Radio Memories: Family Footsteps

We sometimes take a round-about route getting there, but it seems that many times we sons eventually end up following in the footsteps our parents hoped we would.

For this week’s Radio Memories post, our weekly remembrance of the days of radio drama, we pay tribute to mothers on Mother’s Day with one of radio’s most famous moms, Alice Aldrich, in one of radio’s first situation comedies: The Aldrich Family.

From 1939 to 1952, audiences heard Mrs. Aldrich lean out her kitchen window to give her classic opening cry, “Hen-ree, Henry Alll-drich!”, followed by her son's high-pitched reply, “Coming, mother..!”, a tagline so well-recognized in its time that it would still echo for decades to come, serving as a punchline in many contemporary Warner Brothers cartoons.

The actor portraying 16-year old Henry, “the typical American teenager”, for most of the series' run was Ezra Stone, the same actor who originally played the character on stage in the hit play that formed the basis for the hit radio series. He was a good fit for radio, since in reality he was a cigar-smoking heavy-set short guy who looked nothing like what the mind’s eye would imagine the scratchy-voiced teenager should look like.

When radio drama was eventually eclipsed by television's rising star, Ezra Stone went on to a long career as a director, working on various TV series until the early 1980s, when he assumed his father’s position in a non-profit educational foundation. His father had emigrated to the US from Lithuania in 1902, and became such an avid US history buff that he amassed a huge collection of items connected with early Americana. He started the David Library of the American Revolution, in Pennsylvania, in order to be able to share his passion for early American history with his fellow countrymen, and Ezra Stone took his late father’s place as president of this philanthropic Library, until his own untimely death in a car accident in 1994.

This week's particular episode has survived without an original airdate, but I suspect it is from the first summer season in 1939. We can hear actor Norman Toklar playing Willie Marshall, lover of fudge and peanuts (“that’s all I ever eat!”), a character that proved to be short-lived due to WWII. When star Ezra Stone went into the army, Tokar, who had been Stone’s understudy for the original play, took his place behind the mike as Henry Aldrich.

After the war Tokar followed Stone in career choice as well, becoming a director in his own right. After years of working on shows like Leave It To Beaver, his ability to direct children brought him to the attention of Walt Disney. Tokar’s final two decades were spent at the Disney studio, directing gentle comedies like The Happiest Millionaire, Candleshoe, and The Apple Dumpling Gang.

One fascinating bit of dialog occurs in the first minute of the program; Henry's exasperated father is lecturing him on responsibility:

"I used to get up at six o’clock every morning, and after helping my father milk the cows I walked three miles to school, sometimes through four feet of snow…”

This is the same lecture I used to get from my own dad, almost verbatim..! It leads us to ask, how many generations now have been complaining that the latest spoiled one doesn't know the meaning of hard times...?

And how many generations of mothers have responded by standing up for their sons, resolutely seeing in them the potential for good, no matter how off-track their present paths may be leading them...

Previous Radio Memories posts:
Tom Mix, Terry and the Pirates VE Day broadcasts from May 8 1945
You Are There: The Capture Of John Wilkes Booth
Fort Laramie: War Correspondent
CBS Radio Workshop: Son Of Man
Great Gildersleeve: Easter Rabbits
Dimension X: Time And Time Again
An American In England: Women Of Britain
Cavalcade Of America: Bob Hope Reports
The March Of Time: Feb 10 1938 broadcast
Hear It Now: Coming Home From The Korean War
Escape: Vanishing Lady
Rogers Of The Gazette: Rewinding The Town Clock

Sunday Mothers

Happy Mother's Day! Here are some stories for a sunny Sunday dedicated to moms everywhere, and especially to mine, the most wonderful of them all.

Renewal: Mentally and physically abused as a young girl, a former foster child now lives a life that would have been "unimaginable" to her previous 6-year old self.

Parham bounced around the city foster care system for a few years, her self-esteem shattered by her pain and misfortune. "I wanted to give up on life," she recalled.
When she was 10, she went to live with the woman who changed her life - the late Marion Smallwood of Brooklyn.

"She helped me get my life back together," Parham said.

Since taking in her first child eight years ago, Parham has fostered about 20 children and adopted two. ...

Parham starts her day at 5 a.m. to get the kids ready for school and often stays up late into the night, helping with homework.
She said the emotional scars of her youth motivate her selfless lifestyle.
"I want to help children who have been hurt just like me and let them know that life goes on," she said.
"You don't have to give up, you don't have to take your life. God will put someone in your life that will help you to make it through."

"Doer": The National Mother of the Year advises that "life’s problems and tragedies can clear the way for people to show what they are really made of: strength, compassion, resilience."

“There are so many things you can teach children by your actions,” she said.
She was, and still is, an inveterate “doer” and community activist, rising at 5 a.m. to pray and then tend the financial books of her family and her community organizations.
Her children, she said, “had the best of both worlds,” with the wide-open outdoors of the farm and close proximity to cultural activities in Columbia.
For a time in the 1960s, they wrote a family newspaper, the McGregor News, which recorded life in the busy household.
They cared for two elderly parents in their home, a lesson in compassion she believes particularly shaped the life of her youngest son, who was present for the final years of his paternal grandfather’s life.

Memory: A daughter cares for her aging mother, caught in the tightening grip of Alzheimer's. Her article, "What Mama Remembers", reminds me how much a mother can teach us about seeing the good alongside the bad, and how to live in hope:

Four short years later, I've watched her more recent memories fall away like fragile petals off a dying rose, dropping to the ground, one by one. But on Sunday mornings, my real mother comes out to play again. The rose is in full bloom, lovelier than ever, with an aroma of new life that must be envied by the angels. For as she sings, with the joyful abandon of a little child, every word of every song is a heartfelt offering to her King. She raises her hands, willing her Heavenly Father to pick her up, to carry her through one more week. And as she clutches her breast in worship and adoration, her hazel eyes once again sparkle like diamonds.
...
These days, Mom no longer carries a purse. She wouldn't know what to do with one. She doesn't remember what happened two minutes ago. Oh, but she remembers Jesus. She remembers he loves her. And she remembers she loves him.
That's a miracle I experience each week. And it makes my heart sing in the midst of my sorrow.

Miracles And Mother's Day

Born in the corner of hell that was the Auschwitz concentration camp in the last year of World War II, a daughter shares the remarkable story of a mother's choice to bring new life into a world filled with death. It's an inspiring example of the strength that can come through faith: the consolation that when you commit to doing the right thing, you will find a way to do it... because you must.

When 25-year old Vera Bein was shipped to Auschwitz in May 1944, she was almost two months pregnant.

From People Of The Book, we can read the stirring account of Bein's daughter, Angela Volgar, whose birth certificate testifies that she had been Born In Auschwitz:

"My mother felt so terrible for all the people who had lost their children. They lost their babies, and she brought one back," Polgar said.
...
On Dec. 21 Bein felt labour pains. She climbed to the top bunk in her barrack, and there, aided by two other inmates, gave birth in secret to a baby girl.

It's a miracle that she herself survived, let alone both her and her daughter:

At selection on the platform, most visibly pregnant women were sent to die; so were babies, children, the obviously sick and the elderly. Others were spared for use as slave labour or fodder for medical experimentation.

One of the only times Angela Volgar's mother Vera Bein ever discussed her memories of that terrifying time was in an interview she participated in with her teenage granddaughter for a school assignment in 1984. From that tape, Bein relates these details:

"I felt the pain and told the Block altester (the barrack's inmate supervisor) that I feel cramps and pain. She asked me to climb on the top of the bunk, and she came with me and she helped me to give birth to your mummy," Vera tells her granddaughter on the tape.

"She knew how to do it, because she was the daughter of a doctor, so she had an idea about cleanliness and how to help a woman in labor. She brought hot water and clean sheets. She cooked a pair of scissors in hot water to sterilize them" before cutting the umbilical cord, she said. "So everything went quite easily." The infant weighed one kilogram, a little over two pounds "Mummy was so weak and so tiny, she didn't cry. So nobody knew she was born."...

The only other infant survivor, according to Auschwitz museum records, was a Hungarian boy, Gyorgy Faludi, born the day of liberation with the help of a Russian doctor.
...

An important lesson we sons of mothers may learn from this story, and from the example of our own mothers, is how the act of making life meaningful is an ongoing one, a flame forever on the verge of having its light extinguished. For nourishment it requires a reaffirmation of commitment, a refueling of motivation, and a renewal of spirit on an ever-recurring basis.

To feed this reconnection we may wish we could readily find our inspiration with little effort, through existing resources lying physically at arm's reach; but as with Vera Bein's example we must learn to look within, so that even the most horrific tragedy may not impede our ability to see the miraculous treasure trove of inner strength waiting to be tapped into, and brought to light.

Witnessing new life arise from "nothing" seems miracle enough. Yet the miracle continues as the new life continues, as a mother's love for the child they gave birth to is itself forever reborn day after day, year after year, remaining undiminished even as other children may be added to a growing family. It grows, because it must.

The miracle of life, like the miracle of a mother's love, is one beyond physical limits. It is infinite.

And, through the blessing of memory, combined with the wisdom we may accumulate through advanced age and experience, with grateful eyes we learn to see that its light remains upon us, even beyond a mother's death, allowing the miracle to become eternal:

[Angela Polgar] remembers her mother for many things: the odds she overcame, the perseverance she embodied, the pain she concealed for so many years under a mask of optimism and a survivor's dream of renewal."

A heartfelt Happy Mother's Day to Mother's everywhere. God Bless you all, and thank you for teaching us what it means to have faith.


[Great thanks to Suzanne at Big Blue Wave for pointing the way to this amazing story.]

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to mom's everywhere, and a special Mother's Day greeting to my three mothers: the gentle, ever-helpful one I faintly remember from the days before I started going to school, the patient, persevering one who still found something to love despite all my teenage and college-inspired idiocies, and the current one, who continues to teach me through example and wise counsel, now passing on her gentleness and patience and wisdom to her grandchildren.

As we look back on the changing roles and evolving partnerships imbedded in the blessing that is the covenant of Family, we can marvel at, and hopefully appreciate, how some things may change, yet some things never seem to change. Whether it was learning to tie one's own shoes for oneself, passing a big test, getting our dream job, finding our dream girl to marry, each accomplishment would be greeted with an affirming smile, and the eternal phrase, "I knew you could do it."

It is forever humbling to realize that no matter how much we learn about ourselves and our growing potential, there remains one far more insightful than ourselves, about ourselves and the extent of that potential... who seems to forever be one step ahead of us, engaged in a challenging dance of contradictions: tugging and waiting, talking and listening, granting a stage to allow the puppet to pull their own strings, and becoming their own puppeteer; giving advice and later asking for it in return, letting the student earn the triumph of becoming a teacher in his turn, and in so doing, establishing a harmonious balance to the experience of being human, indeed the very experience of being alive.
And today is Her day.

Thanks for everything, mom.