first TV station, WTVR, signed on in 1948. My family got its first black-and-white set, a Philco floor model, in 1950. Television then was younger than the iPod is now. By the time I was 10, I knew that I wanted to work in this new medium, and these were the people I watched, the people who were pioneering television’s early days. They were the first generation, the ones who helped turn TV into an intimate part of our lives. When the second generation, my generation, started working in the business, the first generation taught us how to do it.

The cat in the Amsterdam window

Click on the image to enlarge it. (Don Dale photo, 2006)

For indoor cats, windows rate right up there with catnip. The experience of surveying the world from a windowsill is endlessly fascinating. The position is high and defensible -- important considerations if you're a cat. And the view is great.

This particular cat, name unknown, was settled in for the duration on a windowsill in the center of Amsterdam on a mild late-spring day in 2006. I was struck by his remarkable good looks, due in no small part to his unusual muted-calico coat. After a long stare establishing his clear superiority, he returned to studying the streetscape, ignoring me as I took a couple of digital images.

There was a lot for him to see and hear from his perch. The street was not a busy one, but there were couples walking, a few holding hands, laughing. Here and there were lone pedestrians, headed home or back to work after running errands, plastic shopping bags in hand.

Two doors down was one of Amsterdam's "coffee shops," the Kadinsky, where the menu doesn't list cappuccinos, mocha frappes and lattes. Usually posted just outside the front door, these coffee-shop menus catalog a wide range of marijuana varieties. The shops sell rolling papers too, but frequent visitors often bring their own pipes. There are a few tables inside where customers can enjoy their purchases, and on a warm day, there might be tables on the sidewalk.

If what you really want in Amsterdam is a cup of coffee, go to a café, not a coffee shop.

Across the street and a few doors down was a nondescript bar in a boxy brick building with a rainbow flag flying above the door. The windows were open but the place was quiet. The establishment would no doubt provide much more visual entertainment after dark for the windowsill cat.

A man in a green jacket caught the cat's eye halfway down the block. He had twirled a rack of souvenir postcards outside a neighborhood market. He took his time thinking about his selections. The cat quickly lost interest.

Two teenagers wearing orange shirts did bicycle tricks in the street near the man picking out postcards. One of them was skilled at executing wheelies, and their laughter underscored the street's soundscape. The cat was ignoring them, as though the boys had been at it for some time and no longer merited his interest.

Noon arrived, and the bells of the Westerkerk punctuated the soundscape from a block away. During World War II, Anne Frank could hear the chimes every quarter hour from her family's attic hiding place nearby. She told her diary that the bells sounded reassuring, especially at night. The cat took no notice of the familiar sound.

The cat yawned and stretched and settled back in to watch a man across the street who was staring into a shop. The sign in the plate glass window said Tibet Winkel/Stitching/Tibet Support Group Nederland. From the outside it looked like a specialty bookstore. Haphazard stacks of reading material were visible through the window.

Next door was an art and interior design boutique. In the front window was a large abstract drawing that seemed to be about man's essential isolation.

And the cat with the pale calico coat watched from his windowsill, still and silent and fascinated, as the day unfolded.

The old bridge over the Arno

Today, shops for tourists line the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge, across the Arno in Florence. (Don Dale photo, 2006)

On a trip to Florence, everybody wants to see Michelangelo's David, Filippo Brunelleschi's dome atop the city's Gothic cathedral, Andrea Pisano and Lorenzo Ghiberti's golden doors of the Baptistery of St. John, and the art treasures of the Uffizi museum.

But another of the city's beloved treasures is the Ponte Vecchio (that's Italian for old bridge), which crosses the Arno river.

The bridge is lined with shops, and if you've got the big bucks, you can buy jewelry, art and expensive souvenirs. Or you can stop in the middle for a free, wide-open view of the city's skyline up- or down-river. The view to the west is spectacularly beautiful at sunset.

Nowhere in Florence is the Southern European sun's famed yellow glow more evident than on the Ponte Vecchio. It's the light that so many Renaissance painters tried to capture, that particular deep and rich yellow radiance that is emblematic of place.

The Ponte Vecchio is usually crowded. Florentines whose business takes them across the Arno use the bridge, but the majority of those strolling its nearly 300-foot length are tourists, many of them North American or Asian. At either approach to the bridge, predictably, you'll find both overpriced cafés and tourist shops. I picked up a tacky plaster cast of David at one of the latter.

We had a late lunch one warm afternoon - coffee and Parma ham on slices of cantaloupe -- at a café on the north bank near the bridge and spent at least 90 minutes doing what I often think I like best about traveling -- people-watching. On the corner opposite the café was a souvenir stand selling "Firenze" banners and buttons, and across from that was an African man with a sidewalk array of messenger bags that he said were made from "good-quality leather." (Anybody in commerce near the Ponte Vecchio knows at least some English.)

The Ponte Vecchio speaks eloquently of antiquity, medieval times, the Renaissance, and today. The piers were made of stone by the Romans. Over the centuries, the bridge itself has been rebuilt -- more strongly and more elaborately each time. It was swept away by a flood in 1117, but it was the only bridge in Florence spared by Hitler during the German retreat in August 1944.

Above the shops on the bridge -- yes, there is a second story -- is a passageway connecting the Florence town hall with the Pitti Palace on the opposite bank. Cosimo I de Medici had it built in 1565 so he wouldn't have to mingle with the common folk on the bridge below.

I wondered why there are a proliferation of padlocks in place on the bridge's railing and on the fence around the bridge's statue of artist Benvenuto Cellini. Somebody told me that the padlocks are a modern oddity. Young couples ceremoniously lock them there to signify their eternal bonds. The city used to have to remove thousands from time to time. Now there's a sign that says there will be a 50-euro fine. But some young couples still do it anyway.

Yes, the Ponte Vecchio is definitely a place to let Florence seep under your skin for a few hours.

Perfection, in Carrara marble

(Don Dale photo, 2006)

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.

I found that out just moments after snapping off a single shot of Michelangelo's David in 2006. It was just a matter of seconds before a security guard told me emphatically that photography was not permitted.

I hadn't set out deliberately to break the rules. I'd missed the signs posted at the entrance -- not surprising, given how crowded the gallery was.

Florence had been on my list of European cities to visit for almost 30 years, but I didn't get there until 2006. That was probably for the best: By then, I had learned enough about art to appreciate the city's treasures, and Michelangelo's David was what I most wanted to see.

The sculpture of the teenage biblical figure, which some say depicts the moment between his decision to take on Goliath and the beginning of their epic battle, is perfection in Carrara marble. Seeing it in person was sublime.

Michelangelo was 25 years old in 1501 when he began carving his David.

The figure, completed in 1504, is 17 feet tall. It was originally placed outdoors at the Piazza della Signoria, adjacent to the Florentine seat of government. It soon came to symbolize the city's love of civil liberty. Growing concerns about the toll taken by exposure to the elements led to its being moved inside the Accademia in 1873. (A replica was placed at the original location in 1910.)

Today, David is one of Italy's most-loved tourist attractions. I am glad we took our guidebook's advice and bought tickets in advance. That cost us about $14 apiece, but it saved us at least two hours of waiting in line. With tickets in hand, we were admitted to the Accademia immediately.

Many replicas of the sculpture have been created over time. I bought a cheap plaster version at a souvenir stand near the Ponte Vecchio.

A reproduction of the statue was presented to Queen Victoria by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1857. She, in turn, gave it to what is now the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The story goes that on her first encounter with the sculpture, Queen Victoria was so shocked by the nudity that a fig leaf was commissioned and kept in readiness for royal visits. On such occasions the fig leaf was hung on the sculpture using two strategically placed hooks.

Cassie update

(Don Dale photo, 2010)

Speaking of cats, which I seem to be doing often here, Cassie is getting along just fine.

After a rhinoscopy and histology exam by a kitty internal-medicine specialist, I learned that the problem that's been making Cassie sneeze so violently and keeping her nose so clogged up is a chronic viral infection, complicated by an opportunistic bacterial infection, that we'll probably have to manage for the rest of her life.

A month's worth of antibiotics cleared up the bacterial infection nicely. Nosedrops once a day seem to be holding down the viral inflammation.

Nosedrops? For a cat? Hmmmm.

Both the vet and I envisioned that an adversarial relationship might result from my administering nosedrops. I thought that Cassie would see this as the kitty equivalent of waterboarding. The vet said chances were that the treatment would cause such a disruption in our relationship that the negative effects would outweigh the positive. "But give it a try," she told me. "She might be one of those cats who tolerate it."

It's been almost two weeks now, and the nosedrops seem to be effective. I hear her sneeze maybe once a day. And -- surprise! -- Cassie tolerates the procedure. I won't say she likes it -- no, indeed -- but she has gotten to the point that my efforts to hold her head steady while I put two drops in the space between her nostrils evoke merely a token resistance. She doesn't fight, although she shakes her head vigorously and licks her nose afterward. Then she is content to be petted and held. A few seconds later, she's purring and curling up next to me.

Amazing. Cassie is a refined and dignified patient.

And with the pollen the way it is right now, I'm sneezing far more than Cassie is.

Meeting Mae

Mae is a very special tuxedo cat I met recently. She is seen here sitting on her favorite lime-green cushion. (Don Dale photo, 2010)

I met a blind cat a few weeks ago. I was immediately charmed by her -- so much so that I've been back to visit her at the SPCA three times now.

Mae is the cat that accompanied Tamsen Kingry and me to the WTVR TV studios for a recent interview on "Virginia this Morning." Tamsen is the SPCA's chief operating officer. We were there to talk about the Seniors for Seniors program, which connects humans 65 and older with pets 5 and older. I adopted my cat, Cassie, through the program in March. (My first thought was to bring Cassie along for the interview, but Tamsen suggested we bring a cat who was adoptable instead of one who already has a home.)

I met Mae and Tamsen before our interview in a waiting area at WTVR. Mae was in her carrier. Lively and affectionate, she poked her curious nose through the grate and rubbed against my fingers as Tamsen told me about her. When she said that Mae is blind, I was astonished. I had never met a blind cat before.

When we moved into the studio for the interview, Tamsen took Mae out of her carrier, and she snuggled comfortably between us on the set, purring and even more affectionate now that she was unconfined. Tamsen explained to the audience that Mae is a special-needs kitty and emphasized that she will need extra attention when she finds a new home. The interview went well. When it was over, we said our good-byes, and I gave Mae a farewell scratch under her chin before Tamsen returned her to her carrier.

About a week later, I visited Mae at the SPCA. She lives in a bright and cheerful room with a handful of other special-needs cats. Her favorite place to curl up is on a lime-green cushion under a blue chair next to the door. When I sat down on the floor and picked her up, she settled readily into my lap and purred enthusiastically. She's a sweet-natured and gentle cat and relishes attention, even from comparative strangers. She knows her way around the room and can easily find her litter box and her food and water. It occurred to me that Mae has never really known what life would be like if she were sighted. Her world is dark, but it's filled with other cats and kind people, and she seems to compensate for her lack of vision with a sharp sense of smell and acute hearing.

I have visited Mae several more times. I think she recognizes me, although that might be wishful thinking on my part. I thought long and hard about adopting her myself, but Cassie's vet and I agreed that it might be too risky, since Cassie is still fighting a persistent, contagious viral infection.

I mentioned my interest in Mae in an e-mail to a friend, Christine, who lives in London. Christine told me that she had a friend here in the States, Norma, whose blind cat had recently died after a long and happy life. I e-mailed Norma with a question that had been gnawing at me. How does a blind cat figure out how to enjoy the pleasure of bounding up onto a windowsill or jumping into a warm lap? And how does she work up the nerve to spring back down? The literal leap of faith involved seemed impossible to me.

Norma's cat, Elizabeth, managed with few problems, she told me.

"She jumped up on her favorite blanket-covered chairs and onto our laps till the end. She loved jumping onto the wide windowsill and loved sleeping on 'her chair' on our screened porch during the warm months. We are convinced she was the most affectionate cat on the planet.

"It's my opinion that Mae will learn to jump on a chair or lap without much trouble. Maybe she would have to be lifted onto permitted areas a few times, but I think she will compensate with more acute hearing and the use of her whiskers in negotiating rooms. Elizabeth didn't run -- she walked carefully and did bump into things sometimes.

"She loved being on people's laps, especially my husband Dean's lap. As soon as he settled into a chair, she was there on his lap, purring loudly, and he still misses her so much."

Mae, who tugs at my heartstrings, is still at the SPCA awaiting just the right person, one who understands her special needs and has time for the extra attention she'll need as she learns to adapt to new surroundings.

I hope she'll soon find that special home.

Plot B, Row 10, Grave 36

(Don Dale photo, 2004)

Who was Cecil Woodrow Winburne, U.S. Army serial number 6882691?

It's a question I gnawed on during our 60th-anniversary study tour of the 1944 Allied invasion of Europe. We visited the battlefields. Then we visited the American military cemeteries, those vast stone gardens of death.

More than 93,000 American dead from World War II are buried in those cemeteries, which stretch from England through Normandy and into the Ardennes.

Today, they are peaceful reminders of sacrifice and courage. Visitors -- and there are always visitors -- move quietly among the graves.

I found Private Cecil Winburne's cross in Plot B, Row 10, Grave 36, in the American cemetery in Luxembourg. He is among 5,075 people buried there. Most were killed in the Battle of the Bulge or the Allied advance to the Rhine.

I photographed Winburne's grave in 2004 because the inscription noted that he was a Virginian. Who was he? You can't tell from the spare words on his marker. When I got home, I decided to do some research.

Private Winburne, I learned, was from Richmond. In the late 1930s he was a clerk at Miller & Rhoads department store. He lived on New Kent Avenue just across the Lee Bridge, with his mother, Minnie, and his father, Ernest. As war loomed, Winburne enlisted in the Army. He was assigned to the 194th Glider Infantry Regiment, took his training in Tennessee, and shipped out to England in August 1944. On December 23, he was flown into France, and on Christmas Day his unit took over a sector of the defense of the Meuse River. Patton then gave orders to seize a small town in Belgium where the Germans had mounted a brutal resistance. Winburne's unit sustained heavy casualties, but it achieved its objective.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch printed a short article in late January 1945 that said Private Winburne died from wounds received in action. He was 30 years old. He was awarded a Purple Heart.

We toss around the word "hero" too often today. But by the more stringent standards of nearly 70 years ago, Winburne's unit unquestionably had its share of valiant men.

I like what author Thomas Heggen said in 1946 in his book "Mister Roberts." Heggen warns against using the word "hero" to describe all those who died during the war.

But, he says, "they are all equally dead. And you could say this affirmative thing of all: that in a war of terrifying consequences and overwhelming agony, they participated 100 percent. ... They are the chosen."

If Cecil Woodrow Winburne of Richmond did not die in a manner that history will long remember, we can nevertheless echo what Heggen said: Private Winburne was one of the chosen.

From a distance

The class of 1960 took a 50th reunion tour Saturday of the former Hermitage High School. It wasn't until Sunday morning that I realized that, in taking this photograph, I was once again replicating an image from my past. (Don Dale photo, 2010)

A memorable photo of the main hallway -- as empty of people as I'd ever seen it -- filled a full page in my senior yearbook at Hermitage High School.

It's a picture that sticks with me to this day. I dragged out my copy of the yearbook this morning, and it was just as I remembered. Seeing it again crystallized thoughts I had in 1960. The black-and-white picture was a demonstration of artistic perspective -- although I didn't have the words to express it in 1960. It appealed to me as a teenager on some gut level as a way of seeing the future -- or even the past. The distinct lines of the walls, the floor, the ceiling -- shot from slightly to one side of center -- seemed to converge in the distance, to meet at infinity.

The picture evoked so much for me in that summer between high school and college -- the isolation I often felt at that age, the predictable and reassuring form and space of familiar places, the carefree joy and absurd angst I left behind in that hallway, and the unknown and unknowable future.

I later summoned forth that empty-hallway image literally and metaphorically on a few occasions in my work in television. More important, it shows up regularly in my personal photography.

It took me a few years to discover that the graphic perspective demonstrated in that shot was a known quantity long before I noticed it. About 600 years ago, for example, Italian artist Filippo Brunelleschi, who later engineered the magnificent dome atop the Florence cathedral, demonstrated two-dimensional geometric perspective: all lines converge in a distant horizon.

Once again, on this Class of 1960 reunion weekend, the lasting power of that long-ago image was driven home -- in a picture I took without too much thought of a scene that was unfolding 50 years later in the same central hallway of Hermitage High School. It was only when I was reviewing the picture today that I realized what I had done. You can see the results above.

The Hermitage High School from which I graduated isn't Hermitage High anymore. It's now Moody Middle School with a $10 million renovation. But it hasn't changed all that much physically. Moody's principal came in on a crisp and sunny fall day to give us a 50th reunion tour.

The emotional impact of going back for the first time in so many years was remarkable. I recognized few of my classmates. But I found myself overwhelmed by specific memories of time and place -- classrooms where I began to study journalism and the English language, the auditorium where our senior play gave me a taste of public affirmation, the surroundings in which classmates and teachers were a scale for weighing how to handle both praise and criticism, and the place where the simple joy of having no serious responsibilities was tempered by a gnawing realization that those guileless days were finite.

About a third of our class gathered at the Jefferson Lakeside Country Club last night for dinner, reminiscing, and music from the 1950s. (Wisely, one of our classmates had prepared name tags with our yearbook pictures to speed recognition.) I enjoyed catching up and seeing how time has dealt with all of us. (I was also struck by what nice, decent people we have all become in the past five decades.)

But none of the weekend's fun activities had the impact of that tour of the old Hermitage High. I was swept back with an almost physical rush to my high school days, when life seemed to stretch endlessly in front of me, when I was painfully naïve and ceaselessly optimistic, when I was afraid that I might not seize each day and make something special of it, when the future was mine for the taking if I made the right choices. Life was, for just a moment, very young again. And all lines converged on a far distant horizon.

"The most popular movie comedy there ever was"

Tony Curtis (left) played Joe/Josephine and Jack Lemmon played Jerry/Daphne in Billy Wilder's comedy masterpiece "Some Like It Hot" in 1959.

You can have your "Tootsie," "La Cage Aux Folles" and "Victor/Victoria." But for me, the granddaddy of all cross-dressing movie comedies was 1959's ribald and raucous "Some Like It Hot."

Tony Curtis, who starred in the film with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, died yesterday. He was 85.

I interviewed Curtis six years ago for Style Weekly, just before he came to Richmond for a screening of "Some Like It Hot" at the Byrd Theater. We spoke for about a half hour by telephone. I was at my kitchen table, and Curtis was at his home in Las Vegas. He was charming and gracious, despite the fact that he must have answered questions like mine hundreds of times.

"It's still the most popular movie comedy there ever was," he told me.

In the film, set in 1929, Curtis and Lemmon play out-of-work musicians who accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and then hide from the Mob by disguising themselves as women and joining an all-girl band.

Curtis told me that the key to the success of the movie's cross-dressing element was that "there was no reason for us to be in drag except that our lives depended on it." Both he and Lemmon enjoyed playing in drag. "Jack loved it. He went to pieces over it. We weren't embarrassed or afraid of it. I didn't want to look like my character enjoyed it too much, but I was never worried about it really."

Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx and was the son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. He told me that director Billy Wilder, who left Berlin and came to Hollywood when Hitler rose to power, was tough on the set of "Some Like It Hot."

"Billy Wilder was an Oberstandartenfuhrer -- he was Austrian, you know -- and he kept a good strong hand on the project. But he allowed Jack and me to develop the characters."

In one of the film's funniest scenes, Curtis drops his Josephine character to pretend he is a wealthy businessman in order to woo Monroe's character.

"I decided that morning to use a Cary Grant accent for that scene" to give the character comic sophistication, Curtis told me. "Wilder let us work out our own roles to a great extent."

When we talked six years ago, Curtis, who served in the Navy during World War II before becoming a star, said he was enjoying living in Las Vegas and was spending a lot of time working on his paintings. He said his art was being shown in prestigious galleries. His plans at the time, he said, included a movie about the Holocaust. The film never materialized.

I was far from Tony Curtis's biggest fan. I enjoyed his movies more for the stories than for his personal appeal. But I was impressed by his intelligence, his charm and his sense of humor. He made our 2004 conversation easy and relaxed.

Curtis was the last of the principals from "Some Like It Hot" to die. Monroe died in died in 1962. Lemmon died in 2001. Wilder died in 2002.

Remembering D-Day

Pointe du Hoc is a 100-foot-high spit of land that juts into the ocean just west of Omaha Beach. It was an especially difficult point of attack for the U.S. Army Ranger Assault Group during Operation Overlord in World War II. Germany's Atlantic Wall defense at Pointe du Hoc included a battery of 155mm guns to protect the coastline. The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion was assigned to scale the cliff and destroy the strongpoint early on D-Day.

The Germans, however, moved the guns about a mile inland prior to the attack. The concrete bunkers were left intact and were considered by the Allies to be a major threat to the landings.

Few sites on the beaches and shores of the Normandy coast have been left as they were following the D-Day invasion. In 2004, our study group visited Pointe du Hoc. What we saw was sobering.

There are, however, other reminders visible today of the cost of Operation Overlord, as you'll see in this video.

"I was alone in France"

Vierville-sur-Mer on Omaha Beach has been built up considerably since the end of World War II. It is now a center for tourist exploration of the sites of the D-Day landings. (Don Dale photo, 2004)

Just east of Utah Beach was Omaha Beach. The Allied troops who landed there on D-Day faced a far more brutal German defense, and none of America's town, villages or cities paid a price so high as Bedford, Virginia.

The Bedford Boys, as they were later known, were part of the Army's 29th Infantry Division. There were 30 Bedford Boys in an assault force that numbered some 34,000 men.

The Bedford Boys were with the first infantrymen who approached Omaha Beach in the early hours of June 6, 1944. With German forces raining shells from the heights above, the beach quickly became a bloody abattoir.

German fire hit one landing craft as it approached the beach, sinking it with four of the Bedford Boys on board. They were quickly fished out of the water and rejoined the assault. Nineteen of the 30 died approaching the beach or immediately after they hit the sand, among them their company commander. In all, 22 of the 30 died on D-Day. Bedford lost more men per capita on that day than any other town in America. It was that fact that led Congress to support the creation of what is now the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

Years after the end of the war, one of the Bedford Boys described what happened when he landed on French soil. Elisha Ray Nance, the son of a tobacco farmer, told a Roanoke TV station: "I waded out of the water up on the beach. I could not see anybody in front of me. I looked behind, and there's nobody following me. I was alone in France."

Nance was the last survivor of the Bedford Boys. He died in 2009 at the age of 94.

Utah Beach, Normandy

(2004 photo by Don Dale)

Utah Beach could not have been more peaceful or serene on the September morning in 2004 when we arrived on the Normandy coast. The tide was out, leaving an immense expanse of smooth sand leading up to the tall green grass that waved in a chilly, light breeze.

A horse drawing a sulky and driver made his way slowly along the water's edge, picking his way around tidal pools. Not another soul was in sight.

Utah Beach was a far different place on the morning of June 6, 1944, as Operation Overlord -- the Allied invasion of Europe -- began. Utah was the name given by war planners to the right flank, the westernmost, of the Allied landing beaches.

At a few minutes after 6:30 a.m., the first wave of Allied landing craft lowered their ramps, and American soldiers waded about 100 yards to the beach. Led by Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., they were about 2,000 yards south of their intended landing zone. Undeterred, Gen. Roosevelt told his men "We'll start the war from here." (Gen. Roosevelt was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that morning.)

At the end of the day, the men who landed on Utah Beach counted themselves lucky. Some 23,250 troops landed safely, along with 1,700 vehicles. There were about 200 casualties. Unlike other D-Day beaches, Utah was not heavily defended, and a pre-invasion Allied bombardment had eliminated many fortified positions. American bombers flew low to provide air support. And, significantly, 13,000 glider and paratroop forces from the 101st and 82nd U.S. Airborne Divisions that had dropped inland hours before the coastal assault had been fighting their way toward the beach, clearing enemy positions and preventing any significant German counterattack.

Utah Beach was the first of the Allied invasion sites we visited that day. We walked quietly along the pristine beach. A few of us used film canisters to scoop up sand to take back home.

And we tried to imagine what it must have been like 60 years before.

"Nothing is the same"

(Photo by Don Dale, 2004)

The three veterans of the Normandy invasion in 1944 who accompanied us on a 60th anniversary tour made it somehow more authentic. All we had to do was look at any one of them and remember that they had been there, they had risked their lives, they had experienced the horrors.

As our bus approached the coast of France one morning, they agreed to pose for a picture. The experience seemed to make them slightly uncomfortable. They weren't seeking attention, and none of the three was comfortable with the word "hero."

But they couldn't escape the fact that they had been there 60 years before, under circumstances that were nothing like those of a group of tourists in 2004 who viewed D-Day as history and not as a personally terrifying, ever-present reality that still shaped 21st-century thoughts and feelings, and even yet provided a framework for viewing the world.

I am deliberately not using their names or hometowns: I neglected to seek their permission then, and I have since lost touch with them. If they are still alive, the youngest would be in his mid-80s.

They were three distinct personalities.

One rarely talked to anybody on the tour other than his wife. He would exchange pleasantries if prompted, but beyond that -- nothing.

Another was gregarious and hearty, full of the excitement of seeing Normandy again for the first time since he was a teenager. He socialized with anybody who wanted to strike up a conversation and enjoyed telling stories. He, his son and I enjoyed too many snifters of Calvados one evening as he told stories of 60 years ago.

The third D-Day veteran was one of the first people I met as we tour participants gathered in a hotel dining room in Paris on the night before our excursion began. His wife chattered away, excited about our upcoming visit to Omaha Beach, where her husband had landed. As is the case with many veterans who had horrific experiences, he never told her much about what had happened to him that day. For their anniversary, she had booked the tour. He, she said, had been reluctant to come along. She, however, had finally persuaded him, but it was clear that he didn't share her eagerness to see Normandy again. For him, the memories were best left in the past, undisturbed.

Several days later, when we arrived at Omaha Beach, I saw him at the end of a long pier stretching out into the English Channel, standing alone, apparently lost in thought. I wanted to walk out to the end of the pier myself to photograph the beach as it might have been seen by those wading ashore. But I was reluctant to disturb him. Instead, I busied myself for a while reading inscriptions on a nearby monument, chatting with others on the tour, and taking a photograph of the -- to me -- incongruous "Omaha" miniature-golf course just across the road.

Perhaps 20 minutes passed before I again looked out to the end of the pier, and he was still there, still alone. I made my way out to where he stood, apologizing for interrupting. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. He sighed deeply.

"I was trying to figure out where we landed. I can't find any landmarks. It's all been built up. Nothing is the same. I just don't know where I was."

And with that he walked back along the pier to the beach. I took a few photographs and followed him back to the shore as the waves lapped gently on the sand.

Pvt. John Steele's D-Day story

The tower of the church in the village of Sainte-Mère-Église stands today much as it has since Medieval times. (Don Dale photo)

If you've read the book or seen the movie "The Longest Day," you know the story behind what you see in the picture I took in Sainte-Mère-Église.

The church has stood in some form since the 1080s in a town that has seen its share of wars -- from the Hundred Years War (1337 to 1453) that pitted two royal houses against each other in their quest for the French throne to the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), primarily fought between French Catholics and Huguenot Protestants.

Allied and German forces also faced off in Sainte-Mère-Église on June 6, 1944 -- D-Day.

In the early hours of the invasion of Europe, just before 2 a.m., American paratroopers suffered heavy casualties as the Germans who were occupying the village began to realize what was happening. Burning buildings in Sainte-Mère-Église illuminated the sky, making easy targets of the invading paratroopers. Some landed directly on the fires. Many landed in trees or dangled from utility poles and were shot.

One man who made the jump over Sainte-Mère-Église featured prominently in author Cornelius Ryan's book "The Longest Day" and in the 1962 film that followed. U.S. Army Private John Steele's parachute snagged the tower of the town church. Wounded, Steele hung from the church for two hours, watching the fighting below and pretending to be dead -- until the Germans eventually took him prisoner. Though deafened by the church bells that had rung since the invasion began, Steele soon escaped and rejoined his division in time for an Allied attack on the village that captured 30 Germans and killed another 11.

When I was there for the 60th anniversary D-Day observance in 2004, the French had gone all out to welcome Americans back to Sainte-Mère-Église. In the intervening years, Ryan's book and the movie had made a folk hero out of John Steele. To memorialize Steele's story, the people who lived in the ancient French town had hung a parachute and an effigy from the church tower on which he was accidentally entangled.

Private Steele survived the war and continued to visit the town throughout his life. The townspeople made him an honorary citizen. A tavern named for Steele now stands near the town square . Steele died on May 16, 1969, in Fayetteville, N.C., just three weeks before the 25th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

But thanks to Ryan's book, the movie, and the people of Sainte-Mère-Église, his story lives on.

If only ...

Some historians disagree with the traditional view that Harold II is the figure struck in the eye with an arrow in this section of the Bayeux Tapestry.

If Harold Godwinson had not been struck in the eye with an arrow at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he might have remained on the throne as the king of England.

And if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their little butts every time they jumped. (My Appalachian grandfather, who was never at a loss for aphorisms, used to say that every time I'd begin a sentence with "if.")

I had heard about the Bayeux Tapestry since high-school history class. The tapestry, which is really an embroidery, is a 234-foot-long illustration of the events leading up to the epic Norman conquest of England. The really exciting part is toward the end and depicts the Battle of Hastings, which took place not far from the English Channel seacoast at Hastings, England, in 1066. It was there that the invading Norman French defeated the Anglo-Saxon English. The Anglo-Saxons were led by Harold Godwinson, who had recently been crowned as king of England, and the Normans were led by the man who was thenceforth known as William the Conqueror. Legend has it that Harold was killed by a Norman arrow that struck him in the eye.

There's a lot more to the story of the Bayeux Tapestry, which could be said to be an early example of pictorial journalism. Some date its origins to the 1070s, just a few years after the battle was fought, although the earliest written reference to it is from 1476.

The tapestry, which was made in England, was earlier housed in the cathedral at Bayeux, which is on the Normandy coast and was the first French city to be liberated after D-Day in World War II. Now it's on display in what used to be the Bayeux Seminary, a classical-style building that stands on the site of a medieval priory from the 13th century.

As our D-Day anniversary group entered the room housing the tapestry, which is dimly lit to preserve the ancient cloth and dyes, we were given hand-held audio devices that told the story of the tapestry picture-by-picture. As somebody who spent a career in a museum, I picked up right away on the fact that the audio devices also kept us moving right along in order to stay in synch with what we were hearing. Visitors flock to see the tapestry, and if somebody stops to study a panel, the line clumps up quickly. Yet I didn't sense that I was being rushed.

And as in museums everywhere now, the exit leads through a gift shop. It costs about $10 to see the tapestry, and for me it was money well spent. But the gift shop is where museums really make their budgets. And that's okay by me. As Harold might have said, it beats a sharp stick in the eye.