Heifer LA 2018
(for ticket information click https://www.heifer.org/events/la/index.html . Kids 15 and under FREE!!)
Extending a boat load of thanks to my 45 donors who raised $20,746 in the month of May by participating in my 8th annual Just Stay Home fundraiser.
This money goes to support Heifer International's Vietnam Dairy Development project.
The ten door prize winners are: Mary E White, Holly Derheim, Laurie Ritz, Winnie Freedman, Larry Brown, Louise Owen, Renaissance Family Foundatuon, Mary GBenson, Shea Butler & Mary Alice Muellerleile!!
A cash award of $1,000 is provided by Heifer International Foundation. $800 is for the winner's project group or community and $200 is designated as a cash gift or in-kind gift to the family or individual who earned the award.
I loved being a part of this Award and found the nominees stories one of inspiration and strength.
I also worked on a number of other Heifer efforts, including staffing information booths at various community fairs, chairing an auction component of their Los Angeles 70th anniversary party, working their annual Beyond Hunger Event and participating in their Los Angeles Volunteers Group.
This year I expanded my personal fundraising efforts from April, May & June to January through December.
My goal was to raise $25,000 for our Armenian Women's Project. Today we are at $30,426! Thank you dear people!
I am currently being featured on the Heifer website. To read the story click the link below.
I am in the process of making a deeper commitment to the Heifer mission by joining the newly formed SoCal Heifer Core Group dedicated to establishing and funding a Heifer project for the next 5 years.
Our second meeting is in January where we will look at Heifer's work and needs in Vietnam having done the same study of Uruguay last month.
I will write you again in the New Year to tell you about my/our next phase of spreading the Heifer mission to end hunger and poverty while protection the earth.
My thanks and gratitude to each of you for your continued dedication and support of me and Heifer International.
August 9, 1923 -March 3, 2010
Raymond always said he met me when I arrived at Terry's trailer one MBT night wearing sorely patched overalls, a man's military coat and caring a plate of warm, marbleized brownies.
I have no memory of this specific encounter but the scenario is all too familiar, and I will forever bow to the master of memory. That man could recall the color of your nail polish and the height of heels at any given event.
I do remember his visits to Meadow Brook and how he told me I should look him up should I ever come to LA.
When I arrived in 1981 I did just that.
Raymond was always so interested in everything. His intense interest in me had me detailing the minutiae of my life for over 30 years. And with that incredible memory, he shared marvelous stories and recollections from his youth in Adrian, his military tour as “Raywan Liberwax”, his time in Paris, his NY salad days, his fights with his Mother, his travels, teaching, friends, relatives, theater, art, opera, everything...the minutiae of his life.
He offered advice, all the time. And although I saw that this characteristic sometimes rubbed people the wrong way, I loved it. I loved it because we were so different from each other. His point of view was rarely my point of view.
And let's face it, the man was highly intelligent. Chances are he knew a fact that I didn't although we sometimes tussled over words. Invariably it came down to choice of pronunciation!
Stubborn, negative, truculent, inquisitive, vain, shy, critical, hyper-sensitive, brilliant, fearful, gifted storyteller, worrisome, obsessive, indignant, supportive, defensive, penurious, atheist then agnostic, contradictory, appreciative, and the best audience, ever. I miss my complicated, difficult, fiercely loyal friend.
Around 1985 I invited him to spend the weekend with me at my brother's home in Mexico. I told him I would have to read a movie script and take some time to work on it but otherwise he'd have my full attention. His reply "Oh, I'll help you." I couldn't imagine how but help me he did.
That was the beginning of his being my drama coach.
His life long dedication to self improvement and psychoanalysis was the bedrock on which he drew his suggestions on how I might portray a certain character. He was a keen observer of the human condition. He loved analyzing body movements. We always tried to find out what the character was saying with her body that might inform or contradict what she was saying in her lines.
I attribute my long and successful career to Raymond. He loved helping me by applying his life knowledge to my work. When I got the part, he got the part. And when I didn't, he called them fools, pearls before swine, "Hollywood, Follywood" he'd say. I sometimes wonder if the last 25 years of working with me didn't bring him as much joy as his many years of teaching. He really loved our collaboration, although you can only imagine how often we argued over choices.
We also shared a love of movies and home improvement and finding a "deal." I very much miss all our outings around those interests. I also miss that he's not there to rave when I bring him something I baked or cooked. He loved those little culinary surprises. For years I did his mending until I think he finally loosened the purse strings when it came to replacing socks or bed linens or clothes. I can't be sure of that but he basically stopped asking me to sew for him.
Up until the very end he was asking about the minutiae, the block club meeting at my house and what I was serving. He thank me for every "ice cold" slurpy I brought him or the ads from the weekend paper. Oh how he loved to read those ads, every one!
I can not begin to express how much I miss him. And how much everything reminds me of him. I see an ad and think how I must tell him and how we must go to see what they have, and how much it costs. I go through Cahuenga Pass and picture him up in his living room pouring over the paper. I have a home improvement task and want his opinion on how to approach it.
Hours before he died I asked him if I could read some prayers over him, for me, I said. Of course, he said. As I read the prayers of the dying I cried, choking out the words ever so softly. He remained looking at me the whole time and held my hand to squeeze it. He comforted me as I said my good-bye.
I told him many times over the years that he simply could not die as my career would nose dive. In the end I told him it would all be fine, he would continue to inspire me as he did while with me.
There'll never be another Raymond. The man was one of a kind.
Delivered at Rarig Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 26, 2010
I came to the U of M because my ancestors settled in Minnesota and I like cold weather. I also heard they had a pretty good theater program that I figured would help me be the best high school drama teacher ever.
The reason I stayed at the U of M was Dr. Nolte.
I took his Intro to Theater class where I found it difficult to focus. His looks were very distracting.
Then out of the blue he asked me to attend a play with him. I was confused, baffled and intrigued. No undergrad prof has ever asked me to coffee, let alone meet for an evening.
When I arrived at Theater in the Round I joined Dr. Nolte and 3 other students. Aaaahhh. The classroom has extended hours.
From that evening on I knew I had been chosen, invited, to join a very special club. That night my world began to expand.
Dr. Nolte directed me in three plays during grad school. Most people remember that his friend Tennessee Williams came to see our production of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE . But what I remember most, was an evening of rehearsal. My Dad has recently died, I was absolutely exhausted, and my mind wasn’t in the room. Dr. Nolte came over to me and said “If you could be anywhere but here, where would you be?” “Doing laundry.” I said. “Go, do your laundry.” I actually burst into tears as I was so grateful and so touched and so relieved.
Dr. Nolte sat on my board. He subtlety paved the way for me to wrap up my studies a bit early so I could accept a generous contract at Meadow Brook Theater. I worried about being 6 hours short and he found Dr. Leyasmeyer to do a Pass/Fail independent study with me.
He encouraged me to accept a part in THE GOOD SOLDIER SCHWIEK with the Minnesota Opera Company even though my dance professor said if I dropped his course I could not return. I needed that course to graduate. Dr. Nolte said he’d handle it. And he did.
Off to Meadow Brook I went. It took three years and many more plays under his direction before I could finally call him by his first name. Leaving behind the Dr Nolte was a very hard habit to break. But Charles was always a contemporary, no mater what the age difference.
During my six years at Meadow Brook, our friendship took root and grew. So many wonderful evenings of trailer talk and laughter. I especially remember the probing conversations about What could be done with his hair? We solved that riddle temporarily when I presented him with my hand made Newsboy hat, so fashionable in the 70s.
I did seven plays with Charles. He was the kind of director who made you feel like you had all the answers already in you. That he was there just to coax them out. He celebrated every idea, enjoyed every moment, supported every choice. There was always excitement and energy in the rehearsal hall when Charles was directing.
Charles continued to expand my world by including me in so many adventures. He showed me the Amalfi Coast in Italy where I saw my first bougainvillea. We hunted for Edgar Allan Poe’s tombstone in a cemetery in Baltimore. We sat at an outside café in Rome surrounded by the cats of the Colosseum. In Berlin, it was the Pergammon Museum and the best drag show I’ve ever seen.
He came to my wedding, wearing a violet bow tie, a nod to our 1950s Sweetheart Dance reception. We joined him in DC for the opening of his VALENTINO at the Kennedy Center.
In remembering Charles I realized that the majority of my closest friends today, including my husband, Tom, are people I met because of him. He was most generous in sharing his friends and turning those friends into family.
I last saw Charles just 2 months before he was diagnosed. Tom and I came for a winter visit. Charles told me to bring my Oscar screeners as he had allot of movie going to catch up on. We got through 14 flicks in 5 days! Tearing them apart artistically and indulgently. He was also busy in talks with Bill Siemens about his EXIT STRATEGY. I admired that he got back on the boards in his 80s’s. Would someone want me for a play when I’m in my 80s? Charles has set the bar very high in so many ways.
Being “chosen” by Charles to be in his group changed my life forever. And although there are many of us, I think we each feel that we are his closest one, his special one, the one he valued the most. Charles made us, made me, feel that way. He always appreciated and celebrated the individual. He was fully engaged in life. He didn’t criticize or nudge, he led by example.
Although his gifts were many and unending, his greatest gift to me was Terry. In giving me Terry he doubled his gift of compassion, loyalty, wisdom, knowledge, support, joie de vivre, adventure, humor, sophistication and love.
Charles has been a part of my life for 40 years. I have been molded and remolded by his love. I am to a large extent, part of his work, his legacy. And I will always strive to honor his name.
To finish I would like to read something which you may well have heard, derived from a sermon of Canon Henry Scott Holland delivered in St Paul’s (London) on 15 May 1910 when the body of King Edward VII was lying in state at Westminster.
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.Everything remains as it was.
The old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that, we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no sorrow in your tone.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effort
Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting, when we meet again.