Pub Bad Dogs Have More Fun

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Bad Dogs Have

More Fun
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Bad Dogs Have

More Fun
Selected Writings
on Family, Animals, and Life
by John Grogan
for The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Copyright © 2007 by The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hardcover edition first published in 2007 by Vanguard Books

Paperback edition first published in 2008 by Vanguard Books
The articles in this book were originally written by

John Grogan and published in a beloved column in
The Philadelphia Inquirer, which owns the rights to them.
This book is being published through an arrangement with
The Philadelphia Inquirer. Mr. Grogan has not participated
in its publication and is not profiting from it.A percentage
of profits from the sale of this book will go to The Good
Dog Foundation (www.thegooddogfoundation.org).
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
For information and inquiries, address Vanguard Books,
387 Park Avenue South, 12th Floor, NYC, NY 10016,
or call (800) 343-4499.
Set in 12 point Bembo
Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available

from the Library of Congress.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-59315-468-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59315-490-5
Vanguard Press books are available at special discounts for

bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and
other organizations. For more information, please contact the
Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group,
2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103,
or call (800) 810-4145, extension 5000, or e-mail
[email protected].
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
PA RT O N E
Family
Deaf Girl Provides Lesson in Courage 3
Food for Thought on Child-Rearing 6
Phila. in Spring, and Free Parking! 9
A Refresher Course in Parenting 101 12
Girl, 4, Offers Hope by Way She Lived 15
A Friendship Born of Two Mothers’ Grief 18
A Wish: One More Magic Christmas 21
For Teen Mother, the Son Is Rising 24
Mother Keeps the Passion Alive 27
Getaway Becomes Dad-Son Mind Trip 30
Brain-Damaged, but Still a “Gift” 34
Speeder Dad Learns an Important Lesson 37
Introducing a Gift Named Danny 40
When a Child Goes Missing 43
“It’s Never the Same”:Too True 46
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vi Contents
Who’s a Father? A Guy Who’s There 49

Learn the Rhythm of Solitude 52
PA RT T WO
Animals
What’s Good for the Goose? Us 59
A Feline Air Traveler Lost in Philadelphia 62
Saying Farewell to a Faithful Pal 65
They’re Bad, and We Love ’Em Still 68
Shelter in Media Mocks Its Mission 71
Animal Lovers? No, Just Bullies 74
In the Next Ring, a Stepford Terrier 77
Marley & Me:The Whole Truth 80
Zoo Hysteria High as Elephant’s Eye 83
Puppy Mills Not Always Obvious 86
Celebrity & Me 89
A Trek to the North Pole, for His One True Friend 97
Alpha Bet 100
Skip the Gun,Try Four-Legged Security 103
PA RT T H R E E
Life
New Scribe: A Suburbanite Geek 109
Spreading Cheer the Interfaith Way 112
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Contents vii
Weather to Croon and Swoon Over 115

Boob Eyes Tube While Driving 118
Ditch the Speedo, and Other Fla.Tips 121
9/11 Altered Our View of Tragedy 124
Her Shop Corners Market on Dignity 127
Taking a Shot at Buying a Gun 130
Tired of Sales Calls? Try Defense Tactics 133
Burning the Flag as an Act of Love 136
In Healing, Reminder of Life’s Final Hurt 139
Phones Driving Us to Distraction 142
Hey, Ever Hear of an Ashtray? 145
Letting Go of the One That Got Away 148
Haunting Glimpse at a Stranger’s Life 151
Let No Chip Put This Vow Asunder 154
He Helps Iraq’s Children and America’s Cause 158
TV Weather Is a Flurry of Hysteria 161
Ordinary People Vowing to Marry 164
Sounds of Spring Roar in the Burbs 167
Earth Versus the Mall People 170
Tow-Truck Driver Became Her Angel 173
James Pratt: A Knight in a Lime-Green Tow Truck 176
Zero Tolerance Running Amok 179
It’s Unhealthy, but It Is Legal 182
The Nonsense Logic of Angry Smokers 185
A Shared Concern for a Jane Doe 188
A Friend Lost in Life, but Found in Death 191
Honked Off by Bumper Sticker 194
When Our Fears Lead to Prejudices 197
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viii Bad Dogs Have More Fun
A Terrorist? Moi? Twice Exonerated 200

Even Vicki Needs to Work on Image 203
When Music Died,Words Were Born 206
You’ve Got Spam: AOL’s Trial CDs 209
With This Ring, Show Some Class 212
A Helping Hand, a Helping of Grace 215
Summer and Smoke 218
One Violent Summer,Two Worlds Collided 222
Talkin’ ’Bout the Generations 225
Dogged Writers in the Big House 228
A Searing Lesson in Forgiveness 231
Flying’s Fearful New Annoyances 234
Mortality Check Is in the Mail 238
Just Say No to Black Friday 241
An Army of One Takes on Litter 244
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Family
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= January 24, 2003
Deaf Girl Provides

Lesson in Courage
Caitlin Reel was just six months old when her mother
knew something was wrong.
The baby did not respond to voices or sounds, not even
a loud clap of the hands. The doctors told Luann Reel not
to worry. Her baby was fine.
But the mother persisted, and when doctors finally tested
Caitlin’s hearing a year later, they confirmed her fears.
Caitlin was living in a world of silence. She was pro-
foundly deaf.
Flash forward ten years to last week at Shady Grove El-
ementary School in Ambler.The gymnasium was filled for
the winter concert.
Music teacher Ryan Dankanich stepped to the micro-
phone and told the audience they were about to hear “a
very special violinist.” The only clue he gave that this stu-
dent had made a particularly arduous journey here was
when he said, “Make sure you applaud very loudly.”
3
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4 Bad Dogs Have More Fun
And then out walked Caitlin, now 11, the deaf baby
who never learned to give up. She lifted her violin to her
chin and took a deep breath.
In the audience, Luann, the proud mom, stood poised
with a video camera. Her hands were shaking.
“I was really worried,” she said later from the family’s
home in Parkside in Delaware County. “She had crossed a
lot of barriers to get here. I didn’t want something really
unpleasant to come out of her violin.”
A Long, Hard Battle

What a long road it had been. From birth, her daughter had
been misunderstood, stared at, whispered about, incorrectly
labeled—even by a teacher—as mentally retarded.
Caitlin set out to prove them wrong. She learned sign
language and the rudiments of speech. She received a
cochlear implant, which allows her to hear some sound.
A major accomplishment came last fall when she ordered
a Big Mac and fries all on her own.
While her hearing brother, Jared, 9, walks two blocks to
school, Caitlin must ride 45 minutes or more each way.
The Perm Delco School District buses her to Shady
Grove Elementary, which has a program for hearing-
impaired students run by the Montgomery County Inter-
mediate Unit.
Caitlin saw hearing students arriving with musical in-
struments and said she wanted to play, too. And so, despite
all odds, she began violin lessons—the first deaf child at
the school to attempt them.
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Family 5
“It’s taken a tremendous amount of concentration and

perseverance on her part to get to this point,” said Melanie
Stefanatos, Caitlin’s hearing-support teacher.
And last week’s concert was her chance to show the
world.
The audience hushed. Caitlin drew the bow across the
strings. And out came . . . music. Slow, sweet, and steady—
and with rock-solid timing. She played “Mary Had a Lit-
tle Lamb” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
Her mother fought back tears.
“I know she’s not playing Tchaikovsky,” Luann Reel,
who is divorced, said. “But this is my deaf daughter—and
she’s playing the violin.
An Incredible Feat
For most children, the brief performance would be just
one of many Kodak moments on the road to adulthood.
For Caitlin, it was a Herculean leap. To play this handful
of notes, she had to overcome more obstacles than most
of us will face in a lifetime.
As Dankanich, the music teacher, put it: “It’s just an in-
credible feat she’s been able to accomplish.”
Caitlin probably will not go on to become a famous
musician. She doesn’t need to. The violin already has
taught her about courage and perseverance and faith.
A girl without hearing tackled an instrument that has
everything to do with hearing, and she didn’t give up. For
the determined, she learned, even the steepest mountains
can be scaled, one step at a time.
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Her performance over, Caitlin hurried off the stage.

Principal Beth Pearson told the 500-member audience
the truth about Caitlin—that she was one of the school’s
seven deaf children.
The audience roared its approval—loudly enough, in
fact, that Caitlin could hear the clapping through her
cochlear implant.
Backstage she signed to her mother: “I’m so happy.
They were clapping for me. They were clapping for me.”
= April 14, 2003
Food for Thought

on Child-Rearing
The book arrived unannounced in plain brown paper.

On the cover was a photograph of a little girl beneath
the title, Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of
Character in an Indulgent Age.
Hmmm. Was someone trying to tell me something?
A note inside solved the mystery. It was from an old
high school friend who had done well enough financially
to retire from his career as an investment adviser at the
ripe old age of 45.
The way my investments have been going, I’ll be working
until I’m 95. Other than that, we have a lot in common.
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Family 7
We each have two boys and a girl of similar ages. We

each live in nice suburbs with good schools where most
children grow up assuming a God-given right to a mini-
mum of 3,000 square feet of air-conditioned living space.
We each worry about what effect all this comfort will
have on our children. Nothing instills more dread in ei-
ther of us than the S word. Spoiled.
And so he sent me the book with the caveat, “not that
you need this.” Like heck I didn’t. My idea of tough love
is saying no three times before caving in.
The book, by Harvard psychology professor Dan Kind-
lon, has been around for a couple of years and covers the
obvious bases: the perils of focusing on career over children,
on wealth over relationships, on indulgence instead of con-
sequences.
Or as Kindlon put it, “Giving too much and expecting
too little.”
Breaking Bread
The book is filled with anecdotes of parents doing all the
wrong things to win their children’s love—including hir-
ing lawyers to help them avoid the consequences of their
bad actions. (Remember the student at Philadelphia’s
Chestnut Hill Academy last fall whose parents hired a
lawyer to beat a deserved expulsion for secretly videotap-
ing a female student?)
What makes this book different from the other parent-
ing claptrap out there is its solid research. One fact
jumped out at me—the quantifiable correlation between
family meals and children who are blessedly normal.
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Kindlon’s research and a number of other national stud-

ies reach the same conclusion: Families that eat most meals
together—and that means with Dad at the table—have
children who are at a significantly lower risk for drug
abuse, depression, promiscuity, and underachievement.
Easy enough. But I had to admit that work hours and
long commutes had lately conspired to keep me away
from the dinner table more times than not.
Last week, I found Kindlon at home in Boston during
break in a publicity tour for his new book, Tough Times,
Strong Children, and popped the question: Is it really that
simple?
In a word, yes. Sitting down as a family, even if it is micro-
waved pizza, is a way to reconnect, share, and bond, Kind-
lon said.It lends structure and predictability and balances the
negative influences of popular culture and wrong-track
friends.
Hey, and you get to eat! I’m in.
Fighting Back
“Basically, kids don’t get in trouble as much when they are
alone as when they are with friends,” he said. “So when
you allow the peer group to have more influence than the
family, you’re increasing your child’s risk. Those family
dinners are a time to remind the child: This is what we
believe in, this is our view of the world.”
But why dinner? Wouldn’t, say, family walks do the
same thing? Perhaps, but Kindlon suspects the food itself
has a healing effect.
“Feeding kids, nurturing them—it’s what parents do,”
the professor said. “There’s something almost primordial
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Family 9
about parents supplying food to their kids that cements

the bond.”
I also spoke with William Lessa, superintendent Hat-
boro-Horsham School District, who will speak tomorrow
night at the Parenting Center at Abington on the impor-
tance of fathers.
Lessa agrees family meals are key.
“In our family, dinner was pretty much sacred,” the fa-
ther of two said. “Kids clearly need food. They also need
guidance; they need structure; they need love.” All of
which can be provided around the dinner table.
So bring on the lasagna. Tonight, I swear, I’m wrapping
up early and sitting down where I belong—at dinner
with my family.
= April 21, 2003
Phila. in Spring, and Free Parking!
Some vacations just aren’t meant to be. Our long-antici-

pated family spring break was one of them.
The plan was to drive to Williamsburg,Virginia, for five
days of the kind of family togetherness you can achieve
only by cramming five people into a standard hotel room.
We would see the historic sites, eat in colonial taverns,
buy tacky souvenirs, and swim at the hotel’s indoor pool.
That was the plan.
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A friendly little stomach bug known as rotavirus had

other ideas. First it laid out my older son, then my daughter.
Then my wife. Hey, gang! How’s the vacation going so far?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention, rotavirus kills 600,000 children worldwide per year,
mostly from dehydration brought on by relentless vomiting
and diarrhea. In the United States, it lands 55,000 children
in the hospital every year to receive intravenous fluids.
Two of them were my kids. It wasn’t Busch Gardens,
but the hospital did hand out free Easter baskets.
We stayed in denial for as long as possible, canceling our
hotel reservations one night at a time.
By the weekend, with the patients resting comfortably
in the Grogan Ebola Ward, my one remaining healthy
child and I decided to salvage what little scrap of our de-
railed vacation we could. “Grab a jacket,” I said. “We’re
going to Philadelphia.”
Been There, Done That

“You’re not dragging me to the Liberty Bell again, are you?”
my nine-year-old asked suspiciously. I shook my head no.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
And so we were off—with apples, water bottles, and bi-
cycles.
By 10 a.m., we were parked off Kelly Drive. The day
was as flawless as April days get, the air crisp, the cherry
and pear trees in glorious bloom.
In Fairmount Park, we counted hawks and climbed
rocks. Along the Schuylkill, we hung our feet over the
water and waved to the rowing teams.
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Family 11
We pedaled north along the east bank of the river and

then south again. You think driving on Interstate 95 is a
death trap? Try the Kelly Drive bike path on a beautiful
spring Sunday.
The whole city, it seemed, was on this path, enjoying
the morning. We dodged speeding rollerbladers (an
alarming number of them skating—this is not a mis-
print—backwards), strolling couples, darting toddlers,
prancing dogs, and zipping cyclists.
Mostly, though, we dodged breathtakingly athletic,
beautifully chiseled runners of every hue, every one of
them with great teeth. To them I’d just like to say thanks
for making me feel only slightly older than King Tut.
Eventually, we made our way to the Philadelphia Mu-
seum of Art, where a band was playing near the front steps.
“C’mon,” I said, “Let’s run up the stairs, just like in the
movie.”
“Uh, what movie?”
Oy. Kids nowadays—no culture.
Up and Away
We ran up, anyway, me singing the Rocky theme song
(now there’s something no one’s ever thought to try be-
fore), my son singing the “I’ve Got the Doofus Dad Hu-
miliation Blues.”
From the top, we gazed out over the urban skyline, this
City of Brotherly Love newly dear to our hearts. I yelled
the first thing that came to mind: “Hey! Come back with
our bikes!”
Just kidding. The bikes, unchained and unattended, sur-
vived untouched.
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We sat on the sidewalk and ate semi-petrified hot dogs

that I’m pretty sure had been spinning on the rotisserie
since before the Rizzo administration.
“Dad, these are the best hot dogs I’ve ever had!” the kid
raved.
We stuck our heads inside dinosaur jaws at the
Academy of Natural Sciences, marveled at the bathroom
habits of the horses waiting to give carriage rides in the
historic district, and traipsed through the Betsy Ross
house, where it was all Dad could do not to crawl into the
Widow Lithgow’s bed and catch a few winks.
Best of all, we managed to nab free parking right on
Arch Street. “Son,” I said solemnly, “I want you to stop
and reflect on this moment. It will likely never be re-
peated in your lifetime.”
And so went our Philadelphia mini vacation. We came;
we ate bad food; we avoided personal collisions—and no
one got sick. All in all, not a bad way to spend a lovely
spring day.
= June 10, 2003
A Refresher Course in Parenting 101
Good morning, class, and welcome to Parenting 101.

The purpose of this refresher course is to reinforce
some of the basic skills we parents need to raise stable
children who will grow up to be something other than
residents of one of our fine local penitentiaries.
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Family 13
I apologize in advance if some of these points seem

frightfully obvious. But a spate of parenting no-nos in re-
cent months has shown that, when it comes to rearing
children, it’s best not to take anything for granted.
For instance, when in doubt, do not—I repeat, do
not—punch out your son’s Little League coach. I know
all the other parents are doing it, but just keep telling
yourself, “I am the role model. I am the role model.”
When your 14-year-old has her classmates over for a
sleepover, the proper question is not: “Do you kids take
your margaritas with salt?”
Today’s course uses actual news events from around our
region to illustrate helpful parenting dos and don’ts. So
let’s get started.
Real news items: A 29-year-old woman was found
guilty of leaving her 4-month-old son in the car while
she shopped at a J.C. Penney store in Northeast Philadel-
phia. In Evesham, a 31-year-old woman was charged with
leaving her two young children in a car for more than an
hour while she was at a job interview.
Parenting 101 tip: Until Ford releases the Nannygate
SUV, we suggest you take advantage of a little-known ser-
vice available to parents in which trained individuals will
actually come to your house and watch your children for
a modest hourly fee. It’s called baby-sitting.
Real news item: A father and his 19-year-old son were
arrested in West Chester after a chase and charged with a
string of home burglaries.
Parenting 101 tip: When we stressed the need for fa-
ther-son bonding opportunities, we more had in mind
touch football and weekend fishing trips.
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Real news items: A Southwest Philadelphia woman was

charged with placing duct tape over her 7-month-old son’s
mouth because he was crying too much. In a separate case,
a Bucks County woman was charged with wrapping two
foster children and a biological child in duct tape, and her
estranged husband was charged with photographing the
bound children.
Parenting 101 tip: Yes, it’s true that children need cer-
tain constraints in their lives. And it’s true that duct tape
has many useful purposes around the house. But let’s keep
those two thoughts separate.
Real news items: Police said a 7-year-old girl steered
the family auto down the Blue Route last year at speeds
ranging from 5 to 50 mph, while her drunken mother
worked the brake and gas pedals.
Parenting 101 tip: When we said “designated driver,”
we were thinking of someone old enough to see over the
dashboard. Ever hear of a taxi, lady?
Real news item: Ebony Smith, 10, of Philadelphia, was
released from the hospital last month after she was shot in
the head in February following a snowball fight. Arrested
in the drive-by shooting was the mother of another girl
who was hit by a snowball, and the woman’s fiancé.
Parenting 101 tip: I’m not sure what’s scarier, the right
to bear arms or the right to bear children. Put them to-
gether and you have a good argument for licensing both.
Real news item: A Fort Washington woman is awaiting
trial on charges that she embezzled $65,000 from the
Horsham Hawks during her tenure as the youth football
league’s treasurer. Her husband was convicted of slugging
Family 15
another parent, the Hawks’ president, in the nose during a

confrontation about the missing money.
Parenting 101 tip: While we laud the spirit of volun-
teerism, in this case, we must point out that draining the
college fund is a more efficient way of stealing from your
children. And, dads, Mike Tyson is probably not the best
model for resolving disputes.
Finally, we here at Parenting 101 have received several
reports of parents buying alcohol, condoms, and motel
rooms for their underage children.
(All in good fun, right?)
Mom and Dad, we know you want to be the coolest
parents in the PTA. But sometimes a grown-up just has to
say no. Bummer, huh?
Now get out there and give it a try.
Class dismissed.
= August 29, 2003
Girl, 4, Offers Hope

by Way She Lived
At Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Doylestown

yesterday, a small white casket sat at the edge of the altar,
its lid opened to show the frail body of a young fighter.
Her name was Katie Ann Duffin, and she would have
turned 5 this week. Instead, about 300 people gathered on
a lovely summer’s day to say goodbye to this little girl
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who faced down cancer with a bravery and optimism sel-

dom seen in anyone of any age.
All morning long, the people came. They filed past in a
long, slow procession, each one greeted with a hug from
Katie’s parents, Paul and Terry Duffin of Doylestown.
Many who came had known the girl. Others had never
met her but felt they somehow knew her, too.
It was because of her Web site, www.katieduffin.com,
which faithfully chronicled in weekly journal entries her
long battle against what she called the blob growing in-
side her.
The Web site was written in her voice by her uncle,
Hugh Saunders, to capture her fighting spirit. It started as
a way to keep friends abreast of her medical progress, but
it grew into something bigger. From across the country,
countless strangers logged on to follow her struggle to
survive, many of them leaving her messages of support in
her online guest book.
Her story begins six months after her birth on August 23,
1998, when doctors discovered a golf-ball-size malignancy
beneath her left shoulder. They operated twice and sub-
jected her to six rounds of chemotherapy. As Katie’s journal
states,“All was great until four years later, almost to the day.”
In March, the blob returned. And this time it had long
tentacles that reached up along her spine. And that’s
where Katie’s weekly entries begin:
March 11: “The doctors told us that the golf-ball thing
is back again near my shoulder and neck. . . . They de-
cided that they would have two operations, one from the
back and one from the front.”
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Family 17
March 22:“I am feeling OK and even asked my mom if

I could go to school yesterday. It took a little convincing
but she let me go. I had a great time. I am not going to let
this thing slow me down.”
April 6: “Tomorrow is the big day. The doctors will be
giving me that ‘funny juice’ again to make me go to sleep
so they can go in and get the rest of the golf ball out of
my shoulder.”
April 7:“Great news! . . . Dr. Greg just came in and told
my mom and dad that the [spinal] fluid is clear—no bad
cells in my spine. I think this time mom and dad were cry-
ing because they were happy, and that makes me happy.”
And so the entries go, swaying from the dire to the
mundane, through surgeries and radiation treatments and
chemotherapy and nausea and morphine drips. And al-
ways there is Katie’s voice, the voice of a little fighter un-
willing to throw in the towel.
May 23: “I told [the doctor] he is not dealing with the
ordinary patient. I am Katie Duffin, a mean lean fighting
machine.”
But by early July, Katie was unable to keep food down
and was put on a feeding tube. She was dogged by con-
stant headaches. And in mid-July came very bad news:
The malignancy had spread to her brain. “OK, guys, now
is the time to really rally the troops and give me as many
prayers as you can muster,” one entry states.
July 21, the final entry written in her voice: “I am defi-
nitely hanging in there.”
The last entry, signed by her parents and older brother,
Paul Jr., was logged August 12: “Hello everyone. This is
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the update that we knew was coming but we never

wanted to write. Today at 9:30 p.m., Katie finally allowed
the angel to take her hand and show her the way to
heaven.”
At yesterday’s Funeral Mass, the Rev. Charles Hagan
noted that this remarkable girl’s short life “touched so
many thousands of people,” many of them through her
Web site. And to each she offered a message.
“She never, ever, ever gave up hope,” the priest said.
“This is her legacy to us.”
= September 19, 2003
A Friendship Born
of Two Mothers’ Grief
Dateline: SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania.

As I stood last week overlooking the hillside near this
tiny western Pennsylvania farm town where Flight 93
crashed two years ago, I was drawn to a sun-bleached
photograph.
It hung from one of the 40 painted angels planted here
to memorialize each of the passengers and crew who died
that day. The photo shows an attractive woman with lus-
trous dark hair, bright eyes, and a carefree smile.
Her name was Honor Elizabeth Wainio. She was 27, a
rising regional manager for Discovery Channel stores in
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Family 19
Watchung, New Jersey. And she had been on her way to a

business meeting in San Francisco when her life ended in
this field at 10:06 a.m. on September 11, 2001.
As I contemplated this young life cut short, an older
woman stepped up and placed a red rose beneath the
photo. She stood there a long time.
When the woman turned to leave, I asked, “Did you
know her?”
She thought for a moment, then said:“Not exactly. Not
while she was alive.”
And thus began one of the countless untold stories that
continue to rise from the ashes of the 9/11 tragedy.
It is the story of two mothers from very different
worlds—one a rural Christian farm wife, the other an ur-
ban Jewish professional—finding solace and dear friend-
ship in shared grief.
A Snowstorm and Death

The woman with the rose, I learned, is Shirley Hillegass, a
grandmother who lives with her husband, Robert, on 245
verdant acres of corn and hay about three miles from the
crash site.
During a treacherous snowstorm in 1994, her daughter,
Annette, 32, was killed in a car crash.
Hillegass thought she had boxed up her sorrow as
much as a mother could. “You don’t ever get over the
loss,” she said.“You just learn to accept the fact that this is
the way it is; this is the way it will always be.”
Then came the terrorist attacks, and she found the
wound wide open again. One victim in particular
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touched her. It was Elizabeth Wainio, the young woman

in the photograph.
She seemed like Annette in so many ways. Both were
vivacious, ambitious, so full of life.
Six months after the attack, at a memorial service in
Shanksville for which virtually the whole town turned
out, Hillegass, as chance would have it, found herself sit-
ting behind Wainio’s stepmother, Esther Heymann, a one-
time banker from Baltimore.
“I can’t explain it. I’m normally not someone to speak
to a stranger,” Hillegass said.“I just did what my heart told
me I had to do. I don’t know if it was an angel or Annette
saying, ‘Mom, you need to reach out to that woman.’”
So, after the service, she summoned her nerve and in-
troduced herself.
“I Love You, Mom”

Heymann, who married Wainio’s father when the girl was
5 and loved her as her own, was who Wainio called by
Airfone in the minutes before the doomed plane crashed.
She was the one to hear her stepdaughter’s final words:
“They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to
go. I love you, Mom. Good-bye.”
In the months that followed, those words hung like un-
bearable weights around Heymann’s neck. Into that all-
consuming grief stepped another mother, a self-described
“country hick,” who understood it first-hand.
Heymann said she was leery of strangers trying to be-
friend her after the crash. But Hillegass was somehow dif-
ferent.“I had an instinct about this woman’s genuineness,”
she said. “I just knew she was very special.”
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Family 21
The friendship began cautiously with a few respectful

words followed by letters and phone calls. Over the
months, the women have bonded like sisters. A week ago
today, the day after the second anniversary of that awful
morning, they met at Hillegass’s farmhouse near the crash
site to hug, exchange small gifts, and simply talk.
“I don’t know if I literally believe in angels, but I know
there are a lot of people walking around on earth who are
angels,” Heymann said. “And Shirley is one of them.”
For her part, Hillegass said the healing has been mutual.
“She’s helped me as much as I’ve helped her,” she said.
Two daughters. Two deaths. Two mothers bonded in
grief. And, slowly, together, a dawning realization that for
the living, life goes on.
= December 23, 2003
A Wish
One More Magic Christmas
A few days ago as I hung holiday decorations, my daugh-

ter asked, “Daddy, is Santa really real?”
Her two older brothers had been filling her head with
doubts again. “Do you believe he’s real?” I asked, stalling.
She nodded vigorously, blonde bangs bouncing up and
down.
“Then he must be real,” I said. And that reassurance,
lame as it was, seemed to suffice. She informed me she
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would be putting out four cookies this year instead of the

customary three because Santa had emptied the plate last
Christmas. Then she skipped happily off to write him a
letter.
Colleen is 6, in first grade, our youngest child—and
somehow no longer a baby. If I had any say in the matter,
I’d still be feeding her warm bottles and counting my suc-
cess by the velocity of her burps.
But in this I have no say.
She is moving from the nest like an ocean liner moves
from the dock, slowly but with unstoppable momentum.
Tug on the mooring lines all you want; it will do no
good. On the horizon, adulthood beckons.
Her older brothers, 11 and 10, have moved through the
same stages before her. But because she is our last, the pas-
sage is all the more bittersweet. All I can say is thank god
for video cameras.
With each hurdle she leaps, another chapter in that
book called childhood closes forever. Like any good book,
I don’t want it to end.
Last Stop: Goodwill

As she reaches each benchmark—first step, first word, first
school day—my wife and I at once cheer and sigh. We
capture the moment on tape and try to ignore those little
stabbing pangs of loss.
Last spring, Colleen decided she was done with training
wheels. I removed them from her bike and spent the
weekend running up and down our street beside her,
holding her by the seat as she fought for balance. Out of
sheer exhaustion, I finally let go—and was amazed, and
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Family 23
just a little sad, to see her ride down the block without
me, not once looking back.
When her big brothers mastered bicycles, the training
wheels went to the next in line. But this time they went
to Goodwill. That era of our lives is over.
It was the same for the stroller and the crib and the
booster seat, all rendered obsolete seemingly overnight,
reminders of how quickly babies grow to children and
children grow to teenagers and teenagers leave home.
The day she learned to say “John” instead of “Wahn”
nearly broke my heart.
I try not to be too sentimental about these things.
Spring turns to summer, kids grow up. Believe me, the
day I changed my final diaper will go down as one of the
unequivocally happiest of my life. What can I say? Some
stages are easier to let go of than others.You can imagine
how broken up I am that no one screams to watch Bar-
ney anymore.
I’m counting the years until I can get one of those “I’m
spending my kids’ inheritance” bumper stickers.
The Art of Letting Go

And yet.
Parents are meant to prepare their children for the out-
side world, to make them strong and independent. So
why am I feeling left out because no one needs me to tie
shoes anymore?
I mentioned this to a woman friend of mine, and she
asked, “So men have those feelings, too?” Yeah, I guess
sometimes we do, at least when there’s nothing good on
ESPN.
1593154684_1.qxd 7/30/07 9:29 AM Page 24
My friend Joe Schwerdt, a father of three boys, con-

fessed to feeling the same tug. His youngest, Andrew, is
the family’s last to play Little League, and father and son
have been practicing. But each toss of the ball carries a re-
minder of what soon will pass. “He’s my last boy and I’m
hanging onto his childhood as long as I can,” my friend
wrote me. “I fear on the day he turns 13 he’ll suddenly
discover the generation gap, put his baseball glove away,
and put on a pair of headphones.”
This holiday I want just one gift. And that is for my
youngest to squeeze a final magic Christmas out of her
childhood—to have one more year of wonderment, of
believing in jolly elves and prancing reindeer with no
other purpose in life but to spread generosity and joy.
Come Christmas morning, I will be up before dawn,
video camera in hand, to capture my daughter’s face as she
races to check the plate of cookies. I’m betting Santa will
have eaten every last one.
= March 1, 2004
For Teen Mother,

the Son Is Rising
In her low-slung jeans and powder-blue sneakers, Kate

Gowen could be any high school senior—except for one
small detail. On her lap sits a 7-month-old baby boy.
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Family 25
His name is Donovan, named after the quarterback.

The one-time North Penn High School student became
pregnant with him shortly after she turned 16. And now,
not quite a year and a half later, she realizes her carefree—
and, she admits, wild—childhood is officially behind her.
Yet she tells you this baby in all likelihood saved her
life, literally—from jail, a drug overdose, or worse. And
given her self-destructive path before his birth, you can
believe it.
Sitting with Donovan in the small apartment in Hat-
field that she shares with her mother, Kate admits she was
about as difficult as teenagers come. Starting at age 14, she
tried just about everything.
She disappeared overnight, stole her mother’s car, ran
away from home, skipped school for weeks at a time, ex-
perimented with alcohol and drugs, and became sexually
active.
“I was a total pothead,” she says. “I fell in with a group
of kids. We had this ‘the world is against us’ mentality.”
She threatened suicide several times and ended up in
the mental-health system. “I never wanted to die,” she
now says, “but it was a real attention grabber.”
Her mother, a single parent working as a waitress and
dealing with her own personal problems, was unable to
control the girl. “She was very angry,” Laura Gowen
said.
By age 15, Kate found herself in an alternative school
for troubled teens. She lasted two months before pulling a
knife on a student, getting expelled and hauled into
Montgomery County juvenile court. A judge placed her
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on home probation. Within hours she had run away

again, and this time the judge locked her up for 22 days.
Kate, a thin girl with long dark hair and pretty eyes, is
not sure why she was so angry. She had never known her
father, but her childhood in the suburbs was otherwise
fully ordinary.
“I just had this image of myself as this hardened, tough
girl,” she says.
On Halloween 2002, a month after her 16th birthday,
she learned she was pregnant. After three anguished
weeks, with nearly everyone she knew urging her to have
an abortion, Kate made her decision.
“I just couldn’t live with terminating this pregnancy,”
she said. “And I couldn’t see myself carrying him for nine
months and then just giving him up. So I decided to keep
him.”
The pregnancy landed her at a place that she says pro-
foundly changed her life for the better—the Lakeside
Pregnancy and Parenting Center, a nonprofit, private
school for teenage mothers in Fort Washington.
It was small, just 30 students, and the counselors and
teachers worked intensely with her. They showered her
with attention, teaching life skills, driving her to doctor’s
appointments, and pushing her academically.
Mostly, they just believed in her.
“Kate is very bright,” Nancy Kane, the school’s direc-
tor, told me. “As far as IQ, she is a gifted kid.”
Since Donovan’s birth in July, Kate has made a “huge
turnaround,” Kane said, and thrown herself into parenting
and schoolwork. Once considered at high risk for drop-
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Family 27
ping out, she is back on track to graduate with her North

Penn classmates in June.
Kate says she has been sober since the day she learned
she was pregnant, and she is proud that she delivered a
healthy, 9-pound baby.
She says she avoids her old crowd and finds friendship
now in the other young moms she has met. After gradua-
tion, she plans to pursue nursing.
Life won’t be easy, but it has a new purpose. And a joy,
as well.
“My son is the driving force in my life,” she says. “He’s
everything. He’s helped me turn from a melodramatic
teenager headed to a grave or a jail cell into someone
worth respecting.”
She lifts him over her head and adds:“I owe everything
to him, and I’m working my hardest to give him the
wonderful life he deserves.”
= April 12, 2004
Mother Keeps the Passion Alive
Christine Detwiler, teacher and mother, stands before a

group of students at North Penn High School near Lans-
dale and tries to explain why she is putting up $100 of
her own money as a prize for an essay contest.
You see, she tells them, “My son, Ben, was once a stu-
dent here, too.” And then she adds in a calm, even voice
1593154684_1.qxd 7/23/07 10:08 AM Page 28
she has had 13 years to practice: “He died when he was a

junior.”
It was the night of October 26, 1991, and Ben, 16, and
a friend were walking home along Route 309 from the
Montgomery Mall in North Wales, where Ben worked
baking cinnamon rolls.
The distance was less than a mile, and the boys were
walking in the grass, neither of which made any differ-
ence in the end. A drunken driver veered off the road,
killing Ben instantly. She was convicted and sentenced to
three years in prison.
Life is filled with little ironies. And one that will always
haunt Ben’s mother is the fact that she would not permit
Ben to drive until he was 18, figuring she could keep him
safe that way.
Detwiler, an elementary school teacher in the North
Penn district, mentions none of this to the students before
her. Rather, she tells them what kind of a boy her son
was—an idealist, an activist, a thinker, and a talker who
loved to debate issues.
“He was also a pretty good writer,” she tells the students.
A Better World
And that is why, shortly after his death, seeking some pos-
itive outlet in which to pour her bottomless grief, she es-
tablished the Ben Detwiler Writing Contest for juniors at
the school. Ben once wrote that his goal was to make the
world a better place, and that is the theme for the contest,
now in its 13th year.
She continues to sponsor the event, Detwiler later told
me, as a way of keeping her son’s memory alive—a way of
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Family 29
holding on to him for just a little longer. “I want young

people to do the active thinking about their world that
Ben can no longer do,” she said.
Ben, she tells you, was the kind of kid who navigated
adolescence outside the mainstream. He was small for his
age and not athletic, and by the time he reached high
school he was cultivating a punk-rock appearance, dyeing
his hair black and wearing it in a spiked Mohawk cut. He
pierced his nose, wore black leather, and played guitar in a
rock band.
Because of his look, many students and parents assumed
he was trouble best avoided. Being ostracized by some
taught him early lessons about prejudice and stereotypes.
It also led him into an unexpected friendship with an un-
likely ally, the school’s principal, Juan Baughn, an African
American who himself knew the sting of being outside
the majority. The two spent many hours after school talk-
ing and debating—and, Baughn points out, coming to re-
spect each other.
A Shared Pain
“It hurt him, the disapproval,” said Baughn, who is now
an assistant schools superintendent in Washington, DC.“It
just blew him away that people were not more receptive
to who he was inside instead of just what he looked like.
At one point, Ben said to me, ‘Dr. Baughn, you know
what it’s like?’ And I did, and I do.”
The former principal was happy to hear Ben’s mother
has kept the essay contest going.“He was a little guy with
a great big heart,” Baughn said. “He wanted to save the
world. I kept talking to him about saving his piece of it.”
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And so again this year, a group of North Penn juniors

who were just toddlers when Ben died will try their hand
at capturing that same passion.
They will write about war and poverty and, perhaps,
about accepting those who don’t look like they do.
The winner will take home a plaque and a check. And
the mother, if she is lucky, might catch a glimpse of her son
in their words.
His classmates are adults now, with careers and mar-
riages and kids of their own. They have moved on, and so
has Ben’s mother, as best she can.
But a part of her remains frozen in the fall of her son’s
junior year. That’s how she sees him still, a vulnerable teen
with a great big heart, searching for his place in this
world.
“Right now he would be 29,” she says in that voice of
hers, the calluses of time cushioning a mother’s grief.
“I have a son who will always be 16.”
= July 13, 2004
Getaway Becomes Dad-Son Mind Trip
A 12-year-old mind is a strange and beautiful thing to

behold.
And when I drove into the dawn with my son recently
for a four-day backpacking trip in the Allegheny National
Forest, I got to behold more than I would wish on any
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Family 31
parent. There was no mom, no little brother or sister.

Only the two of us.
The kid just would not shut up.
To help pass the six-hour drive, I had brought along a
large supply of favorite tunes—my music, not his, of
course. But he kept turning down the volume so he could
chat my ear off.
“You just turned down Jimi Hendrix,” I admonished.
“Don’t you know it’s a sin to turn down Jimi Hendrix?”
“Dad, you always play it too loud.”
“That’s not possible,” I retorted.
He eased the volume down. There were questions ga-
lore that needed answering.
“Hey, Dad, if Mars veered off course and crashed into
Earth, what do you think would happen?”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“But what if it wasn’t? Then what?”
“I have no idea,” I said,“but I’m pretty sure you’d use it
as an excuse to get out of doing homework.”
Next question: “If you had to eat poison, what kind
would you pick?”
“I would never eat poison—and neither should you.”
“But let’s just say you had to.”
I refused to answer on the grounds that no father
should be endorsing toxic substances. But he wouldn’t re-
lent. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “Hemlock?” I figured if
it worked for Socrates, it worked for me.
Weird and Evil

“What’s the weirdest thing ever?”
“You?”
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“That’s not funny.” Two-second pause, and then:

“Who’s the most evil person in all of history?”
“Easy,” I said.
“And it can’t be Hitler.”
“I was going to say Hitler.”
“Everyone says Hitler. That’s too easy. Someone other
than Hitler.”
And so went the long drive. I was tempted to duct-tape
the boy’s mouth shut—a disciplinary measure for which
there is ample precedent here in our region. And I just
might have tried it, except for this one thing: He’s 12 and
still thinks his father holds the answers to all mysteries.
Next year he will be 13, officially a teenager, and things no
doubt will be different.
By 13, he’ll consider me somewhere between mold
spores and pond scum on the spectrum of valued informa-
tion sources. I thought I’d better enjoy the babble while I
could. He’s talking now, I told myself, let him. Soon enough
he just might go silent, and then I’d be kicking myself.
So I rolled down the windows to breathe in the coun-
try smells of mowed hay and cow manure and let the in-
quisition continue.
His mind was a preadolescent cauldron of popping,
snapping, crackling synapses, and it jumped all over as he
chased his curiosity.
What was the worst disaster? The biggest crime? Coolest
invention?
Politics and Presidents

“Who’s your favorite Republican?”
“Ever?”
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Family 33
“Ever.”
“Abraham Lincoln.”
“Favorite Democrat?” he asked.
“Harry Truman.”
“Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?”
“Frank Zappa.”
“Who’s he?”
“Oy. Kids nowadays.”
“Who else who’s famous?”
“I interviewed the first George Bush once,” I said.
“Really? Was he nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Were you nervous?” he asked.
“Just a little.”
“Too cool,” he said.
The questions and answers continued through our hike
deep into the woods, through dinner on a ledge over-
looking a fast-moving brook, and through the fire’s dying
embers.
I was beat, but I dared not stop him, knowing in a year,
or perhaps even a month, he would be cringing at his fa-
ther’s glory-days’ tales of close encounters with dead rock
stars and past presidents. For now he was all ears, and I
was too cool. I’d take it.
As the moon rose over the trees, I finally managed to
get in a question of my own. “So, kiddo,” I asked. “What
do you say we go to sleep now?”
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= March 7, 2005
Brain-Damaged but Still a “Gift”
Her name is Millie.

She came into this world 55 years ago, a healthy,
chubby baby with a shock of dark hair. Her family loved
her then, and despite everything—or perhaps because of
it—loves her now even more.
Millie Reynolds has never spoken a word or returned a
smile. Her first tentative baby steps would be her last. Just
before her first birthday in 1950, she contracted viral
meningitis, with sustained fevers that left her profoundly
brain-damaged.
The doctors said an institution would be best, but Mil-
lie’s parents would not listen. They brought their damaged
baby home to the Olney section of Philadelphia and lov-
ingly cared for her as she grew, unaware, from a child to
an adolescent to an adult.
Today her world is a small bedroom on the second floor
of the Cheltenham home of her older brother, Charles
Reynolds, and his wife, Susan, who took over Millie’s 24/7
care after the parents’ deaths. For the last 17 years, the cou-
ple have dedicated their lives to her without regret.
“She is our forever baby,” Susan Reynolds says, gazing
upon Millie lying wide-eyed but unseeing beneath a pic-
ture of Jesus. And Millie is.
She requires diapers and total care. Until four years ago,
when a feeding tube was surgically inserted as her swal-
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Family 35
lowing reflex weakened, she sucked milk from a bottle

and was spoon-fed pureed fruits and vegetables.
A Child’s Face
She is blind, and paralyzed from the neck down. Her
hands curl up against her wrists, and her spine over the
years has taken the shape of a curving mountain road. She
weighs just 80 pounds, and with her soft skin and black
hair not showing a strand of gray, she looks almost like a
teenager, even a child.
Ask her family whether Millie’s life has value or mean-
ing, if the kindest course might not be to simply remove
the feeding tube so she can escape the prison of her bro-
ken body, and they just smile.
“Millie is a gift,” Susan Reynolds, a third-grade teacher,
says. “Her life has brought many blessings to our family.”
Adds her husband, a furniture salesman: “She has taught
us the importance of life.”
The couple are devout Catholics, and caring for Millie
has cemented their conviction that all life, even one as
compromised as this, is precious.
They say Millie has taught them charity, patience, and
unqualified love. She has shown them what really matters
in life. Most important, they say, her continual presence
has given their three now-grown children the greatest gift
of all—compassion.
Not bad for a human life many would dismiss as better
off dead.
In exchange, they give her loving, dignified care. They
point out proudly that Millie’s doctors are in awe that she
has never suffered a single bedsore in 54 years.
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Who Decides?
The Reynoldses have followed with interest—and dis-
may—the national uproar over Terri Schiavo, the brain-
damaged former Huntingdon Valley woman whose
feeding tube, a judge ruled last week, could be removed as
early as March 18.
What is missing from the debate, they believe, is a
simple but fundamental question: Whose right is it, any-
way, to decide what constitutes a life worth living? Can
any human really make that decision about another?
The Reynoldses believe not.
Despite what some medical ethicists say, they do not see
Millie’s feeding tube as an artificial means to prolong life
but simply as a medical tool to allow her to more comfort-
ably and safely get the sustenance all humans need. Before
the tube, she had aspirated food into her lungs, leading to
critical bouts of pneumonia.
When Millie’s time comes—and she grows weaker each
year—they will not order any extraordinary measures to
prolong life. But neither will they ever consider steps to
shorten it. That decision, they believe, is between Millie
and a higher authority.
“Our faith and our love, that’s what has guided us,”
Susan Reynolds says.
As she talks, her forever baby rocks her head from side
to side, her tongue out slightly, her sightless gaze far away
in that netherworld the rest of us will never comprehend,
somewhere between here and forever gone.
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= April 15, 2005
Speeder Dad Learns

an Important Lesson
It was one of those amazing spring days that demand a

drive in the country.The sun was brilliant, the sky a cloud-
less blue, the earth’s awakening smell sweet on the air.
“Hop in,” I told the kids. “We’re taking a ride.” A ride
to nowhere and for no purpose other than to feel the
wind in our faces and to take in the eye-popping beauty
of budding maples and blossoming cherry trees.
We found our way to one of those bucolic Bucks
County country roads that artists draw. We whizzed past
cows and barns and pastures, the sunroof open, the win-
dows down, and Stevie Wonder on the stereo. Bliss.
Then I glanced in my rearview mirror. Bliss be gone.
A police car was tight on my tail, lights flashing, siren
wailing. A choice swear word nearly escaped my lips before
I remembered the kids and uttered,“Shoot. Golldarnitall!”
With sinking heart, I pulled over, knowing I had been
having way too much fun not to have been speeding. But
the cop whizzed by me, instead pulling over the pickup
truck I had been following. Whew, better him than me,
I thought.
My good fortune was short lived. The state trooper, it
turned out, was going for a double play. He waved me
over behind the pickup. I handed him my driver’s license.
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“Mr. Grogan, are you in a hurry today?” he asked.

“Actually, no,” I said.
No Good Excuses
I wanted to tell him about the joyous riot of spring, the
blue sky, the budding trees, the awakening earth, and all
that. I wanted to extol the wind in my face and the
unadulterated pleasure of Stevie Wonder and an open sun-
roof on a day so perfect—neither too hot nor too cold—it
could have been delivered by angels. But I was pretty sure
the joie de vivre defense was not going to cut it.
“You were driving 62 in a 40-mph zone,” he told me.
And then he delivered the most withering blow of all:
“And with children in the car!”
His tone was a cross of contempt and concern, and
the words stung. What kind of a father would go speed-
ing around curves with his own flesh-and-blood beside
him? The only good news was that the guy in the
pickup had been going ever faster—and he had his kid
along, too.
The punishment for my lead-footed indiscretion: a $160
fine and three points on my driving record. But that was
nothing compared to what awaited me when I glanced at
the face of my 8-year-old daughter in the backseat. My
son, 12, was more amused than anything by my predica-
ment. But Colleen looked stricken.
I was her dad. And to a second grader, that meant I was
her hero, her compass, her rock of stability and righteous-
ness. I was the one who kept her safe, who always told
her the police were there to protect her from bad people.
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Family 39
I was the guy who regularly admonished her to obey the

rules and do the right thing, even when no one was
watching.
And here I was, caught red-handed on the wrong side
of the law.
Off the Pedestal

Yes, it was only a speeding ticket, but I could see it on her
face, the dawning awareness that her father was less than
perfect, was in fact something approaching criminal.
The trooper seemed to see it, too, and in a softer tone
said, “We’re just trying to keep everyone safe.”
And then to Colleen: “I’m glad to see you all wearing
your seatbelts.”
Her face brightened. See, her dad wasn’t a total bum!
I thanked the officer—why, I’m not quite sure—and
drove off with all the zip of a church lady on her way to
Sunday services.
I have preached ad nauseam to my kids that actions
have consequences, and now I was Exhibit A.
“I learned an important lesson today,” I told them.
“The rules are there for a reason, and I broke them, and
now I have to pay.”
It’s odd, this family affair. We spend the first half of our
lives hiding our imperfections from our parents so as not
to disappoint them, and we spend the second half hiding
them from our children for the same reason.
On this achingly lovely day, I had no place to hide. My
little game was up.
Speeder Dad was guilty as charged.
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= April 25, 2005
Introducing a Gift Named Danny
Friday was the day Susan Haggerty had apprehensively

awaited for weeks. Her coming-out day.
Nerves on edge, she walked into her son Jack’s fourth-
grade class at St. Alphonsus in Maple Glen, Montgomery
County. Jack greeted his mother at the door and then re-
turned to his seat, surrounded by his classmates.
He, too, was ready for this moment. Some teasing had
begun. Some things had been said. It was time.
His mother paused in front of the class, took a breath and
then said:“Jack has a brother. Jack’s brother has autism.”
There. It was said.
Not that Haggerty had hidden the fact, but some things
are harder to talk about than others. This was her first
time standing before a group of this size to disclose her
son’s autism.
She asked the children whether they knew what that
word meant, and one bespectacled girl shot up her hand
and said, “It’s like you’re kind of out of control some-
times.”
“They have a problem with their brains,” said another.
“You’ve been reading up!” the mother praised her.
In simple sentences, she told Danny’s story. He was a
beautiful newborn, perfect in every way. But his parents
began to notice he was not like the other babies. He did
not cry like they did, did not chatter, did not achieve the
same milestones.
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Family 41
Different Drummers
In 1998, when Danny was 2, the parents received the for-
mal diagnosis.
What she wanted the students to know is that children
such as Danny, while different, are not to be feared. Some-
times they grunt; sometimes they flap their arms or get
right in your face. They have a hard time looking in your
eyes. But they mean no harm.
“If you’re not afraid of them, you might find out
they’re nice guys,” she tells the children, “They want to
have friends, too.”
This coming out as an autism parent is not meant just
for the children, but for their parents, too. She gives each
child a two-page letter to take home. In it, Haggerty bares
her soul.
“We had the usual expectations and dreams that parents
have for their children,” she wrote.“On this particular day
[when Danny was diagnosed], everything in the world
changed for my husband and me.”
And she told them something else—that Danny is not
the only one in their home with autism. His younger
brother, Will, 7, has been diagnosed with a milder form of
the condition.
She apologized if her children disturb anyone at Sun-
day Mass. “We want you to know how much we appreci-
ate your patience and kindness,” she concluded.
Separate and Apart

After Haggerty finished her talk, as the children streamed
out of class, she confessed that life as the parent of autistic
children can be lonely and isolated. The invitations to so-
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cialize are painfully few, she said, adding, “I’ve learned to

grow a tougher skin.”
But she and her husband now know what really mat-
ters, and most of it exists within the four walls of a fam-
ily’s home.
She has discovered that sometimes amazing gifts come
in surprising packages. Sometimes they are wrapped in
heartbreak.
Before Friday’s presentation at St. Alphonsus, Haggerty
took me to another school a few blocks away, Maple Glen
Elementary, where I met the gift that is Danny.
He charged into the room, arms aflutter, eyes darting,
and smashed his lips against his mother’s.
He is a beautiful, freckle-faced boy with watery blue
eyes who speaks in two- and three-word sentences, which
makes his mother beam with pride. Just months ago, he
was limited to one-word responses.
Thinking he is going home, he says, “I get backpack.
My tummy rumbles.”
He cannot tell me his age—nine, but he knows what
he will do when he gets home. It’s the same thing he does
every day
“Rewind!” he squeals.
And that is what he literally will do, over and over
again: rewind videotapes, their soothing whir comforting
him. His mother laughs, hugs him. He prances off like a
stallion.
Jack’s brothers have autism. This family is through
apologizing.
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= May 6, 2005
When a Child Goes Missing
It had the makings of every parent’s worst nightmare—a

missing child.
My best friend from college was visiting with his wife
and two daughters. I loaded them and my three children
into the minivan for a tour of historic Bethlehem. One
second we were nosing our way through colonial-era
ruins along a fast-moving river; the next I was yelling,
“Where’s Conor?”
My middle child, who was 7 at the time, had simply
disappeared. “He was just here a second ago,” my friend
Pete Kelly said.
His wife, Maureen, gathered up the other children, and
Pete and I searched the area. As the minutes ticked by,
I focused ever more frantically on two scenarios. One in-
volved the icy river with its rapids and jagged boulders;
the other involved a man who had been playing with a
puppy nearby and now was gone, too.
Pete, a police officer in Michigan, seemed to be having
the same thoughts. I trotted along the riverbank, peering
with dread into the water; he dodged in and out of old
foundations and buildings, anywhere someone could pull
a child.
After 20 minutes, we met up again. “Nothing,” he said.
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I looked at him, not wanting to say what I was think-

ing. He was the cop; I trusted his judgment.
“I think it’s time to call 911,” he said.
He ran to a store to find a phone; I returned to the
stream. Two minutes later, I heard his shouts from a
block away, and when I turned, he held my son above
his head.
Relief and Gratitude

Relief, so intense I felt my legs wobble, washed over me.
Conor had wandered out of sight, and when he couldn’t
find us he did exactly what I had taught him to do: He re-
turned to the car to wait for us. There he was when Pete
reached the street, sitting on the curb, bravely fighting back
tears.
If only the family of Jamil Guy could have had such a
happy ending.
The 13-year-old drowned in Chester Creek on Mon-
day after he and his two cousins tried to turn a small, plas-
tic wading pool into a boat.
They were supposed to be at their grandmother’s
house, but they had sneaked down to the creek across
from Chester High School. They were boys being boys.
Boys doing what boys have always done and always
will.
Jamil Guy’s death stopped me short and made me ap-
preciate my lucky draw. It reminded me how differently
my own son’s disappearance could have turned out—at
the bottom of a river or, lured by a cute puppy, in the
trunk of a predator’s car.
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Family 45
Jamil’s death pointed out what every parent knows but

tries not to fixate on—that no matter how vigilant you try
to be, you cannot watch them every second of every day, es-
pecially as they grow into teens. As much as you try to teach
them to act responsibly, you cannot control their actions.
Ascribing Blame
And yet something the boy’s family said after his death
bothered me. Family members were upset that the boys
were able to make their way down the steep embankment
to the water.
“If there had been a fence up there, they wouldn’t have
gone that route,” Jamil’s aunt, Janet Guy, told reporters.
A grieving aunt can be forgiven for seeking a scapegoat
on whom to blame this tragedy.
For dreaming there is someone out there—govern-
ment, society, somebody—capable of wailing our children
away from danger.
But it would have to be a mighty wall and an endless
one, too, long enough and high enough and impenetrable
enough to protect every child from every conceivable
hazard.
From every creek and pond and railroad track and cliff
and lurking stranger.
If only there had been a fence . . .
If only it were that simple.
It is easy for parents whose children are safe today to
pass judgment. To say Jamil and his cousins should have
been more closely supervised; should have been better
trained to avoid danger. I won’t be among them.
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I’ve had my brush with the fenceless world and know

this: Jamil could have been Conor and Conor Jamil. One
boy’s tragedy, another’s close call.
In life, there are no foolproof fences, no impervious co-
coons. Only little children and the adults who do their
best to keep them safe.
= August 29, 2005
“It’s Never the Same”

Too True
I was running late.

At the end of the long hallway, the last room on the
right sat empty.
The bed was made, a walker in the corner. My mother
and her wheelchair were missing.
I found a nurse. “I’m Ruth Grogan’s son. Is my mother
around?”
It was a dumb question. This was a nursing home. Of
course she was around. Everyone was always around.
“I’d try the chapel,” the nurse offered. “Mass started
at 11.”
Life has its chapters, distinct divisions marked by water-
shed events, and this summer marked a new one in mine.
A year earlier, when I had visited my aging parents at their
home outside Detroit, ripe tomatoes lined the windowsill,
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Family 47
a pot of soup simmered on the stove, and my folks greeted

me happily at the door.
This summer’s visit marked a new beginning. As my
children swam in the lake I had swum in as a boy, I sifted
through my father’s papers, visited his grave, and spent
time with my mother in the place she now calls home.
As far as nursing homes go, it’s a lovely one, perched on
a shaded hill overlooking a lake and run by kind nuns
committed to compassionate care. But it is still a nursing
home with all the smells and sounds and sadness nursing
homes hold.
I made my way down corridors lined with frail women
passing the hours. “Take me with you,” one of them
pleaded as I passed.
Bowed White Heads

In the chapel, an ancient priest celebrated Mass before a
small clutch of nuns and about three dozen patients, their
wheelchairs arranged in an arc around the altar. From be-
hind, the bowed white heads all looked alike. As I scanned
the congregates, I realized nearly all of them were asleep.
My mother was no exception.
I touched her shoulder and whispered, “Hi, Ruthie.”
Her eyes opened and widened with surprise. She had for-
gotten I was coming.
My 89-year-old mother’s memory has been fleeing her
for some years now. When my father died in December,
she lost not only her husband of 58 years but a devoted
and exceptionally attentive 24/7 caregiver.
Mom’s eyes shut again, and I stood with my hands on
her shoulders as the priest soldiered on. At Communion,
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he walked down the rows of wheelchairs, placing wheat

hosts onto tongues. My mother woke to accept hers and,
as she always has, pressed a fist to her heart and began
working her lips in silent prayer.
Some things are not easily lost.
After Mass, I wheeled her into the courtyard, where she
tilted her head toward the sun and smiled. Deep lines
crossed her face, and her hair was as snowy as a blizzard.
But a child’s face looked up at me, a little girl lost in her
innocence.
A Song from Long Ago

She began to hum and then sing. It was a song I had
never heard before, a ditty about a brash child swallowed
by an alligator she thought she could tame. Mom had no
idea what she had eaten for breakfast that morning, but
she reeled effortlessly through the stanzas, not missing a
beat.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked.
“Girl Scouts,” she said.
I had to laugh. “That was 80 years ago! It’s about time
you sang it to me.” Then she sang it all over again.
We sat quietly for a moment. She broke the silence
with an observation.
“Once they leave home, that’s it,” she volunteered as if
she were telling it to someone other than one of those who
had left.“They come back to visit, but it is never the same.”
I wanted to insist otherwise, but she was right. It never
is. It never was.
I wheeled her back to her room and kissed her goodbye.
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Family 49
“I’ll be back this evening with Jenny and the kids,” I

told her. What I did not say is that the next morning we
would be returning to Pennsylvania.
Outside in the parking lot, I looked back through her
room window where I had left her. She was peering out
at something far, far away. When I caught her attention, a
startled look of pleasant surprise came across her face, the
same look she had given me at chapel. It was as if she
were seeing me for the first time.
“Aw, Mom,” I whispered.
She blew me a kiss. I blew one back, then drove away.
= October 17, 2005
Who’s a Father? A Guy Who’s There
I noticed them immediately.

Standing in front of me in line at a fast-food restaurant
near Souderton on a rain-streaked Tuesday, the father and
his daughter were hard to miss.
To a stranger’s eye at first glance, they did not appear as
if they belonged together.
She was 6 or 7, a pretty, delicate girl with sand-colored
hair that fell to her shoulders. She was dressed sharply in a
blue-and-green plaid jumper, white shirt, white anklets,
and black dress shoes.
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He was about 35, dressed in old jeans, a sleeveless T-

shirt, and a ball cap worn backward over a bandana tied
around his head. Both forearms sported large tattoos, and
his face, dominated by a long mustache and scraggly goa-
tee, spoke of a hard life. He used bad grammar.
He looked as if he belonged on a big Harley-Davidson,
not here in line with a schoolgirl.
I don’t even know for a fact that he was her father, but
the longer I watched them, the more convinced of it I be-
came. They had that certain easy chemistry that can exist
between dads and their little girls.
They stood quietly in line, not talking. He rested his
muscled arms on the counter; she leaned into him. He or-
dered their food, adding, “and one of them frosty things”
for the girl.
A Comfortable Silence
They sat a few tables from me and ate mostly in silence,
but it was a comfortable, easy silence. He reached over and
unwrapped her cheeseburger. She swung her legs beneath
her as she chewed.
I noted with approval that he held back her frozen
dessert until she had finished her meal. Then he sprinkled
the topping on it a little at a time as she ate so each bite
would be special.
It might say something about my own prejudices and
stereotypes that I took notice of this rough-hewn, work-
ing-class guy simply meeting the minimum standards we’d
expect of any parent. If he were dressed in a khaki suit
and penny loafers, would I have looked twice?
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Family 51
I hope so. The special one-on-one bond between fa-

thers and their daughters is one of life’s more under-
reported joys. And one worthy of notice.
When my daughter was a preschooler, I sometimes
took her out to breakfast before work, just the two of
us. No Mom Rules. We ate with our fingers, shared
drinks from the same straw, and burped with abandon.
Moments worth remembering after others have faded
into dusk.
What struck me about this father and daughter was
how effortlessly they interacted. He was not one of those
smothering “quality-time” types jabbering and treating his
child like a miniature adult at a cocktail party.
But he was there for her, and she for him. It was some-
thing to watch.
Little Life Lessons

After the man and girl were done eating, he walked her to
the bathroom and stood outside the door until she came
out. She held her hands up to his nose so he could smell
the soap, proof she had washed them.
At the door to the parking lot, she pulled.“Push,” he said.
She pushed, the door swung open, and she looked up
at him as if he were the smartest man alive.
As they stepped outside, it occurred to me that parent-
ing is not rocket science.You don’t need a doctoral degree
in child development to be decent at it.
Sometimes it is as simple as saying push instead of pull.
Fathers, I was reminded, come in many shapes and sizes
and fit no one mold. The good ones have a few things in
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common, and at the top of the list is just being there.

Present and accounted for. There for the big moments,
but also there for burgers at Wendy’s on a rainy afternoon.
They stood beneath the awning for a moment, survey-
ing the puddle-filled parking lot. The girl looked down at
her new shoes, and then the man did, too.Without a word,
he leaned over and scooped her up in one strong, tattooed
arm. She tossed her arms around his neck, peachy cheek to
ornery bristle, and together they headed off into the
dampness.
She was with her dad, high and dry and safe in his
arms. Did life for a little girl in a plaid jumper get any
better than this?
= August 21, 2006
Learn the Rhythm of Solitude

A Backpack Hike Shows
Grace that Comes in Solitude
In the summer of 1977, I nearly sent my poor mother into

cardiac arrest when I announced my plans to hitchhike
and backpack around New England by myself.
“Alone?” Mom asked. “Oh no, you aren’t.”
“Mom,” I shot back in my best this-time-you’re-not-
winning voice. “I’m going.”
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Family 53
She began to protest, but my father caught her eye. He

didn’t breathe a word, but his face said it all. I know he’s
your baby. I know you worry. But he’s not a child any-
more.You need to let go.
My father knew what dwells in a young man’s heart.
He knew that sometimes a guy has to find adventure to
find himself.
I had just finished my sophomore year of college and
had a few weeks until my summer job started. I had
hitchhiked and backpacked with friends before. Who
knows what I was trying to prove, but this time I needed
to do it alone.
When my father was 20, he was supporting a wid-
owed mother and two younger siblings as he worked his
way through college. Not long after, he was on an air-
craft carrier in the South Pacific. He didn’t need a solo
road trip to prove his chops. But he seemed to under-
stand that I did.
“Well, OK, then,” my mother finally said.“But you bet-
ter call.”
We made a deal. I would phone every other day, and
Mom would keep her worrying to herself.
I set out with everything I needed on my back. My
first night out, I was ready to raise the white flag and go
limping home.
I had gotten dropped off at a trailhead of the Ap-
palachian Trail in western Massachusetts. Evening was fast
approaching, and I hiked in only a couple of miles before
setting up camp. Rather than put up my tent, I decided to
sleep under the stars. As blackness enveloped me, coyotes
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began yipping all around. I swore I could hear them mov-

ing through the brush.
Then the rain started. I pulled a tarp over me and fig-
ured that would keep me dry enough. What seemed like
hours later, I bolted awake, rainwater rushing in from
where it had pooled atop the tarp. I was soaked.
I reached for my watch and hoped daybreak was immi-
nent. The illuminated hands read 11:20 p.m. It was going
to be a very long night.
At the first gray of dawn, I rose, wrung as much water
as I could from my sleeping bag, and began to walk. By
lunch the sun was out, and I spread my wet clothes and
bedding over shrubs to dry.Yet my spirits remained damp.
The steep terrain left me winded and with aching mus-
cles. Blisters popped out on my feet. As much as I didn’t
want to admit it, I was miserable.
But I soldiered on, hiking through most of Mas-
sachusetts and into Vermont. With each day, my strength
and confidence grew. I fell into a routine, rising with the
sun, hiking until it began to slant low in the sky, then
stopping to swim, cook over a small open fire, and fall
asleep to the nocturnal sounds of nature.
The rhythm of solitude, once so intimidating, began to
feel comfortable. Aloneness, I was learning, does not have
to equal loneliness.
And when I had walked as far as I cared to walk, I put
out my thumb and began to hitch my way around New
England, stopping in villages and college towns, eventually
making it to Boston.
In all the encounters with strangers, I came across just
one creep. An oddly silent man who picked me up and
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Family 55
when we reached my turnoff offered to drive me 20 miles

out of his way if I’d only pose for a few photos. When I
balked, he assured me they would just be snapshots of me
standing beside the car. Why not, I figured. I was so clue-
less, it never occurred to me why he might be so moti-
vated to collect photos of young strangers.
But he was the exception.
There was the young hippie girl who picked me up
in a Volkswagen microbus (yes, stereotypes come from
somewhere) and shared a cooler of vegetable sand-
wiches and cold beer with me. There were the graduate
students in Amherst who fed me a big spaghetti dinner
and let me sleep on their living room floor. There was
the cop who found me with my thumb out on a deso-
late stretch of road and pulled a U-turn to give me a lift
to a more traveled intersection. And the small-town
folks everywhere who offered me cold drinks as I
passed by.
For all the bad things in this world, I was learning a
fundamental truth that people are basically good and kind
and generous.You couldn’t be dumb about it, but if you
took a chance on them, the vast majority would not be-
tray your trust.
That summer I came to appreciate the beauty of soli-
tude and the gift of companionship. I learned to revel in
nature and trust my instincts. Most important, I came to
believe in the overarching decency of the human race.
Not a bad haul for one young man’s summer sojourn.
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Animals
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= March 4, 2003
What’s Good for the Goose? Us
I’ve been talking to the geese lately.

“You guys,” I say. “What’s your problem? Can’t you do
any better than this? Shouldn’t you be basking on a nice
golf course in Florida?”
They look up at me like I’m some kind of quack and
say what they always say. Honk!
Canada geese. The big, fat, beautiful birds are every-
where, ubiquitous ornaments on the suburban landscape. I
pass them as I walk into the mall, drive by the cemetery,
take my kids to the playground, visit college campuses and
corporate parks, and turn into my neighborhood.
A whole big flock of them has taken over the lawn out-
side the door of my office, where they chew the frozen
grass, ignoring the stream of humans trudging by just feet
away.
What I don’t get is why here? Greater Philadelphia has
its virtues, but as a wild and scenic refuge for water fowl,
it’s got to be near the bottom of the list. Especially in
59
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March with the snow, the ice, the salt, and that frumpy
bulky-sweater look.
I’ve been trying to talk some sense into them. But do
they listen? You would think they were teenagers.
“Excuse me,” I tell them.“If I could fly to New Orleans
for free, do you think I’d be standing here in a slush pile
eating frozen grass? Hello? You’ve got wings. Use them.”
Honk!
Flap Southward, Dummies

“Look, I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll point, and you fly. It’s
not that complicated. South is that way. Just keep going
until you hit Disney World. Go on. Shoo!”
Honk!
“All right. If you’re not going to fly south for winter
like any self-respecting goose would do, at least hang out
at Valley Forge or some other open space. I mean, is a
grimy industrial zone along the Schuylkill really your idea
of a good time?”
It’s no use.They just keep chewing and pooping, chew-
ing and pooping.
I turn for help to a water-fowl professional, none other
than the appropriately named Donald Drake, a wildlife
specialist and assistant professor of wildlife management at
Rutgers University.
Professor Drake, first things first. Is that really your
name?
Absolutely, he assures me.
So how come these dumb geese insist on hanging out
in the Philly deep freeze when they can be catching rays
on Hilton Head Island?
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Animals 61
Drake does not duck the question.

What we see around the ’burbs are not migratory
geese, he explains. We see their plumper couch-potato
cousins, which are so happy here they’ve made this their
year-round home.
“They most likely never migrated a day in their life,”
Drake says.
And if they appear fearless, it’s because they are, he says.
The suburbs are essentially a predator- and hunting-free
zone for geese, and they’ve figured out that we suburban-
ites are harmless weenies. (Oh yeah? Let them try step-
ping in front of our SUVs as we head home from work!)
Creating an Ideal Habitat

We spend tens of thousands of dollars on everything from
border collies to firecrackers to shoo away the winged eat-
ing machines. But basically they don’t give a flying quack.
Drake points out that we’ve given them everything a
goose could possibly ask for. “As Americans, we have a
fascination with well-manicured grass,” Drake says. And
Branta canadensis thanks us for it.
Not only are our suburban lawns and soccer fields tasty,
but we keep them nice and short, just how geese like
them so no enemies can sneak up on them. And then we
dig backyard ponds and subdivision drainage lakes, which
they like, too. And we chase off most of the bird’s natural
predators. Some of us even feed them bread.
We’ve pretty much given geese everything they could
ask for except their own cable channel. And, remind me
again, which species is supposed to have the superior
intellect?
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“Most of their life they spend grazing and just loafing

around,” Drake says. “People ask, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to
have a dog’s life?’ But to have a Canada goose’s life, I
think, would be even better.”
Right. And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back
out there and take their drink orders.
= April 4, 2003
A Feline Air Traveler

Lost in Philadelphia
Felix is MIA.
Missing in action, not on a battlefield in the Iraqi
desert, but somewhere in the cavernous bowels in
Philadelphia International Airport.
Felix is a cat.
The black feline with the white patch on his chest dis-
appeared March 4 during a plane change in Philadelphia
while en route from Baltimore to London to join his
owners. No one has seen a trace of him since.
U.S. Airways, which was transporting the cat, has put
out food and water, conducted several sweeps, posted
Felix’s photograph, even hired a tracker with a beagle to
try to sniff the cat out of hiding. All to no avail.
His owners, while acknowledging that a lost feline is
not exactly headline news, want him back desperately. So
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Animals 63
desperately that they have traveled the Atlantic Ocean and

back again in search of him.
The story begins in Baltimore with Rebecca Smith, a
British nanny, and her American husband, Darrell, an
events planner. Earlier this year, the couple decided to re-
turn to England to be near Rebecca’s parents.
Rebecca and the couple’s 3-year-old daughter flew to
London in January. Darrell and Felix the cat were to fol-
low later. Darrell made it; Felix, locked in a pet carrier
bearing a large “Live Animal” sticker, did not.
U.S. Airways admits a mistake was made. Said spokes-
woman Amy Kudwa: “We continue our very diligent ef-
forts to find the animal, [which] at this time has not been
found.”
The Wrong Conveyor Belt

A baggage handler was supposed to take Felix to a cargo
area to receive food and water and await transfer. Instead,
a cargo manager told the Smiths, the employee acciden-
tally put Felix’s carrier on a conveyor belt that took him
on a journey into the airline’s cavernous luggage area.
When workers finally located the carrier, the door
was ajar, and Felix was gone. “I just find it absolutely
amazing that in a space of about 20 minutes they lost an
18-pound cat,” Rebecca Smith, 34, told me by telephone
from England.
Three days after the disappearance, U.S. Airways flew
the couple back to Philadelphia and put them up in a ho-
tel overnight so they could comb the baggage area to lure
their shy cat out of hiding. Felix, if he was still in the
building, wasn’t taking the bait.
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“It was very much a wasted trip,” Darrell Smith said.

“We want our cat back; that’s the main thing. But I don’t
think that’s going to happen. It’s been a month now.”
While the airline insists the search continues, the
Smiths sense otherwise.
“I don’t think they’re really worried about it anymore,”
Darrell Smith said.
The Smiths said the airline has agreed to refund Felix’s
$257 ticket and has told them to submit a bill for the
price of the cat.
Said Rebecca Smith: “We got him from a shelter when
he was two months old. Monetarily, the cat has no value.”
A Loyal Friend
But to the family, Felix is a priceless family member. The
big lazy cat helped Rebecca through many homesick
nights in America and became a constant companion to
the couple’s daughter, Dominique. “It was like he was
guarding her,” the wife said.
“If it were lost clothing, we wouldn’t care.You can re-
place clothing,” she said. Then, perhaps realizing how her
concern for a cat might sound amid the mounting human
casualties of war, she added: “You can’t really understand
unless you are a cat person.”
Or at least a pet person. We know better, but still we
treat them like children, spoiling them, worrying over
them, grieving when they die.
Tellingly, the couple have begun to speak of their pet in
the past tense, even as the relationship between the couple
and U.S. Airways grows increasingly tense. The Smiths say
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airline officials are impatient with the family’s continued

insistence on finding Felix. As for her part, Kudwa, the
airline’s spokeswoman, won’t discuss details of the case,
citing fear of a lawsuit—a possibility the Smiths deny.
As hope for locating their pet of seven years fades, the
couple has a request of the people of Philadelphia. If any-
one spots a big black cat with a white tuft on his chest,
please give a call.
There’s a family across the ocean who very much wants
him home again.
= January 6, 2004
Saying Farewell to a Faithful Pal
In the gray of dawn, I found the shovel in the garage and

walked down the hill to where the lawn meets the woods.
There, beneath a wild cherry tree, I began to dig.
The earth was loose and blessedly unfrozen, and the
work went fast. It was odd being out in the backyard
without Marley, the Labrador retriever who for 13 years
made it his business to be tight by my side for every ex-
cursion out the door, whether to pick a tomato, pull a
weed, or fetch the mail. And now here I was alone, digging
him this hole.
“There will never be another dog like Marley,” my fa-
ther said when I told him the news that I finally had to
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put the old guy down. It was as close to a compliment as

our pet ever received.
No one ever called him a great dog—or even a good
dog. He was as wild as a banshee and as strong as a bull.
He crashed joyously through life with gusto most often
associated with natural disasters.
He’s the only dog I’ve ever known to get expelled from
obedience school.
Marley was a chewer of couches, a slasher of screens, a
slinger of drool, a tipper of trash cans. He was so big he
could eat off the kitchen table with all four paws planted
on the floor—and did so whenever we weren’t looking.
Marley shredded more mattresses and dug through
more drywall than I care to remember, almost always out
of sheer terror brought on by his mortal enemy, thunder.
Cute but Dumb

Marley was a majestic animal, nearly 100 pounds of quiv-
ering muscle wrapped in a luxurious fur coat the color of
straw. As for brains, let me just say he chased his tail till the
day he died, apparently convinced he was on the verge of
a major canine breakthrough.
That tail could clear a coffee table in one swipe.We lost
track of things he swallowed, including my wife’s gold
necklace, which we eventually recovered, shinier than
ever. We took him with us once to a chi-chi outdoor café
and tied him to the heavy wrought-iron table. Big mis-
take. Marley spotted a cute poodle and off he bounded,
table in tow.
But his heart was pure.
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When I brought my wife home from the doctor after

our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, that wild beast
gently rested his blocky head in her lap and whimpered.
And when babies finally arrived, he somehow understood
they were something special and let them climb all over
him, tugging his ears and pulling out little fistfuls of fur.
One day when a stranger tried to hold one of the chil-
dren, our jolly giant showed a ferocity we never imagined
was inside him.
As the years passed, Marley mellowed, and sleeping be-
came his favorite pastime. By the end, his hearing was
shot, his teeth were gone, his hips so riddled with arthritis
he barely could stand. Despite the infirmities, he greeted
each day with the mischievous glee that was his hallmark.
Just days before his death, I caught him with his head
stuck in the garbage pail.
Life Lessons Learned

A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one
like ours.
Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled
exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and fol-
lowing your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple
things—a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a
shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he
taught me about optimism in the face of adversity.
Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness
and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.
When his time came last week, I knelt beside him on
the floor of the animal hospital, rubbing his gray snout as
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the veterinarian discussed cremation with me. No, I told

her, I would be taking him home with me.
The next morning, our family would stand over the hole
I had dug and say goodbye. The kids would tuck drawings
in beside him. My wife would speak for us all when she’d
say:“God, I’m going to miss that big, dumb lug.”
But now I had a few minutes with him before the doc-
tor returned. I thought back over his 13 years—the de-
stroyed furniture and goofy antics, the sloppy kisses and
utter devotion. All in all, not a bad run.
I didn’t want him to leave this world believing all his
bad press. I rested my forehead against his and said: “Mar-
ley, you are a great dog.”
= January 13, 2004
They’re Bad, and We Love ’Em Still
Man, and I thought my dog was bad.

Ever since I penned a farewell to my companion of 13
years, Marley the neurotic and incorrigible Labrador re-
triever, my e-mail inbox has resembled a TV talk show
episode:“Bad Dogs—and the Humans Who Love Them!”
In the week since I wrote about Marley’s death, I have
heard from several hundred pet owners.They offered con-
dolences (thanks, everyone). But mostly they wanted to
dispute the accuracy of my report.
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Now I know I erred when I characterized Marley as the

planet’s worst-behaved creature. The typical response went
something like, “Your dog could not have been the worst
because MY dog is the worst.” And to prove the point,
they supplied detailed accounts of shredded couches,
raided cupboards, and sneak slobber attacks.
Oddly enough, nearly all the tales involved large re-
trievers, just like Marley.
Take it away, Sandy Chanoff of Abington Township:“Alex
was what we called a ‘high spirited Lab’ with a little atten-
tion deficit disorder. He ate almost all of my leather shoes,
pocketbooks, and even the carpet. He would greet us at the
door with something in his mouth all the time, and would
jump all around like he hadn’t seen us in years. He knocked
everything off the coffee table with his tail. By the way, we
were also thrown out of obedience school.” You too, huh?
Diploma Envy
Gracie, a golden retriever owned by Lynne Major and
Lynn Lampman of Drexel Hill, actually managed to grad-
uate—and was so excited she promptly jumped up and
pulverized her diploma. Said Major: “She is lovable and a
little crazy at the same time.”
Lois Finegan of Upper Darby said my manic mutt had
nothing on her separation-anxiety-challenged Lab, Gypsy.
“She was a holy terror in her day, eating curtains and their
rods, doors, rugs, plants, and even a jalousie window.”
Others reported their dogs gobbling down beach tow-
els, sponges, kitty litter, spare change, even a diamond ring
(which definitely trumps Marley’s taste for gold necklaces).
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Mike Casey of Pottstown beat them all. He said his late

dog, Jason, a retriever-Irish setter mix, once downed a
five-foot vacuum cleaner hose, coiled reinforcing wire and
all—without so much as a burp.
Elyssa Burke of West Goshen feared the worst after her
dog, Mo (yes, another highly intelligent Lab!), decided to
exit the house by crashing through a second-story win-
dow. Mo survived the fall just fine, apparently quite de-
lighted by his newly forged egress.“He landed on a shrub,
which broke his fall,” Burke explained.
Nancy Williams clipped my column on Marley because
it reminded her of her own irrepressible retriever, Gracie.
She writes: “I left the article on the kitchen table and
turned to put away the scissors. When I turned back, sure
enough, Gracie had eaten the column.”
I’ll take that as a compliment.
Knee-Deep in Concrete
Rene Wick of Havertown owns “a lunk-headed yellow Lab
named Clancy,” who decided to make a lasting impression
on the next-door neighbors by visiting their newly poured
foundation. “Clancy jumped the fence and went straight
into the still-wet concrete up to his knees,”Wick wrote.
And then came Haydon, the brawny—not to be con-
fused with brainy—Lab that once swallowed a tube of Su-
per Glue. “His finest hour, however,” owner Carolyn
Etherington of Jamison recounted, “was when he tore the
frame out of the garage door after I had foolishly attached
his leash to it.” She adds, “In those days, we had the vet-
erinarian on speed dial.”
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Tim Manning of Yardley thought he had outfoxed his

yellow Lab, Ralph, by stowing a chocolate centerpiece
safely on top of the refrigerator.“Ralph figured out how to
open a drawer on the linen cabinet next to the refrigerator
and use it as a ladder,” Manning wrote. “We could tell be-
cause the drawer’s contents were all over the floor, and the
chocolate was devoured right there on top of the fridge.”
All of which raises the question that any sane person
must be asking: If pets are this much of a pain, why does
anyone keep them?
As Sharon Durivage of Yardley put it: “They give their
love and loyalty freely and always forgive us for our bad
days and cranky moods.”
Shelter in Media
Mocks Its Mission
Who said it’s a dog’s life?

For the dogs—and cats—at the Delaware County
SPCA, life is anything but.
As The Inquirer’s Barbara Boyer has illustrated in a series
of articles, the private, nonprofit animal shelter in Media
makes a mockery of its name—the Society for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals.
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Does an organization dedicated to animals prevent cru-

elty by cramming dogs and cats into crowded, unsanitary
conditions?
By allowing contagious diseases to run rampant
through the facility? By blithely adopting desperately sick
animals out to unsuspecting families who then face either
mountainous veterinarian bills or the heartbreak of
putting down the animal—or both?
Does it prevent cruelty by sitting on a $7.6 million nest
egg while refusing to provide a modicum of veterinary
care for its animals? By having a veterinarian on premises
just two hours a week? Two hours for a facility that last
year handled nearly 3,000 dogs?
If this is where cruelty is prevented, I’d hate to see the
torture chamber.
We humans expect certain minimum standards for our
four-legged companions: safe, sanitary conditions, proper
nutrition, clean drinking water, compassionate care, ade-
quate medical attention.
It’s not rocket science, and yet the shelter’s 13-member
board appears clueless on so many fronts, incapable of get-
ting even the basics right.
Goodwill Gone Bad

The negligence is not malicious. It’s benign in nature,
good intentions overwhelmed by poor decisions—or no
decisions at all.
Part of the problem seems to be the board’s inability to
wisely tap its $7.6 million endowment. Even conservatively
invested with a 4 percent return, the investment would
yield more than $300,000 a year in income; at a 6 percent
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return, the shelter has $456,000 a year to play with.Yet the

board members act like misers.
Nearly $8 million in the bank, and they can’t afford
$80,000 a year for a full-time veterinarian? Sorry, but that
dog won’t hunt.
“The board of directors just sits on the money,” dog-
rescue volunteer Arthur Herring the third of Mont-
gomeryville told Boyer in frustration. “It’s like a power
trip for them.”
Meanwhile, sick animals continue to go out to homes.
Healthy animals continue to get infected. And the pa-
thetic cycle continues.
Boyer has heard from people who adopted dogs
and cats from the Delaware County shelter only to dis-
cover they were desperately ill. One woman took home
a cat dying from the highly contagious feline HIV. An-
other adopted a German shepherd that spread a respira-
tory infection to the family’s other dog.Yet another took
home a pit bull mix, not knowing it was suffering from
a highly contagious virus and internal bleeding. The dog
required surgery, which cost the new owner $2,200.
Redefining “Humane”
A Collingdale woman took home a dog suffering from
kennel cough, worms, and malnourishment. “I could
count every rib on her body,” the owner told Boyer.
That’s what one might expect from a back-alley puppy
mill, not from a well-meaning group with the words
“prevention of cruelty” in its title.
Volunteers have quit in disgust. Visiting veterinarians
have complained about the conditions. The state vows to
investigate. And yet the board digs in its heels, stubbornly

defending its incompetence and clinging to its miserable
Typhoid Mary methods.
When one former SPCA board member, Joseph P.
Boyle, pushed to improve conditions at the shelter, he was
forced off the board. Boyle told The Inquirer that sick but
treatable dogs were often euthanized because death was
cheaper than medicine.
What is going on here?
Some animal advocates have begun a petition drive to
recall all 13 members of the shelter’s board, and that is a
good thing. Perhaps a complete change in leadership is
what is needed to get this sorry excuse for an animal shel-
ter back on track.
In the meantime, the existing board members need to
tape reminders to their foreheads that read: “It’s about
preventing cruelty, stupid.”
= June 6, 2005
Animal Lovers? No, Just Bullies
The far upper reaches of Bucks County still hold the ves-
tiges of an earlier, simpler time.
Cows graze in pastures; tractors rumble along country
lanes; open farmland, thousands of acres of it, stretches to
the horizon, a quilt-work of browns and greens and golds.
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It is a place where silos still outnumber cell-phone

towers, and where stone farmhouses are actually still oc-
cupied by farmers with John Deeres, not investment
bankers with BMWs.
A most unlikely scene for a brazen terrorist attack.
But it was here amid the pastoral tranquility of rural life
in Richland Township, where the terrorists struck.
Not al-Qaeda or suicide bombers, but animal-rights
activists.
Their cause: to keep animals from being used for med-
ical research.
The innocent victims of their carnage: plants. Specifi-
cally, Chinese peonies, many of them rare and expensive,
all of them ethereally beautiful.
I pull my car off Route 212 into the flower farm
known as Peony Land, and the first thing I notice are the
endless rows of blooming shrubs. Their fragrance fills the
air; their vivid colors dab the fields like oil paints from an
artist’s palette.
A Rich Irony
The next thing I notice are the obscenities scrawled in
spray paint across the farm’s barn. “[Very bad word] with
primates, and get [very bad word] by us,” it states.
The vandals used the acronym ALF—Animal Libera-
tion Front.
The intended recipients are Peony Land owner
Michael Hsu and his parents, Chao and Susan Hsu, who
had planned to build a kennel on the 47-acre property to
house up to 500 monkeys for medical research.
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The vandals poured paint stripper on two cars and

spray-painted several buildings on the property. But what
broke the Hsus’ hearts were the plants. The vandals
dumped and smashed hundreds of delicate, high-end tree
peonies in a greenhouse.
“I was in disbelief that people would do such a thing,”
Michael Hsu told me. “To spray-paint our buildings and
write graffiti is one thing, but . . . these are plants. They
have nothing to do with our application.”
I’m sure the culprits who trashed Peony Land didn’t in-
tend it, but they left behind rich irony—the wanton and
indiscriminate destruction of one living species to save
another. Kill a plant, save a primate. Fauna ranks; flora ap-
parently does not.
In someone’s twisted mind, it all makes perfect sense.
Another irony: The primates the Hsus had planned to
import would play a role in research that could someday
cure deadly scourges such as AIDS and cancer.They could
help in fight against bio-terror. Or as Hsu put it, they
could help “to extend the lives and save the lives of mil-
lions of people.”
Thuggish Tactics
For the extremists masquerading as animal lovers, that is
not enough, even if the monkeys are treated humanely, as
Hsu insists they would be.
In an anonymous Web posting, a group claiming respon-
sibility for the vandalism at Peony Land used the favorite
method of thugs, terrorists, and bullies everywhere—
intimidation.
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“Drop your plans for a primate prison, or we will make

your life a living hell,” the posting states. “If you continue
to go forward with your plans, we will destroy your busi-
ness, and we will destroy your lives.”
In what Hsu insists is an unfortunate coincidence, the
family has withdrawn its application to house monkeys on
its farm. Their decision, Hsu said, has nothing to do with
the threats, but simply because he realized his proposal
would not meet township space requirements.
That may be so, but he and I both know that the crim-
inals who targeted him are crowing victory right now.
Reasonable people can disagree on the use of animals in
medical experiments. But there are legitimate forums for
airing such differences. A free society gives us that gift.
There is a word for those who instead would sneak
around under cover of darkness and use anonymous post-
ings to seed fear and intimidation: cowards. And with the
Hsu family’s sudden reversal, my fear is the cowards will
only be emboldened.
= November 22, 2005
In the Next Ring, a Stepford Terrier
I spent Sunday immersed in a world that has gone totally,

unapologetically to the dogs.
Believe me when I tell you fur was flying everywhere.
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Not only was it flying, it was being combed, parted,

clipped, teased, blow-dried, poofed, and puffed. The last
time I witnessed this much vanity preening, I was walking
past a beauty salon on the Main Line.
The occasion was the Kennel Club of Philadelphia Dog
Shows, which stretched across two days and 15 rings in
the Fort Washington Expo Center over the weekend,
drawing 2,700 purebred dogs of every imaginable shape
and size, accompanied by their perfection-driven owners,
who also came in every imaginable shape and size.
Some 15,000 dog lovers streamed through the doors to
ooh and ahh over the super pooches, and it occurred to
me that if the Miss America contest could capture a frac-
tion of this mojo, it wouldn’t be going down the drain.
In the staging area, the owners fretted over their
pooches, which waited patiently for their turn before the
judges. Many of these dogs live a good part of their lives
on the road, going from one show to the next. I watched
as a spectator patted a husky on the head, and his handler
swooped with a comb to fluff the violated spot.
Racing to Nowhere
I knew I was in a special world all its own when I headed
for the bathroom and found not only His and Her doors,
but Human and Canine facilities, too. The dogs actually
got the better deal, enjoying spotless stalls filled with
sweet-smelling cedar shavings.
In the rings, the handlers lined up their unflinchingly
behaved specimens and began prancing around in circles
at a half-run under the keen eyes of the judges. Round
and round they trotted, hurrying to go nowhere.
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A surprising number of the handlers were young people,

many in their early teens. They obviously had invested
hundreds if not thousands of hours into working with their
dogs. What was up with these kids? Shouldn’t they have
been home playing video games?
The dogs were something to behold. They stood in
flawless formation, their noses just inches from the tails of
the dogs in front of them. Not one of them made a move.
No lunges, no butt-sniffing, no hopping in the air as if
they had invisible springs on their paws. No attempts at
intimate relations. No two-legged floor dances. It was like
I was watching fur-clad robots that had been programmed
by Miss Manners.
Who was the official sponsor of this show, anyway?
Puppy Prozac?
As the unofficial chairman and spiritual leader of the
Dysfunctional Dog Owners of America, I’ll admit to a lit-
tle professional jealousy. I couldn’t help imagining how
my own late and not-so-great Labrador retriever, Marley,
would have taken the competition by storm, starting by
stealing the tablecloth off the judges’ table.
If the kennel club had a shredded-couch division, I’d
have had a shoo-in national champion.
Optional Commands
The current Lab-in-residence at the Grogan house thinks
“Come!” is a suggestion she is happy to take under ad-
visement and get back to us on. She’s never met a rustling
leaf that hasn’t been worth barking herself hoarse over.
Every dog has its strengths, and Gracie’s unique gift is
her eye-tongue coordination. This allows her to leap into
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the air and smash her snout into our faces at the exact
moment we are opening our mouths to speak, allowing
her to jam her tongue where no canine tongue was meant
to go. We call her the Phantom Frencher.
And she’s the good one.
I guess I came to the show hoping to find some small
ray of hope that even award-winning show dogs shared
some common ground with my obedience-school rejects.
I scrutinized the contestants for any cracks in their
glossy armor. C’mon, I pleaded silently, just one flying
drool-stringer. Nothing. They trotted; they pranced; they
posed, not missing a beat. I came across one poodle, so still
and perfectly coifed, I had to look twice to confirm it
wasn’t stuffed.
“That’s just not right,” I said.
As much as I envied the magnificent über-beasts, I knew
that life for them, as for all of us, was full of trade-offs.
Good dogs win all the ribbons, it’s true. But bad dogs
have more fun.
= January 31, 2006
Marley & Me
The Whole Truth
In light of the scandal enveloping best-selling author

James Frey, who now admits his purportedly nonfiction
memoir A Million Little Pieces is riddled with fabrica-
tions and exaggerations, the online accuracy watchdog
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SmokingCanine.com has launched an investigation into

another memoir currently topping best-seller lists. We
now bring you this shocking expose:
PHILADELPHIA—Credible evidence has surfaced that
Inquirer columnist John Grogan might have greatly exag-
gerated the badness of his now-infamous Labrador re-
triever Marley.
In his memoir, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the
World’s Worst Dog, Grogan portrays his now-deceased pet
as incorrigible, neurotic, ill-mannered, flatulent and slob-
bering. But a SmokingCanine investigation found scant
evidence to support the unflattering depiction.
One former neighbor, Betty Barcalot, told Smoking-
Canine: “Marley was a great dog. I once witnessed him
dart into traffic to pull a Chihuahua to safety. But did that
make the book?”
Added a former nanny: “Yes, there was a lot of damage
to the house, but you should ask Mr. Grogan about how it
got there. Let me just say an incompetent homeowner
with power tools can be a dangerous thing.”
Ice Picks and Drool

Reports that Grogan may have used an ice pick to inten-
tionally mar his home’s woodwork in an attempt to frame
Marley could not be confirmed.
Even Grogan’s wife, Jenny, has distanced herself from
the book, saying, “Honestly, if anyone had a drooling
problem, it was my husband.”
Grogan now admits the amount of saliva produced by
the hound was exaggerated. “I swear, it seemed like gal-
lons at the time,” he said in a brief interview.
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Grogan’s book claimed Marley “chased his tail till the

day he died.” But family veterinarian Andover Yorecash
called the claim,“absurd . . . beyond laughable.” He added:
“On the numerous occasions Marley was in to have a
household object extracted from his bowels, I never once
saw him chase his tail.”
At a dog park Marley was known to frequent, a Rott-
weiler who gave his name only as “Fritz” said the whole
book is a gross exaggeration.
Speaking through an interpreter, he growled, “Never
once did I see Marley sniff a poodle’s butt. And even if he
did, is that so wrong?”
Fritz added: “I knew Marley. Marley was a friend of
mine. The character in this book is no Marley.”
Dutchess, a corgi who was once romantically linked to
the buff Labrador, added: “Grogan makes a big deal out of
Marley’s nutty behavior, but he was nothing special.
Hello! He’s a male Lab. They all act like that.”
SmokingCanine has learned that literally hundreds of
Labrador retriever owners have come forward to dispute
Grogan’s “world’s worst dog” contention.
Window Jumpers
Said one, “I know with certainty that Marley wasn’t the
worst. Did he ever jump out of a second-story window
like my Bunky?”
Grogan admitted Marley only crashed through first-
floor windows.
There are even as-yet-unsubstantiated rumors that
Marley is not dead at all but living in seclusion in a canine
rest home in Boca Raton, Florida.
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“I can’t swear it’s the same dog,” said Rocco De-

Rawhyde, an aide at the facility.“But our resident,‘Harley,’
is a dead ringer for that dog on the cover. All I know is
just before the book comes out, these two guys in sun-
glasses drop him off with strict orders, ‘No visitors, no
media interviews.’”
Attempts to locate “Harley” were unsuccessful.
Grogan refused to comment about allegations that his
original title for the book was My Marley, My Dream Dog,
and that he only changed the premise after his agent
could not sell the manuscript, saying, “The whole Lassie
thing is SO last year.”
Oprah Winfrey, who recently withdrew her endorse-
ment of A Million Little Pieces, did not return calls seeking
comment on this latest controversy.
= February 27, 2006
Zoo Hysteria High as Elephant’s Eye
It might be easy to write off as a nutty extremist Mari-

anne Bessey, the animal-rights activist who has been
banned from the Philadelphia Zoo.
Easy, that is, until you look into the eyes of the giant, ma-
jestic beasts she so zealously—some might say hysterically—
champions.
Until you look into the eyes of a captive elephant.
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There is something there. Something more than docile

existence. There is intelligence, fierce intelligence. No
question about it. Even the zoo’s own Web site notes the
animal’s innate smarts. Is it my imagination, or is there
also sadness in those eyes?
Sadness and Longing?

Bessey thinks there is, and she has become obsessed with
helping the zoo’s four elephants find freedom—or at least
a relative facsimile of it—at a 2,700-acre pachyderm sanc-
tuary in Tennessee.
She has become a major burr under the saddle of the
zoo’s administration, regularly visiting the elephants in
their tight quarters at the zoo, videotaping them, freely
sharing her opinion that elephants deserve better than a
quarter-acre exercise yard where visitors stand and gawk
at them.
“They’re so intelligent and just so amazing,” she said by
phone Friday.
“A Little Depressed”
Bessey, a lawyer, became smitten with elephants as a child.
“But when I saw them in circuses or zoos, I always felt
there’s something wrong here,” she said. “They always
seemed a little off or depressed.”
In 1996, she traveled to Zimbabwe to watch wild ele-
phants in their native habitat and was stunned by how dif-
ferently they behaved and interacted from confined
animals.
And those smart, deep eyes, she insists, had different ex-
pressions. Not sad at all.
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She calls zoo elephants mere “shadows” of wild elephants.

Last year she began badgering zoo officials to release
the four elephants to the sanctuary where they could live
closer to how nature intended. So far, the idea has gone
nowhere.
She’s particularly frustrated over the fate of Dulary, a
42-year-old female with an injury that has kept her inside
a concrete barn since August.
“It’s like putting your child in a closet for the rest of
their life,” she said.
As her frustration grew, she posted a message earlier this
month on an online chat room known as the Elephant
Connection. In it, she wished that Philadelphia Zoo Di-
rector Alexander L. “Pete” Hoskins might experience
what it would be like to be “kept in a concrete closet for
six months to hasten [his] demise.”
“My frustration just boiled over,” she said.
What she didn’t know was that zoo officials were mon-
itoring the chat room (your donor dollars at work), and
they filed a police complaint against her, apparently on
the theory that her comments were not-quite-but-
almost-sort-of a little like a death threat.
A Threat, but to What?

Now, we can’t have death-threatening eco-terrorists at a
family attraction, right? And so the activist was banned
from zoo property.
Remind me again who’s acting with extreme hysteria?
Let’s get real here. The threat the zoo is trying to con-
tain is not to its director’s life but to its well-coifed
public-relations image. Zoos are friendly, family places
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where all the animals are happy all the time. There is no
room for loudmouths questioning whether the elephants
might be better off running free.
I like zoos. I like the Philadelphia Zoo in particular, so
much so that I have an annual membership. I like taking
my kids there. But I have to say, when I reach the elephant
enclosure, I see it, too. Those eyes.
Most of the animals seem content in their enclosures.
But the elephants always leave me feeling just a little . . .
sad. If they could talk, you know what they would say.
And it would not be how splendid life is standing in a
rectangle of dust so people can take their photographs.
Other major zoos have released their pachyderms to
large sanctuaries where they now roam free.
Visit the zoo, look into those deep, knowing eyes. Then
ask yourself: Isn’t it time Philadelphia did the same?
= July 7, 2006
Puppy Mills Not Always Obvious
The sign rose out of the cornfields as we drove down a

narrow country lane in far rural Berks County:
“Vegetables & puppies for sale.”
This was the place. The place we had been looking for.
Our longtime Labrador retriever, Marley, had died a few
months earlier, and the silence in our home had become
deafening.
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It was time for another dog.

We were responding to a small classified ad for puppies
of mixed but distinct lineage—a cross between two types
of retrievers. After our wildly hyperactive purebred Lab,
the mix sounded like a good bet. The breeders were old-
time, traditional farmers who raised dogs on the side.
I pulled up to the old stone farmhouse where Jenny, our
three children, and I were greeted by six stunningly beau-
tiful youngsters.They were blond and blue-eyed, their skin
burnished from working in the fields. The girls wore bon-
nets and calico dresses to their ankles.The boys wore over-
alls and brimmed hats. All were barefoot. No adults were
in sight.
Jenny and I exchanged a smile.We both felt good about
this place. A small family farm out of yesteryear; the real
thing. We liked the idea of steering clear of commercial
breeders, some of whom have reputations for being moti-
vated more by profit than love of animals.
A Sinking Feeling
I asked to see the puppies, and the oldest of the siblings, a
girl about 16, stepped forward and without a word led us
toward a cacophony of barking. Near the barn we found a
series of rickety runs filled with dogs of every imaginable
shape, size, and age. None looked like the progeny of two
pure-bred dogs.
Two of the cages were rigged with spinning wire tread-
mills, like giant versions of the exercise wheels found in
hamster cages, in which little yapping dogs raced end-
lessly. At once the scene was comical and heartbreaking.
It instantly felt wrong.
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We began absorbing more of the scene. The puppies

were crowded into a makeshift pen, and some looked
lethargic with runny eyes and noses. Excrement covered
the ground so thick it was almost impossible not to step
in. The mother dogs slinked around the periphery of the
barnyard, looking worn out and exhausted, their teats
hanging low.
It was becoming obvious this was not the idyllic rural
breeder we had imagined, and that these dogs were being
bred and sold irresponsibly by children without visible
adult supervision. We asked if the parents were available,
but got no clear answer.
Still, we persevered. Anyone who has ever taken young
children to pick out a puppy knows how difficult it is to
leave empty-handed. The puppies, even the sickly ones,
were undeniably cute, and the farm kids handed them out
of the cage one at a time for my children to cuddle.
“This one, Dad; can we get this one?” they shouted for
each puppy.
Nervous Glances
Jenny and I exchanged nervous glances. We both knew
we would not be leaving with one of these dogs.
I called the kids over to the car for a huddle. “We’re
going to get a puppy very soon,” I promised. “But this is
not the right place.” The kids hung their heads but didn’t
protest. I think even they knew something was amiss.
As darkness fell over the unlit farm, we excused our-
selves and drove away. A mile down the road, I pulled over
and we all scraped dog dirt off our shoes.
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It didn’t occur to me that night, or for months after-

ward, that what we had stumbled on was a puppy mill.
Not one of the factorylike commercial enterprises Penn-
sylvania is so notorious for, but a puppy mill nonetheless.
A place that cranks out living animals like widgets for
profit and often passes along hereditary and health prob-
lems. Governor Rendell is taking steps to crack down on
these operations, and I applaud him for it.
Looking back on my experience two years later, I re-
gret not doing more myself. I should have made a phone
call, should have turned them in. But these beautiful,
simple children were not what I imagined or wanted to
believe puppy-mill operators could be.
A puppy mill, I now know, can take many forms. Some-
times you don’t even recognize it until it is too late.
= July 16, 2006
Celebrity & Me
Look what Marley has dragged in now. Best-sellerdom is

an unexpected and rich blessing, but at times the author
has a bone to pick.
I know exactly when and where it happened—the mo-
ment I finally figured out that my quiet, contented, bor-
ing little life had changed in powerful ways and would
not be changing back again anytime soon.
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It was 8:30 a.m. on January 13, and I was sitting in the

greenroom at the CBS studios in New York, waiting to go
on The Early Show. A makeup artist powdered my nose
and fussed with my hair. A producer wired me with a mi-
crophone.
I was there to talk about my book, Marley & Me, and its
surprising vault from obscurity to the top of national
best-seller lists.
Waiting in the wings with me to appear in the same
half hour of the morning talk show were rapper/actress
Queen Latifah, movie mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, and two
young women with hardly any clothes on who billed
themselves as “the world’s only twin belly dancers.”
“Only on morning television,” host Harry Smith
cracked to me moments before we went on the air. I just
shook my head. The scene was surreal, and I was smack in
the middle of it, about to go live in front of 2.7 million
viewers.
After my interview, Smith leaned in close to me and, in
an almost fatherly way, said,“I don’t think you fully realize
it yet, but your life will never be the same.”
He knew what I was just beginning to understand. For
better or worse, my new status as “best-selling author”
would change everything, even as I resisted change with
every fiber of my being.
I felt a little like the ordinary working schmo who wins
the lottery. No, scratch that. I was the ordinary working
schmo who won the lottery—my case, the lottery being
the infinitesimally tiny chance of writing a first book that,
for whatever mysterious combination of factors, takes off.
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What began in my mind as a “little book”—the simple

story of the early years of my marriage and the joyously
insane Labrador retriever that would change the family
we became—is now in its thirtieth printing, with just less
than two million copies in print. It has been on the New
York Times nonfiction hardcover best-seller list for 34
straight weeks, 16 of them at No. 1.
Part of me is ecstatic at this startling success. Part of me
still can’t quite believe it. And part of me worries about
what effect it will have on my family, particularly my three
children, and on my lifestyle, my career, my friendships.
I catch myself wondering: How did I get on this roller
coaster, and how do I hold on?
The journey began on January 6, 2003, when I pub-
lished a column in The Inquirer saying goodbye to my
hopelessly hyperactive, incorrigible Labrador retriever Mar-
ley, who for 13 years filled our home and lives with riotous
bedlam. He was a very bad boy yet with a heart as bound-
less as a summer sky, and I wanted to set the record straight
after years of making fun of his total lack of self-control.
That column brought a flood of responses from Inquirer
readers, responses that were highly personal. It was then I
knew I had quite accidentally tapped into something big-
ger, something seminal. Not a dog story. Not my story.
But the story of the journey humans and animals make
together, and how the two shape and affect each other
and become magically intertwined.
After a dozen rejections, I found an agent, Laurie
Abkemeier, who saw the potential in my story and de-
cided to take a chance on me. I began rising at 4:30 a.m.
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to write before leaving for work. Week by week, chapter

by chapter, the story spilled out like utterances from a
hypnotized patient, without hand-wringing or self-con-
sciousness.
Very early in the process I realized I could not tell the
tale of this bigger-than-life dog without telling the tale of
my wife, Jenny, and me and the life we were just begin-
ning. The two stories were inseparable, one and the same.
The book flowed easily out of me partially because I
was convinced no one would ever see it. As the book pro-
gressed, my agent kept telling me I was on to something,
but I didn’t quite believe her. I kept wondering: Who in
their right mind would want to read 300 pages about my
ho-hum life?
But when the manuscript was done, in fall 2004, the
agent’s instinct proved more accurate than the author’s.
She called me back a few days after shopping it around to
say she had six publishers interested in making offers. We
sold Marley & Me to the William Morrow Co., and it hit
bookstores in mid-October 2005, debuting at No. 10 on
the Times list.
My publisher’s aggressive marketing and publicity cam-
paign—it gave away thousands of early copies to review-
ers, media types, and booksellers—gave me the big push it
needed out of the gate.
But by the holidays, I became aware that something
else was at play. Marley’s rise above the glut of holiday-
released books was being fueled in large part by that elu-
sive gift—word-of-mouth buzz. Bookstore owners were
recommending my book to their customers, librarians to
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their patrons and, most important, readers to their friends

and relatives.
Attendance at my book signings was growing exponen-
tially, from 40 or 50 in the early weeks to as many as 400.
And people were beginning to show up with multiple
copies of my book in their arms. At one appearance in
Chester County just before Christmas, I signed a copy for
a woman who tracked me down the next week to sign 25
more copies she had decided to give as gifts.
By the time I appeared on The Early Show, Marley &
Me was No. 3 on the Times list. A few weeks later, I was
sitting in The Inquirer’s downtown newsroom when
Mauro DiPreta, my editor at William Morrow, called, as
he did every Wednesday evening when the best-seller list
was updated.
But this call was different; he was on a speaker phone
surrounded by my entire publishing team. “Are you sit-
ting down?” he asked. “Because you just hit No. 1.”
All I could say was, “Wow.”
I was similarly speechless in late January when I learned
—by cell phone as I attended an author’s reception with
my wife in South Florida—that Fox 2000 Pictures had
bought the film rights. I put my hand over the phone and
whispered, “You won’t believe this; they want to make a
movie about us.”
Jenny, who had graciously agreed to let me trot out the
most personal details of her life in the book, just smiled
nervously.
The routine of our life was changing dramatically. I was
writing my Inquirer column and fielding a growing list of
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media and public-appearance requests. And I was begin-

ning my next book-writing projects.
The irony of my success was not lost on me—or my
family. I had written a book celebrating the simple joys of
life—and now there was precious little room for those joys.
In early March, I took a leave from The Inquirer to go
back on the road promoting the book—Chicago, Seattle,
Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Jacksonville, New
York,Washington. Jenny felt like a single parent; on phone
calls home, I got the impression my kids were figuring out
how to get on without me around.
And when I was at home, a steady parade of media
people arrived at our door for interviews and photo-
graphs. Most of them made me proud of my profession.
They were smart, talented, fair-minded, and gracious. A
few reminded me why reporters are not always liked or
trusted.
In February, I was in Phoenix when I began receiving
e-mails saying, “Do you know Howard Stern’s talking
about you on his show?”
Oh no, I thought, this can’t be good. Stern, with his
bombastic and bawdy antics, was the last person I would
expect to click with my book.
But there he was on his satellite radio program for three
straight days telling the story of reading the conclusion of
Marley & Me while on a cross-country flight and weeping
so openly a flight attendant asked if he needed help.
He told his listeners he planned to write me a letter
telling me what the book meant to him. I thought he was
just blowing smoke, but a week later, a four-page handwrit-
ten letter arrived from Stern, and it was—lovely. Sensitive
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and warm. I now know what I long suspected, that there is

more to people than they sometimes let on, and there can
be more to the jock than just shock.
My favorite part of this white-knuckle ride has been
the people I’ve met along the way. Some have been
celebrities, such as Diane Sawyer, who interviewed me on
ABC’s Good Morning America, and Anderson Cooper, who
I met at a publishing party a week before his book
knocked mine out of the No. 1 slot. Most have been ordi-
nary readers, from as close as Ardmore and as far away as
Australia, many of whom now seem like dear family
friends.
They have formed a sort of Marley fraternity, sharing
their photographs and stories at marleyandme.com and
making friends with one another as they wait in line at
signings. Some write me poems, some record goofy songs,
some bake gourmet dog treats for our new Lab, Gracie. In
Denver, 180 strangers sang “Happy Birthday” to me.
An amateur artist shipped me a beautiful framed por-
trait of Marley she painted in oils, which I hung in my
bedroom.
Each morning, I look at his likeness staring out at me
and just smile at the bizarre thought that my slobbering,
never-do-right hound has become a household name, not
just in the United States but, with Marley now being
published in 24 languages, around the world.
When I was on leave from The Inquirer, many readers
wrote to ask me if I was gone for good. I have to admit, I
thought about it. But I love newspapers, this one in par-
ticular. I love writing a column and, above all else, I love
the readers who follow and respond to my work.
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After my first column back, a slew of messages greeted

me, like this: “Yo, Grogan! Welcome back. Now get to
work!”
Yep, there’s no place like Philadelphia.
On the home front, best-sellerdom has been mostly an
incomprehensible blessing but, as with most things in life,
not without its trade-offs.
My sons, 14 and 12, are like most teenagers in that they
crave anonymity. The book has thrust them out of that
comfortable invisibility, and sometimes they struggle with
the notoriety. Many of their classmates, and nearly all their
teachers, have read the book. People stop them at school
events or the mall to ask about it, making them squirm
uncomfortably.
I can’t protect them from that, but Jenny and I have de-
cided to make no major lifestyle changes anytime soon.
We plan to stay put. Our house is our home (although we
might add that new kitchen we’ve long dreamed of ), our
neighbors, our friends, our local school system, our chil-
dren’s universe. Besides, I can’t think of anyplace else I’d
rather live.
I’ve always celebrated frugal simplicity. I am the guy
who fixes broken appliances, washes my own car rather
than fork over 10 bucks at the car wash, and scouts garage
sales for steals. The income from the book and movie
rights is something we had never dreamed of and some-
thing that will take some getting used to.
I upgraded my car, paid off some debts, bought Jenny the
piano she had always wanted, and splurged on a nice family
vacation to the Florida Keys. But mostly we want to invest
for the future—and share some with those less fortunate.
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Who could have imagined that dumb lughead dog of ours

would put all three of our children through college and give
us a secure retirement nest egg? Good dog, Marley!
As far as my children are concerned, all the hubbub can
end anytime now.
One night recently as I tucked my 9-year-old daughter in
bed after 10 days on the road, she looked up at me and said
without a trace of self-pity:“You know what, Dad? I’m kind
of ready for you not to be on the best-seller list anymore.”
“You are?” I asked.
“So you’ll stay home again.”
I winced just a little and promised her I’m getting bet-
ter at saying no. Then I reminded her we were like surfers
riding a dizzyingly giant wave.
“It’s a crazy ride, honey,” I said, snugging the blanket
around her. “But soon enough we’ll be back on shore.”
= July 17, 2006
A Trek to the North Pole,

for His One True Friend
Sometimes a dog is more than a pet.

It can be a joy in good times, a comfort in bad, an un-
questioning friend always. The special ones can change a
person’s life. A very few might just land you at the North
Pole.
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For Barry Greenberg, that dog was Kunitz.

For 11 years, the powerful, intelligent Siberian husky
was at Greenberg’s side through the ups and downs of life.
Kunitz was there through a divorce and through career
changes. He was there as his owner started over and found
love again.
For much of Kunitz’s life, Greenberg, who now resides
in Quebec, lived in Wilmington and worked in West
Chester as a biotechnology researcher.
Greenberg had never been one to celebrate winter, but
the snow-loving animal of proud Arctic heritage changed
that. Greenberg began hiking daily with him in Brandy-
wine Creek State Park near his home and soon caught
what he called his dog’s “winter lust.”
It didn’t take long for the Alzheimer’s disease researcher
to begin dreaming of what huskies live to do: pull heavy
loads across frozen landscapes of white.
Greenberg took his first dogsledding expedition in
northern Minnesota in 1996, when he was 40. Seven
more trips would follow—and his second marriage would
take place on the back of a dogsled in the middle of a
frozen Minnesota landscape.
“Kunitz,” he told me last week,“was my best friend for a
very long time, with me through some of life’s great trials.”
In 2002, while Greenberg was in Sweden at a confer-
ence, the call came from home in Wilmington that his
beloved husky had suffered a seizure and died. “I never
had the chance to say goodbye,” he said.
Greenberg spread some of Kunitz’s ashes in the state
park where the husky loved to romp. But he saved a small
amount with a special dream in mind—to one day travel
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by dogsled to the top of the Earth and release them on

vast ice cap where huskies’ spirits never die.
In April of this year, Greenberg’s dream became a real-
ity. He joined an expedition led by his dogsledding men-
tor Paul Schurke, the veteran Arctic adventurer. The
group flew to Norway, where it outfitted itself with dogs,
sleds, and supplies. Then it flew to a Russian research
camp one degree from the North Pole. The group then
flew by helicopter with the trained sled dogs, sleds, and
supplies to a point about 120 miles from the pole and set
out on an arduous 11-day passage. With temperatures
hovering well below zero degrees Fahrenheit the entire
trip, the expedition braved strong winds, steep ice ridges,
open water, and treacherous soft ice.
At the end of each day, the group of nine, with four
sleds and 32 dogs, slept in tents on the ice.
In his backpack, Greenberg carried Kunitz’s leather col-
lar and a small plastic vial of the dog’s ashes. On the final
day, April 25, he lashed the collar to the outside of his
pack, and the tags jingled as he walked, giving him an odd
sense of peace, as if Kunitz were there walking beside him.
The group arrived at the North Pole at 6 p.m., and al-
most immediately Greenberg set about the task for which
he had come. He walked a few paces from his cohorts,
dropped to his knee, and used a knife to break the seal on
the container. Almost instantly, he said, a strong gust of
wind carried the fine ashes off.
“I’m keeping my promise to you, Kunitz,” he whis-
pered, “You were a good boy.You always will be.”
And then he thanked him. For the companionship and
loyalty, the intuition and canine empathy. For the goofy
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way he howled along whenever he heard people singing

“Happy Birthday” but no other songs.
He thanked the dog for helping him find a new life and
a new wife and for setting him on the path to the adven-
ture of a lifetime.
In the subzero Arctic air, unanticipated tears welling in
his eyes, he saw it all so clearly, the way an animal can en-
rich and deepen the human experience, often in mysteri-
ous and unexpected ways.
“Thank you, Kunitz,” he said.
= October 2, 2006
Alpha Bet: It’ll Work on Lids,Too

A Household of Dysfunctional Dog Owners
Heels to the Will of the Whisperer
When my wife, Jenny, told me the Dog Whisperer would

be coming to our home to help us become better pet par-
ents, I admit I rolled my eyes.
I am a plenty fine pet parent. My pets run all over me,
and I put up with it.You got a problem with that?
Regardless, it seemed this whisperer guy was arriving a
little too late.
After all, our famously bad-boy Labrador retriever,
Marley, shredder of couches and flinger of drool, had long
ago departed for that great obedience school in the sky.
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His replacement, a shy, sedate female named Gracie, is so

good she is boring.
“Um, is there something he needs to whisper to me?”
I asked.
Cesar Millan came to this country from Mexico and
slowly built a reputation for his ability to turn around
even the most problematic and disturbed dogs. Today, he
hosts the popular television show Dog Whisperer on the
National Geographic Channel, and his dog-behavior
book, Cesar’s Way, is a best-seller.
His big message is that it’s usually not the dogs that
need attitude adjustments, but their human handlers.
Dogs, like a lot of humans, are natural-born followers, but
they will only line up behind a strong, confident leader.
Think Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor or Giuliani after 9/11.
Millan’s mission in life is to instill these elusive leadership
qualities in dog owners. He calls it “calm assertiveness.”
True leaders, he argues, don’t yell or shout or lose their
cool; they calmly and quietly assert their will on others.
Not in our house. Our animals are under the impression
they live in a democracy, and they have an equal vote.
One day after watching his show, Jenny had one of those
“why not” moments and e-mailed Millan’s producers. Of
course, they loved the idea of America’s best-known dog
behaviorist taking on what may very well now be its best-
known dysfunctional-dog owners. (My parents would be so
proud.) Or as they put it,“that Marley family.”
Last week, Millan and his seven-person television crew
arrived for their second of two visits.
During the first visit in August, Millan observed that
Gracie, while naturally pretty well behaved, was adrift,
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trying to find her own way in the world without benefit

of a clear pack leader.
“You have her trust and affection,” he said,“but not her
respect.”
Hey, just like my children!
Within minutes, and without ever raising his hand or
voice, he had Gracie bowing to him in supplication. He
spent most of his time training us to exert alpha assertive-
ness. Our dog just looked at me as if to say, if you’re the
pack leader, I’m Madonna.
By the time Millan returned last week, Gracie seemed
to treat us with new respect. She came when we called
her, and sat at the door awaiting our permission before
barging out. The Dog Whisperer was pleased.
The more Millan talked about surefire methods to con-
trol dogs, and to earn their respect, the more I kept think-
ing: Forget the dumb dog; I’m trying this out on the kids!
As parents, we can’t put shock collars on our children
and zap them every time they misbehave, but what if we
used some of the same techniques Millan uses on animals?
What if we applied these commonsense techniques of
calm, assertive leadership? What if we forgot about being
our sons’ and daughters’ pals and instead focused on being
their . . . parents?
Over a beer at the end of the day, I only half-joked,
“Will you come live with us and be our Teen Whisperer?”
Millan laughed, then volunteered that he receives a
steady stream of letter and e-mails from parents requesting
just that.
With his own sons, 12 and 7, he said he follows a simi-
lar philosophy. He gives them lots of chores and exercise
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to burn off excess energy, and tries not to inadvertently

reward bad behavior—even when it’s cute.
He thinks twice before issuing an edict. Once issued,
there is no room for self-doubt. Kids, like dogs, have a
radar for weakness and will exploit it.
And as with dogs, he believes one firm, memorable cor-
rection is worth a thousand idle threats. In other words,
when you say no, you better mean it. And follow through.
Dogs are easy to figure out; kids, especially your own,
quite another matter. And yet, as Millan and his entourage
pulled out of the driveway, I felt oddly empowered on both
counts.
Gracie looked at me as if to say, “Good riddance! Now
we can get back to normal.” My three children seemed to
be having the same thought.
I leveled my gaze on the dog, then on the kids, and prac-
ticed my best look of quiet confidence. I could almost hear
Cesar whisper: Believe in yourself and they will believe, too.
“Not so fast,” I said.
= December 29, 2006
Skip the Gun,

Try Four-Legged Security
When the kidnapper slipped into 8-year-old Laura Sta-

ples’s bedroom on that Sunday night in 1998, he failed to
consider one important point.
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The Stapleses’ Hatboro home was armed with a power-

ful secret weapon hardwired to prevent just such a crime.
A weapon at once potentially deadly but guaranteed to
never accidentally harm a family member.
The weapon was not a handgun or assault rifle or how-
itzer. It didn’t answer to the name of Glock or Colt or
Ruger.
It answered to the name of Rocky. And it was 120
pounds of finely tuned, rippling-muscled Rhodesian ridge-
back dog.
The intruder flashed a knife and cupped his hand over
Laura’s mouth as her parents, Michael and Joan, slept in
the next room. “She gave it her best fight, but the creep
got the upper hand and started down the stairs with her,”
her father recalled last week.
As the girl struggled helplessly against him, her foot
knocked a picture off the wall.
The noise was not enough to rouse her parents, but it
did awaken Rocky, who had been sleeping on the third
floor—where he wasn’t supposed to be—with Laura’s older
sister, Megan.
The dog charged down the stairs, teeth bared, and
lunged. “The bad guy tried to use Laura as a shield, but
Rocky was too smart for that,” Mike Staples recounted.
“He bit the bastard wherever he could.”
Irrefutable Evidence
The intruder dropped Laura and ran for the door. Rocky
chased him down and clamped his powerful jaws over the
man’s forearm, leaving a gruesome wound that forensic
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Animals 105
experts would later use to tie a suspect arrested nearby to

the crime.
By now, Laura’s screams filled the house, and her father
ran downstairs brandishing a loaded handgun he kept in
the house for self-defense.The bad man was already gone,
and it was a good thing, Staples realized.
His adrenaline was pumping, heart pounding, temples
throbbing. Screams filled the air. Confusion reigned. In
mere seconds, from a dead sleep, he was trying to process
an aborted crime that could have shattered his family for-
ever. Staples, an experienced hunter and shooting enthusi-
ast, was in no shape to be making life-or-death decisions
with a loaded weapon.
“I was out of body. I wasn’t Mike Staples. I was Hulk
Hogan suddenly. I would have had no problem blowing
someone’s brains out,” the father said.
To this day, it unnerves him to think what might have
happened had he, not Rocky, confronted the kidnapper
on the stairs, he holding a gun, the bad guy holding
Laura.
“Had I been in the mix with the gun, bad things could
have happened,” he said. “When you have a 120-pound
dog charging down the stairs at you, there are no hostage
negotiations.”
Eternally Grateful
Eight years have passed since that horrible night. Frankie
Burton, a convicted child molester, was convicted in the
kidnapping attempt and sent to prison for 42 to 118 years.
Laura is 16 now, a junior at Hatboro-Horsham High
School, where she runs cross-country. With the help of
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years of therapy, the psychological wounds are slowly

washing away.
Rocky, an incorrigible bad boy who more than once
was brought home in the backseat of a police car after
breaking loose to romance the female canines of Hatboro,
got steak dinners, a parade, and the 2000 National Dog
Hero Award, given by the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles.
More importantly, he earned his family’s eternal grati-
tude.
Three years ago, veterinarians diagnosed cancer in
Rocky. He died on May 12, 2004, on the night before his
ninth birthday. “The sense of loss, it was unfathomable,”
Staples said. “This dog saved our family. There are no
words to express the emotion or the pain.”
The Stapleses have a new bad-boy dog now. His name is
Junior, and he can often be found sleeping at Laura’s feet.
Staples is a sportsman who is comfortable around guns.
But he thinks his family’s experience serves as a good les-
son for anyone considering buying a weapon for home
protection.
“I’ve thought about the gun thing a lot,” he said. “After
the bad guy, I just locked mine up. Guns don’t work in the
house. A dog is really the best thing. Which is why I tell
everyone I know, don’t get a gun, get a dog.”
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= December 2, 2002
New Scribe:
A Suburbanite Geek
Hey there. I’m the new guy. New to The Inquirer, sort of
new to the area, and with a new column that will appear
here three times a week, focusing on the Pennsylvania
suburbs.
Yeah, I’m one of those geeky suburbanites. When all
my cool friends are attending Center City art openings in
their black Gap tees, I’m out crawling around my front
lawn worrying about the dandelions.
And yes, shame of shame, there’s a minivan parked in
my garage.
My kids are always throwing these ridiculous proposi-
tions at me. The other day, the 9-year-old said: “Dad, if
you won $10 million and could only spend it in one
store, what would it be?”
I thought. And I thought. And the only place I could
think of was . . . Home Depot. Pathetic.
109
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You want to know how I spent a recent weekend? Build-

ing a tree fort. And I’m terrified of heights. I’m 18 feet up in
the air in a swaying—swaying!—tree. I’m trying to hammer
nails while holding on with a white-knuckle death grip.
The kids went inside hours ago.Why am I up here?
And why not the Bulletin?
My bosses want me to introduce myself to you. What
can I say? My dad grew up in Philadelphia’s Germantown
section a block off Chelten Avenue. He still talks about
swimming in the Wissahickon Creek. When I told him I
got this job, he said, “The Inquirer? Why not the Bulletin?
That’s the big-name paper in town.”
Uh, Dad, how can I break this to you?
By the time I came along, we were in Detroit, which is
kind of like Philadelphia without the nice parts. I was
born on 8 Mile Road, right where rapper Eminem’s new
movie was filmed. It would make a great story to tell you
Em and I hung in the ’hood together, but age-wise I’m
closer to Chaucer. And by the time I was potty-trained,
my life in the ’burbs had begun.
Journalism jobs took me from Michigan to Ohio to
Florida and, three years ago, to southeastern Pennsylvania
where I was editor of a gardening magazine. (You can call
there only if you promise not to ask me about your crab-
grass.)
The last few weeks I’ve been wandering around the re-
gion a lot. Man, is this place old. The cemeteries are all
filled with Revolutionary War veterans. Of course, South
Florida, where I spent 12 years, six of them as a newspa-
per columnist, has plenty of Revolutionary War vets, too;
the difference is, they’re still driving.
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This whole place is like a Smithsonian exhibit. Is there

anywhere George Washington didn’t sleep?
I was in New Hope the other night. As far as I can tell,
the newest thing in New Hope is about 200 years old. If
this is New Hope, what is the Old Hope? I guess that
would be Bob.
I see the region’s helpful developers are doing their part
to make sure there’s plenty of new, too. If Philadelphia is
ever invaded, we can rest easy knowing we’ve fortified the
perimeter with Wawas and T.G.I. Friday’s.
Everybody Loves William

But it’s the historic stuff that has me smitten. I keep meet-
ing people who insist their homes were originally deeded
three centuries ago by William Penn. Either that or by
Penn’s old college roommate, Sir Frank Lautenberg.
(There I go exaggerating again. Frank actually bunked
with Lincoln.)
What is the big deal about William Penn, anyway?
And why is everything named after him? I landed here,
too—hauling three goldfish, two frogs, and a heavily se-
dated Labrador retriever, no less—and I don’t see anyone
naming the waterfront Grogan’s Landing.
History is so plentiful around here, it’s almost cheap.The
auto-parts store near my house is in an ancient farmhouse
that in most places would be a museum.The corner tavern
claims to be in its 267th year of continuous service—and,
trust me, the bathrooms are still waiting for their first
cleaning.
I can’t wait to jump in on the local issues. There are
some real doozies.
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This whole listeria thing has me freaked out. I’ve got

listeria hysteria.
The other day, after reading about the latest recall, I
screamed at my wife: “For God’s sake! I gargle with that
stuff every day!”
“That’s Listerine,” she said. “Grogan, you’re an idiot.”
Listerine, listeria, Liz Taylor. Whatever.
= December 24, 2002
Spreading Cheer
the Interfaith Way
A few nights ago, I went in search of true Christmas spirit.

Guess where I found it? On the second level of the King
of Prussia Mall, right in front of the J. C. Penney entrance.
I found it at a counter lined with wrapping paper, rib-
bons, and little Jewish ladies.
The women—and a couple of their husbands—cut,
folded, tucked, and taped at a furious pace, turning mall
purchases into Christmas gifts.
They did it without pay for a holiday they don’t cele-
brate. They did it with cheer and smiles, despite hours on
their feet.
They did it as a mitzvah—a good deed to the commu-
nity. Not only were they helping harried shoppers—most
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of them wrapping-impaired guys like me—with each gift,

they where helping those less fortunate.
As chief gift-wrapper Sandy Heitner put it: “Not one
penny goes to any of us. All the money is donated to
charity.”
The shoppers happily fork over anywhere from $1 to
$8 a gift, depending on size, for the service. Many toss in
generous tips. One man handed the women a $20 bill for
a $6 wrap, and said, “Keep the change.”
Even the tips are donated.
The money will go to local police officers for bullet-
proof vests, to firefighters for hoses, to local libraries, to
senior centers, and to the Red Cross. A local ambulance
squad will get a chunk. So will Upper Merion High
School and the homeless of Montgomery County.
A Pint-Size Dynamo
Heitner, a pint-size dynamo with bifocals perched on her
nose, and her husband, Jerry, have been working on the
annual wrapping project since October, when they began
putting out calls for volunteers. Acting under the auspices
of the Jewish service group B’nai B’rith, the couple hopes
to raise more then $10,000 by the time the booth closes
tonight.
“It’s just like a little store,” she says. “It has to run
smoothly. We have these last-minute customers who want
their gifts wrapped.”
And on my night there, the shoppers lined up with bas-
ketballs and lamps, mirrors and nightgowns, waiting for
the volunteers to work their magic. As one who has been
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there, I could feel the shoppers’ relief. A guy named Mil-

ton looked at me and said simply, “Worth every penny.”
Third-year volunteer wrapper Linda Halpern of Con-
shohocken finds the hapless men amusing, especially the
dad who, amid the luxury shops of King of Prussia, asked
her, “So, where can I find the dollar store?”
Standing beside Halpern was Dan Gross, a retired or-
thopedic surgeon from Chesterbrook, wrapping a gift
with surgical precision—but no sutures. “I’ll try any-
thing,” he said. And the free coffee donated by a food-
court vender isn’t bad, either, he said.
Intense Couple of Weeks

The mall donates the space for the wrapping counter, and
an Allentown company provides discount paper, boxes,
and bows. Each night after the booth closes, the Heitners
tally the day’s take, restock the cupboards, then get on the
phone to line up the next day’s volunteers, not all of
whom are Jewish.
“It is a two and a half week period that is very intense,”
Sandy Heitner said.
Why do they do it? Why fight the mall crowds each
day to wrap gifts for strangers when they can be curled up
in front of the fireplace back home in West Norriton?
Jerry Heitner said it was to remind those who celebrate
Christmas that their Jewish neighbors “are positive, con-
tributing members of the community.” His wife said it is
simply for the good feeling of doing good.
Volunteer Chele Leyva of Chesterbrook, talking as she
spliced paper together to cover a giant karaoke machine,
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Life 115
said there’s something about the wrapping table that

brings out the best in wrappers and shoppers alike.
“You have moments when you ask yourself, ‘Why am I
doing this?’ But, mostly, it’s fun,” she said. “It’s the happy
side of Christmas. People are just so glad you’re doing this.
They’re not yelling at you for cutting in line.”
Actually, it’s much more than the happy side. It’s the
real and meaningful side. A side where people of different
faiths come together in selfless good cheer to help each
other. It’s a side we could all use a little more of.
= December 27, 2002
Weather to Croon
and Swoon Over
I have been waiting half my life for a white Christmas.

On Wednesday, I finally got one.
Bing Crosby, eat your heart out.
True, 12 of my last 15 years were spent in Florida,
where the only white stuff hitting the ground was coming
from the drug couriers’ duffel bags.
But for years before moving to Florida, I saw no
Christmas snow. And after returning north to Pennsylva-
nia three years ago, I still saw none. The last Christmas
here to have even a dusting was in 1998.
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At dawn I awakened to the roar of stampeding hooves

in the hallway. Either Rudolph and his team had taken a
wrong turn or my kids were up.
“Daddy!” the 5-year-old shrieked.“Santa made it snow!”
“Great. Go back to bed.”
As if that was going to happen.
She yanked open the blinds. Outside stretched a vast
canvas of white.
Wow. I was awake.
Being older and wiser, I knew Santa played no role at
all. The real reason was that two days earlier I had finally
washed the salt off my car, which pretty much guaranteed
a major storm.
Different parts of the region got different amounts,
anywhere from a dusting to a dumping. In my microcli-
mate, up on suburbia’s brave northern frontier, big wet
flakes kept falling all day. By the time the smell of roast-
ing turkey filled the house, seven inches had piled up on
the deck.
Snow Driving Wimps

Everyone was bailing on holiday dinner plans. The roads
were just too treacherous. May I say that we’ve all become
a bunch of winter-driving wimps. Back when I was a kid, a
little blizzard never stopped anyone. We’d just crank up the
Model T and off we’d go, a shotgun in the back window in
case we needed provisions along the way. Now, a hint of
frost brings traffic to a screeching halt.
Not that I was complaining. When it comes to relatives
and holidays, I’m firmly in the “less is more” camp.
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My bachelor brother managed to make it in from New

Jersey, bearing gifts of dirty laundry for our washing ma-
chine. We call him Uncle Buck.
As the snow piled up, my kids were so ecstatic they
raced to the computer to play virtual video snowboarding.
“You guys, hello?” I said. “You can do the real thing
outside, you know.”
No response. Not even a glimmer.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
Am I the only father in America who comes with a
mute button?
Eventually, I got their attention and got them outside—
after earning my Ph.D. in snowsuit zipperology. The kids
had fun playing the Let’s Stuff Ice Down Dad’s Shirt game.
The soggy snow was perfect for packing, and soon we
were building a fort that could have stopped a Humvee.
One by one, the kids retreated to the house for hot
chocolate. Eventually it was just Uncle Buck and me. Two
grown men on their knees in the snow, working away to
keep the home front safe from enemy snowball attack.
When was the last time we had played in the snow
together? I’m pretty sure Lyndon Johnson was still
president. I looked at my brother through the falling snow
and saw someone I had not seen for decades—the 12-year-
old boy I had once shared a bedroom with.There was only
one thing to do:Wind up and nail him with a snowball.
Surprise Dinner Guests

My neighbor Steve pulled up with his snowplow. He and
his wife and kids were supposed to be driving to Lower
Bucks for Christmas dinner at the in-laws’. Not in this,

they decided.
We had a turkey and no one to eat with. They had
wine and no one to toast with. Besides, the guy had just
plowed my driveway.
So dinner it was, two families thrown together by the
whimsy of a winter storm that happened to arrive on a
day we call Christmas.
I whipped up my nearly famous gravy. My wife mashed
a few extra potatoes. Uncle Buck spiked the eggnog. And
we had an impromptu party. No expectations, no baggage,
no stress.
After dinner, the kids played in the basement while the
adults assembled toys. Outside, the storm had stopped, en-
sconcing our little world in a pure cocoon of white. Peace
on Earth.
Who knows? Maybe my daughter was right. Maybe
Santa did bring the snow—a simple gift of joy and tran-
quility to a rushed and cynical world.
= January 3, 2003
Boob Eyes Tube While Driving
It’s 5:20 p.m. on a workday, and I am merging onto the

Vine Street Expressway into a wall of traffic. In front of
me, a Ford Escort that looks like an escapee from the sal-
vage yard weaves like a bee.
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Life 119
A weaving car in Philly rush hour? Stop the presses!

But this car catches my eye. The passenger compartment
emanates an odd blue-gray glow, the kind of otherworldly
radiance you might see coming from a spaceship just be-
fore aliens emerge and ask to see your leader. (What? You
mean, you’ve never seen this?)
The glow gets the best of my curiosity. I slip between
two tractor-trailer rigs and pull alongside. This is what I
see: A man watching television.
Not a passenger watching TV. The driver watching TV.
As he merges into traffic. At the height of rush hour.
Earth to aliens: Beam him up, please.
The TV is not some miniature travel model. It’s the real
deal, the kind you might have on your kitchen counter.
And it’s somehow wedged on the dashboard above the
center console where it blocks the better part of the wind-
shield.
Survivor: The Sequel

In my commuting adventures, I have seen a lot: drivers
shaving, applying makeup, tying ties, reading novels, jotting
notes, and, of course, gabbing endlessly on cell phones. I’ve
even seen motorists executing several of these multitasking
feats of skill simultaneously.
But never before have I seen someone turn a car into a
mobile multiplex. What? No Raisinets?
I’m dying to find out what could be such must-see TV
that this upstanding member of the commuting public
would risk his life and everyone else’s around him to watch.
Couldn’t he wait till he was in safer surrounding—say,
while dismantling explosives back in his garage—to tune
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in? I pull beside him again and can almost see what’s on
the screen when—WHOA! Here he comes!
I hit the brakes.The truck behind me hits the brakes.The
13,000 commuters behind the truck hit their brakes. And
over drifts Mr.Teletubby. No blinker. No warning. No clue.
I back off and follow at a safe distance, watching the
glowing Escort wind and weave up the Schuylkill and
onto the Blue Route. I finally lose him at Plymouth Meet-
ing when he peels off on 276 East toward New Jersey.
Where is Tony Soprano when we need him?
I never did find out what my pal was watching. But I’m
pretty sure he had his own private Ralph and Norton
show unfolding right there in the driver’s seat.
If he keeps this up, he’s sure to get his very own show:
Do You Want to Be a Highway Smear?
Crime and Punishment

Later, I talk to State Police Trooper Chris Paris at the Bel-
mont Barracks. This can’t be legal, can it?
Trooper Paris assures me that driving under the influ-
ence of reruns is definitely not legal. Specifically, Title 75,
section 4527 of the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code prohibits
any motor vehicle from having a television mounted “for-
ward of the back of the driver’s seat or otherwise visible to
the driver.”
“If I saw that on the road, I’d pull him over and write
him a ticket,” Paris said.Yes!
And the fine? A whopping $25 ($100 with costs).
Well, it’s the thought that counts.
Trooper Paris wants to stress that looking away for even
a moment—let alone for a half-hour sitcom—can be
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Life 121
deadly. And more of us, he says, are looking away—to dial

cell phones, to eat Big Macs, and, in my case, to try to fig-
ure out what the guy in the next car is watching.
“At 55 mph, you’re traveling 80 feet per second. That’s
the physics of it. And who drives 55 out there?”
No one I know. Anything else?
“Any task that takes away from the driving is a poten-
tially dangerous one.”
OK, trooper, are you about done?
“You are your neighbor’s keeper. By driving carelessly,
not only do you hazard yourself, but you put everyone
else at risk.”
So is this guy a complete moron?
“I would say unwise.”
Trooper, you’re kinder than I am.
OK, Mr. Unwise, here’s a tip: next time you hear the
boob tube’s siren call, do us all a favor. Pull over.
= January 28, 2003
Ditch the Speedo,

and Other Fla.Tips
Look! Up in the sky! What’s that blotting out the sun? Is it

a plane? Is it a blimp? Is it a flock of jumbo-sized Canada
geese?
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No, it’s just the annual migration of the Great North-

ern Pale-Bellied Snowbirds as they flock from their home
range in the Philadelphia region to the fabled winter
thawing grounds of South Florida. Caw! Caw! Caw!
With the temperatures in the Northeast dancing into
the single digits, the southward stream of half-frozen pale-
bellies has reached a frenzied pace.
The signs are everywhere: darkened houses, boarded
pets, piled-up mail, empty offices. Have you tried to find
long-term parking at the airport lately?
The featherless snowbirds are heading south en masse,
some for a few days, some till spring, and I only have one
question: Will the last one out please leave me his long
johns?
Unlike most migratory birds, the Great Northern Pale-
Bellied Snowbird is not protected under federal law, which
makes sense, I guess, considering it’s the only known avian
to fly coach class wearing loud clothing.
I spent 12 years living at ground zero of the annual
invasion—Palm Beach County—observing the pale-bellies
interact, often disastrously, with the native species. I went to
help.
Here’s the first thing snowbirds need to know before
taking flight: Floridians will smile as they take your money,
but make no mistake, they’re laughing at you behind your
back. Snowbird character assassination is a favorite pastime
in the Sunshine State—and there’s no bag limit.
The second thing snowbirds need to know is, balmy
skies and white sand aside, it’s a jungle down there.This is a
place where the T-shirts read:“Don’t shoot; I live here!”
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So I’ve put together these Snowbird Survival Tips to

help my migratory neighbors avoid harm and ridicule
while thawing out:
Leave the Speedo at home. I know it looked buff on
you back when you where training with Mark Spitz, but
time marches on. Snowbirds tend to follow the inverse
rule: the larger the body, the smaller the suit. Buck the
trend and cover up.
Try not to fry. Too many snowbirds assume the vacation
is a bomb unless they return home sporting third-degree
sunburn. The lobster look is a sure giveaway you’re a Great
Northern fly-in. Floridians spend years perfecting their skin
cancer; don’t try to catch up in a week.
Steer clear of seniors. South Florida’s large elderly
population looks harmless enough, but don’t be fooled.
I’ve witnessed seniors duke it out over parking spaces. In
November, a 74-year-old man died from a head injury af-
ter he was slugged during a scuffle in line for movie tick-
ets. The suspect: a 68-year-old.
Don’t become roadkill. Along those same lines, my
advice is to stay off the roads. You think Philly drivers
are out of control? We’re a bunch of Mario Andrettis com-
pared to Florida drivers, many of whom haven’t had a
vision test since Grover Cleveland was president. I’ve seen
drivers plow their cars into swimming pools, store win-
dows, fire hydrants, you name it. Mr. Magoo lives—and he
drives a Buick in Delray Beach.
Speak like a local. Boca Raton, where I used to live, is
pretty high on itself (probably because it has more face-
lifts per capita than any other place on earth). Pronounce
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the town wrong and you are marked for life. So repeat
after me: Boca Ruh-TONE. Not ruh-tahhn. Not ruh-tan.
Ruh-tone. If you really want to impress the locals, simply
say, “Bowh-ka!”
Drop the fib. Don’t call your long-lost relation in Fort
Lauderdale and say, “I’ve really missed you, Cuz.” He’ll see
right through it. All Floridians have had this scam pulled
on them. If you want to show your Florida kin you love
them, visit in August. If you want a free place to stay in
February, try the homeless shelter.
Don’t get lured by the early bird. That great Florida
institution, the early-bird special, offers really bad food at
ungodly hours for unbelievably low prices. The locals
avoid these joints like typhoid. If you want to blend in,
you should, too.
Now go have fun in the sun.
As for me, I’ll be ice fishing.
= February 4, 2003
9/11 Altered Our View of Tragedy
On Saturday morning I was in a high school cafeteria

with 200 other parents from across Southeastern Pennsyl-
vania, receiving judge training for a regional student
competition.
About 9:30, a man with a cell phone in his hand broke
in, whispered something to the speaker, and then an-
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Life 125
nounced in a loud voice, “The space shuttle Columbia ap-

parently has just broken up over Texas.”
At that moment, I realized just how much September
11, 2001, has changed us.
Two hundred people in a room, and this is what we
did: Collectively, momentarily, reeled back. Sucked in a
sharp, short breath. Blinked hard.
A few gasped. One man in back asked for the informa-
tion to be repeated. Another asked how many were
aboard. A woman said, “Oh my God.”
And that was it. We returned to our meeting as if noth-
ing had happened. Our collective shock and grief lasted
all of 90 seconds.
Flash back 17 years and four days. January 28, 1986.
I was a graduate assistant at Ohio State University, teach-
ing editing to a classroom full of second-year journalism
students.
The door opened and a young woman from the stu-
dent newspaper across the hall burst in, visibly shaken.
“The space shuttle just exploded,” she blurted out.
The television went on, the now-famous images of
those errant white plumes in the blue Atlantic sky playing
over and over. Hands covered mouths, eyes welled with
tears, faces turned ashen. We stood frozen for hours, and
our lives remained in lockdown for days as the nation
reeled with shock and grief.
A Changed Landscape
Sitting with those other parents Saturday, the sense of déjà
vu was palpable. And yet, something was jarringly different.
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I was surprised—and slightly appalled—at how quickly

we processed the tragedy, compartmentalized it, and
moved on.
What had taken us weeks to work through after Chal-
lenger took us less than two minutes. Not another word
was spoken about it for the rest of the morning. Speakers
got up and sat down, presentations were made, handouts
distributed, questions asked.
It was as if Columbia had not really been lost. As if what
had been described to us was just a scene from a reality
TV show. Real but not really real.
Our ambivalence surprised but did not shock me. In
the wake of 9/11, the explosion of a space shuttle by no
nefarious design was tragic, certainly, but somehow less so
than what we all now know is possible.
I’m ashamed to admit that almost instantly I worked
the numbers. Seven lost. Seven lives, seven of our best and
brightest. Heroes, gone in a flash. Horribly sad. And yet.
Seven is not 700. Or 7,000.
And yet.
A fatal mishap in the netherworld of Earth’s outer at-
mosphere in a pursuit as inherently risky as space travel is
not terrorists striking ordinary Americans as they go
about the routines of their daily lives.
A Scale of Tragedy
And yet.
Death by nature’s fury is not death by the hand of hu-
man hatred.
On the post–9/11 national-tragedy scale, this one, merci-
fully, fell somewhere less than a 10.That is not to minimize
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the loss, searing and profound, but rather to acknowledge

the context.
We have changed. Our nation has changed. We are
tougher now, harder. Our hearts are no less big, but the
innocence—that optimism and blind belief in goodness
we Americans are so famous for—is tempered.
We have been reminded—in horrible ways—that this
world is a dangerous, unpredictable place, and death can
come at anytime to anyone.
On Saturday night as I watched the Columbia tragedy
unfold on CNN, an announcer broke in with yet another
reminder of life’s fragility: Seven high school students,
children not unlike yours or mine, were buried by an
avalanche in British Columbia. Seven more bright stars
extinguished.
I reeled back. Sucked in a sharp, short breath. Blinked
hard. Then moved on.
= February 10, 2003
Her Shop Corners

Market on Dignity
On the matter of breast cancer, Marguerite Spina tells her

customers, “I’ve been there, done that.”
Thirteen years ago, she was a West Chester wife, a
mom, an auto insurance claims adjuster chugging happily
through life.
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Then she found the lump. “That’s what got the ball
rolling,” she says. It rolled her out of an ordinary life and
into a place no one wants to enter—a world of doctors
and hospitals, chemotherapy, and surgery.
Before it was over, she lost her hair. She lost her left
breast. And when it was time to pick up the pieces and
carry on, she nearly lost her dignity as well.
That’s the part that sticks with her all these years later—
the humiliating ordeal of having to find a wig to cover her
bald head and a silicone breast form to fill the empty spot
beneath her blouse. The sales clerks were uncomfortable
with her, which made her uncomfortable with herself.
One day she found herself alone in a storage room at a
pharmacy, facing a wall full of boxes. It was up to her to sort
through them to find an artificial breast that would fit her.
She decided right then that this was not right. And she
began to dream of a store that specialized in just one
thing: helping women navigate the frightful world of
breast cancer with their dignity intact.
A Better Place to Go
“Women needed a better place to go where they wouldn’t
be treated like second-class citizens,” she says.
Now a ruddy-cheeked, 58-year-old grandmother, Spina
has realized her dream. She owns the Yellow Daffodils Wig
Salon & Post Mastectomy Boutique at 961 Downingtown
Pike.With a name like that, you can bet it doesn’t get many
walk-ins.
Her customers arrive by word of mouth from doctors
and other breast-cancer survivors. They come from all
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around. One woman drove all the way from Long Beach
Island, New Jersey.
The shop is in a converted farmhouse between West
Chester and Downingtown. Open the door and it’s like
stumbling into someone’s family room, complete with
wicker furniture and fresh flowers.
Four of the seven women who work there are cancer
survivors themselves.
“It’s not a job requirement,” Spina says. “It just worked
out that way.”
The women try to keep the mood light and upbeat as
they fit customers with wigs, hats, undergarments, and ar-
tificial breasts. “I’ve had people say, ‘This is the first time
I’ve laughed since this all began,’” Spina says.
But it can be a bleak business.
Her customers have been as young as 12. Just last
month, a 17-year-old with flowing hair was in to buy a
wig in anticipation of her chemotherapy. Most of the
women are in their 40s and 50s.
“You have a lot of women come in here who you
know aren’t going to make it,” she says.
Sadness and Satisfaction

They are the ones you don’t soon forget. A woman with a
brain tumor came for a wig. She told Spina the doctors
had given her two options: take no treatment and live 90
days or undergo radiation and last six months.
“I never saw her again,” Spina says.
And here at Yellow Daffodils, the bell can toll close to
home. Kim Ledgerwood beat cancer several years ago and
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spent the last four years working at the store, where she
become a beloved member of the staff.
Then the cancer returned. “She fought it for a little
over a year,” Spina says. “It just kept spreading.”
Her friend died three weeks ago. She was 46 and left
behind a husband and two sons.
Spina and the other women who work here balance
the sadness with the satisfaction of knowing they are
helping women at a most vulnerable time. There is no
charge for the empathy, listening, and hugs.
“We’ve been in their shoes,” she says. “It’s kind of a
buddy system.”
Averaging just 10 customers a week, Spina doesn’t make a
lot of money at this.“It pays the rent most months,” she says.
But money is not why she is here.
She is here to stand as a beacon of hope for women nav-
igating the darkest passage of their lives. Her very presence
beams a needed message:“We survived it, and so can you.”
= February 11, 2003
Taking a Shot at Buying a Gun
“I want to buy a shotgun,” I said.

The young man at the Wal-Mart sporting-goods
counter didn’t miss a beat. “What did you have in mind?”
he asked, unlocking the gun case.
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His name was Bob, and he sported bleached hair and

baggy, low-slung pants. I asked to see the cheapest shot-
gun he had. Bob pulled out a single-shot, 20-gauge New
England brand with a price tag of $85.
Such a deal. I had come prepared to spend a few hundred.
Bob placed it in my hands. I didn’t try to hide my ig-
norance. “How do you load this thing?” I asked.
He showed me how to break open the barrel, slide in a
shell, click it shut. “Then you’re set to go,” Bob said.
I had come to this Wal-Mart near Quakertown, in Up-
per Bucks County, as a customer to see just how easy—
and fast—it was to buy a weapon.
What brought me here was the suicide of Richard Lee
of Willow Grove.
On February 2, police say, Lee, 25, walked into a Wal-
Mart in Horsham and, after passing an instant background
check, bought a 20-gauge shotgun. He then drove to a
Wal-Mart in Warminster, where he bought shells.
From there, he drove directly to Cavalier Telephone in
Warminster, which had laid him off, and began firing.The
final round, police say, was for himself.
Blessedly, no one was present for the Sunday night
rampage, and Lee was the only casualty. But it doesn’t take
much imagination to picture what could have been had
he arrived during work hours.
No Hard Questions
And so on Friday I went to Wal-Mart to experience first-
hand the safeguards that failed to save Richard Lee from
himself. I sighted briefly down the barrel then said, “OK,
I’ll take it.” I had been at the counter for four minutes.
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I was waiting for Bob to grill me about my inexperience

and motives for wanting a cheap gun. Had I completed a
gun-safety course? Did I have any practice handling firearms?
Instead he asked me for two pieces of identification and
gave me a federal form that asked a series of yes/no questions
intended to root out the unstable and criminally inclined.
Had I ever been convicted of a felony? Ever been the
subject of a restraining order? Any history of domestic
abuse? Mental illness? Drunken driving? Drug addiction?
If I had evil intent, did they really expect me to answer
truthfully?
I handed Bob $2 for the background check and he
phoned in my information to the state police’s Pennsylva-
nia Instant Check database.
Ten minutes later, he returned with a box and packed
my shotgun into it.
“Does this mean I passed?” I asked.
“Yep. No problem,” Bob said.
I asked if I could buy shells for the shotgun, too. Bob
apologized and said store policy did not allow that.
We wouldn’t want people to start shooting until they were
safely out of the store now, would we? If the ammunition re-
striction was meant as a deterrent, it wasn’t much of one.
There was a Kmart across the street that sold ammunition.
On Second Thought
Bob rang up my sale, and I reached for my credit card.
Once I paid, I was free to walk out with my new weapon.
But I didn’t really want this weapon, and at Wal-Mart,
as with other gun shops I checked, all gun sales are final.
No returns; no exchanges.
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And so at the last second, with apologies to Bob for

wasting his time, I pulled the plug on my little experi-
ment and walked out of the store empty-handed. The en-
tire process had taken 27 minutes.
Just for kicks, I drove across Route 309, walked into
Kmart and bought a box of 25 Winchester Super-X game-
load shells for $3.79. No ID required; no questions asked.
On the way home, I wasn’t feeling particularly homici-
dal or suicidal or deranged. But had I been—and had I
not aborted my shotgun sale at the last moment—I would
have been, in Bob’s words, “set to go.”
I later checked with the state police in Harrisburg,
who confirmed that Bob had properly done everything
the law asks of him. Pennsylvania requires no gun-safety
training. No proof of competence. No cooling-off pe-
riod. Not even an overnight delay. Just 27 minutes and
two forms of ID.
That wasn’t enough to stop Richard Lee. And it won’t
be enough to stop the next Richard Lee, either.
= February 21, 2003
Tired of Sales Calls? Try Defense Tactics
Most of us agree that telemarketers are among the lower

life forms on the planet, falling somewhere between mold
and fungi. The only difference is they have better speed-
dialing skills.
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They call at dinnertime, selling time-shares. On Sunday,

selling credit cards. After a birth, selling college funds. Af-
ter a death, selling crypts.
They call. They call. They call.
Government is trying to protect us, but, let’s face it, the
laws of a civilized society don’t mean much to lower life
forms. Since Pennsylvania’s “Do Not Call” law went into
effect November 1, the state attorney general has received
more than 3,000 complaints from people who are still
getting pestered despite being on the no-calls registry.
You might as well politely ask cockroaches to please
not trespass into your cupboard. Sometimes you just need
to reach for the Raid.
I don’t lightly advocate vigilantism, but in our house,
we’ve taken the law into our own hands.
Deception is the key to the Grogan Telemarketing De-
fense System (TDS).
One night, we were reading in bed when the phone
rang. My wife listened for a minute before saying in a
heartbreaking voice, “I’m sorry, but no, my husband can’t
come to the phone. He passed away last night.”
She barely got the words out when—click—the tele-
marketer was on to the next victim. I should have been
thrilled, but I don’t know. She sounded just a little too
gleeful conjuring up my demise. Do I need to be worried?
The Name Game

Like any military operation, a successful TDS relies on
early detection. My wife and I have different last names.
Anyone calling for Mrs. Grogan gets a “Sorry, no one here
by that name.” Click.
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Mangled names are another tip-off. If you don’t want

me hanging up on you, don’t call me “Mr. Gorggins.”
Another important weapon is the classic Three H
Flanking Maneuver.
Three H was developed by my 87-year-old father,
who spent the first 10 years of retirement listening po-
litely to every imaginable come-on before deciding to
fight back.
Three H (Hello, Hello, Hang-up) targets the soft under-
belly of the telemarketers’ primary offensive weapon: the
automatic speed dialer.
These rapid-fire dialers are the telemarketing equivalent
of howitzers. But they have one fatal flaw: A momentary
delay before a live telemarketer can come on the line.
Care to share your technique, Dad?
“You say, ‘Hello? Hello?’ And, if no one answers, hang
up immediately.”
Personally, I’m a disciple of Secretary of State Colin
Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force. This usually in-
volves letting my 6-year-old daughter answer the phone.
Telemarketer: “Is John Gorggins there?”
Colleen: “Santa brought me a Barbie Bake Oven for
Christmas.”
And she’s off and running for the next 20 minutes, de-
tailing her secrets to cupcake success while steadfastly re-
fusing to hand over the phone.
She wears them down every time.
Could You Speak Up?

My other secret weapons are my two sons, the aspiring
musicians. One is learning trumpet, the other violin.
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They like to practice at the same time. In the same

room. In different keys.This fools our two dogs into think-
ing that a cat is being tortured in the immediate vicinity,
which sets them to barking ferociously.
Adults who have been in our house during rehearsal ask
how we stand it. But I just drink it in, grinning maniacally,
one hand on the phone, daring a telemarketer to call.
Go ahead, pal; make my day.
I’ll admit, this tactic probably violates the Articles of the
Geneva Conventions, but you do what you must.
Of course, blunt honesty works, too.
A couple of months ago, a seriously perky woman
called to try to sell me a condo in “New York City’s excit-
ing theater district.” I cut her off.
“Reality check,” I said. “I’m a guy with three kids, two
dogs, three pet chickens, and a mortgage that rivals the gross
national product of Lithuania. My wife and I consider it a
red-letter weekend if we can sneak out alone to the Wawa to
buy milk.Then there’s the college funds. Do you know—”
Click.
And, gee, I was just getting started.
= April 8, 2003
Burning the Flag as an Act of Love
The sun was sinking beneath the horizon, a chill in the

air, when I led my children into the backyard to burn the
American flag.
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It was not an act of anger or rebellion or defiance. Far

from it.
Our family’s flag was a simple nylon affair, the kind you
can pick up for ten bucks at any hardware store. We
would haul it out on Memorial Day and the Fourth of
July and sometimes just for fun. Truth be told, it had be-
come less patriotic symbol than garden accent. I liked the
way it looked hanging off the back deck above the roses
and daisies. My wife and I tried to remember to bring it
in at night; but for long stretches, it stayed out around the
clock, rain or shine.
Over the years, it faded, then frayed, and finally shred-
ded. The last time we had it out—in those dark days after
September 11, 2001—a stiff breeze finished it off, ripping
it into a series of sad ribbons. I simply rolled the tattered
remains around the flagpole and propped it in a corner of
the garage.
I knew that was no way to treat the American flag, this
proud symbol of freedom and sacrifice; and I promised
myself to get around to disposing of it properly. But in a
busy suburban life of yard work, home repairs, and soccer
matches, it became a low priority.
What It Stood For

As the weeks turned to months, the old, shredded flag
gnawed at me. I began to think about what it really stood
for and how many Americans had laid their lives at its feet
these 200 years and more.
How many had died on September 11 simply for living
beneath its banner. How many continue to fight and die
in its name today.
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In the face of this new, changed world, there was not

much I could do, but I could make right by that old flag.
So on a crisp, clear evening, with a firmament of stars
awakening above as if to bear witness, I called my sons,
ages 9 and 10, into the garage, and together we gently un-
clipped our old flag from its pole and folded its shredded
remains as best we could into a tight triangle. A former
Boy Scout, I had once been quite adept at folding the
American flag. But it had been years since I had bothered.
It took me a few tries to get it right.
I gave the folded flag to my older boy to carry, and we
made our way to the back corner of the yard where the
fire circle sits. The boys gathered kindling from beneath
the pines. Soon we had a small blaze that we fed with
walnut and maple branches until the flames jumped
cheerfully into the night.
Seeing the glow, two neighbor boys walked over and
joined us. I told them what we were about to do and ex-
plained why.
Moment of Silence
Without prompting, one of the boys asked,“Should we have
a moment of silence?” And we all agreed that this would be
a good idea. We stood there for a minute or more, the only
sound the crackling of the burning hardwood.
Children will sometimes surprise you. This night was
one of those times. Again without prompting, one of the
boys placed his right hand over his heart and began: “I
pledge allegiance to the flag . . .”
And the rest of us joined in. “ . . . of the United States
of America . . .
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Life 139
“And to the Republic for which it stands . . .

“One nation under God . . .
“Indivisible . . .
“With liberty and justice for all.”
I took the flag from my son’s arms and nestled it into
the burning logs. The flames immediately leapt as the
nylon caught fire, and we watched in silence as the Stars
and Stripes curled up and disappeared into ashes.
Tattered and worn, this humble flag of ours had graced
our home in good times and in very bad times, in joy and
in deepest sorrow, in pride and in anguish. It had seen ba-
bies arrive and Americans die. Now, however belatedly, it
was officially, properly retired.
We stood in a circle for a long time, the boys, normally
rambunctious and silly, saying nothing. The orange light
of the fire shone on their sweet faces. As much as I tried
not to, I found myself thinking about—and hoping
against—the war they someday might be called to fight.
Eventually, my younger son spoke. “Dad, will we get
another flag?”
“You bet,” I said.
= June 27, 2003
In Healing,
Reminder of Life’s Final Hurt
As dozens of my colleagues hunkered down with Ameri-

can troops in the Iraqi desert, I was embedded in a life-
and-death struggle of an entirely different kind.
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My post was a Bucks County nursing home, and the

war I witnessed over a six-week period was against that
insidious enemy known as age.
Let me tell you, like all wars, this one is hell.
What brought me to the nursing home was not jour-
nalistic curiosity but medical necessity. Two herniated
disks in my neck sent me in search of a physical therapist.
I found a good one who practiced in rented space in the
nursing home’s basement right beside a small beauty par-
lor where, each morning, old women caused a traffic jam
of wheelchairs as they maneuvered to have their hair set.
Three mornings a week, I arrived for traction and exer-
cise. Several of my fellow patients were just like me, in the
words of the physical therapist, “40-something guys who
still think they’re 20.” Middle-age men who stupidly
overdid it and hurt themselves.
Yep, that would be me.
But we were the clear minority. Most of the therapist’s
patients were residents from upstairs. Starting at 8:30 each
morning, attendants in bright floral smocks would begin
arriving with them. Some came with canes, some with
walkers. Most arrived in wheelchairs.
They were stiff and weak and achy—and very old, in
the final pages of the long books that are their lives. The
physical therapist wasn’t pretending to fix them. His job
was simply to help them make it through each remaining
day a little more comfortably.
Over the weeks, I got to know several of them and the
world they inhabit. It is a world most of us breeze past
unnoticed as we go about our lives. A world of empty
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hours and countless days, not unpleasant but without fu-

ture, where the only checkout is death.
There was Anna, a birdlike woman with a thin wisp of
white hair, who rolled in with her arm in a sling from a
fall.The therapist and his 24-year-old assistant tried to en-
gage her, get her to do a few light exercises. She would
have nothing to do with it.
“Why am I here?” she asked.
“We’re going to work on that arm,” he said.
“Why can’t I hear what you say?”
The therapist let the question slide, but she asked it
again, this time more urgently. He knelt before her, his
face close to hers, and said loudly but gently, “I think it’s
age-related, Anna.”
There was chubby, cheery Sue, who each morning lay
on a low table, struggling to lift her hips a few inches into
the air. One day, she smiled sweetly at me and volun-
teered: “My mother always told me, ‘Never get old.’”
Then she paused, and the smile slipped from her lips.
Somehow it hadn’t worked out that way.
Across the room was Doris, hooked to an oxygen tank
and dressed improbably in purple high heels. Her mission
was to get out of her wheelchair without help. She rocked
to build momentum. “One, two, three. Up you go,” the
assistant coached cheerfully. Doris tried and tried again.
“I just can’t do it,” she said.
And, saddest of all, there was Violet, who by all appear-
ances had given up. Her job was to tug a rope through a
pulley. But she just let the braided cord slip from her life-
less hands.
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The therapist admonished: “Come on, Violet. What’s

going on with you? Show me you still have something in
your body to work with.”
But Violet was done. Checked out. She sat, gazing
blankly ahead.
On my last day, I arrived to find the place nearly empty.
All of my elderly friends were missing, and for a brief,
sudden second I was filled with sadness. Had their time
come? All at once?
But after a few minutes, in they wandered: Doris, still
on her oxygen but this time in more sensible shoes; Anna,
her bruises turning yellow; always cheerful Sue; rail-thin
Ray. And poor Violet.
As they struggled with their routines, wincing and
groaning, the young assistant working the muscles in my
neck, lowered her lips near my ear, and whispered her
confession.
“God, I hope I never get old.”
= August 12, 2003
Phones Driving Us
to Distraction
Not long ago, I was a cell-phone virgin. I didn’t own one

and didn’t want one. I had a phone at work and a phone
at home, and that was as in touch with the world as I
wanted to be.
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My idea of getting wired was gulping a double espresso,

not signing my life away to Cingular.
In those B.C. (Before Cell) days, I made sport of ridi-
culing the self-important chatterbox slaves who were
convinced the world would stop—screech to a crashing
halt—if they were out of touch for one solitary second.
I watched them droning on at restaurants, malls, ball-
games, picnics—and wondered what on earth they were
finding to jabber about.
Now I’m one of them, a cell-phone convert. And
I wonder no more. How I ever got along without one
of these things I’ll never know. Equipped with my mo-
bile communicator, I feel like Spock on a Star Trek
episode.
But, like almost everyone else who owns a cell phone,
I have a problem. I can’t resist using mine—to check voice
mail, talk with my editors, return messages—as I hurtle
down the expressway in a two-ton steel box at frightening
speeds.
As though Philadelphia’s crowded roads don’t have
enough headaches already, they’ve now been invaded by
vast armies of mobile goofus gabbers. To which I say: Re-
porting for duty, sir!
That Vision Thing

My favorite soldiers in this assault are the members of the
bifocals brigade (of which I am a recent inductee).You see
them swerving at you in traffic, with one hand on the
steering wheel, the other hand holding their cell phones
out at full arm’s length as they squint quizzically at the
keypad, trying to read the tiny numbers.
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We chatty commuters are checking blind spots, passing,

and merging into rush hour—all while yammering away
about the minutiae of our lives.
If you see us coming, look out, because we won’t be
looking out for you.
At least when we run each other off the road, we can
dial 911 before the wreckage even comes to rest.
Do you think this is what AT&T had in mind when it
told us to reach out and touch someone?
A first-ever study of driving habits by the University of
North Carolina paints a sobering picture of how dis-
tracted motorists have become. The study videotaped
drivers in metro Philadelphia and in North Carolina and
found that 30 percent talked on cell phones as they drove.
The average driver took 13 seconds to dial a cell phone.
At 60 miles per hour, that means the car traveled nearly a
quarter mile with the driver looking down at the phone.
Oh my.
The study found that 40 percent of drivers read or
write behind the wheel, usually while stopped. What is
this, community college?
An additional 46 percentage groom themselves as they
drive, and a whopping 71 percent bring new meaning to
the term fast food, eating or drinking as they zoom
along. Rule me guilty on that last count. If I add any
more selections to my front-seat buffet, I’ll need a lunch-
wagon license.
A Close Shave
In my daily commutes, I’ve seen it all: Women applying
makeup; men using electric shavers; couples mashing.
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I even know a guy who claims to play guitar while

driving.You will note that a guitar requires two hands to
play, which leaves approximately no hands to steer with.
In his own defense, my friend says he serenades the dash-
board only while cruising down lonely stretches of road.
Well, why didn’t you say so, Elvis?
All this distraction comes at a cost to human safety. As
The Inquirer’s Marian Uhlman reported last week, it is to
blame for roughly a quarter of all car accidents, according to
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates.
That’s a lot of distraction.
I must confess, since getting my cell phone, I some-
times glance up mid-conversion and have no idea how I
got where I am: One second I’m in Baltimore, the next
I’m entering Chester. Hey, what happened to Delaware?
So, my fellow crazed commuters, whaddaya say? Shall
we try regulating ourselves before the government kindly
does it for us?
Here’s a place to start: I promise not to call you from
the road if you promise not to call me.
= August 25, 2003
Hey, Ever Hear of an Ashtray?
Dear Drive-By Smoker:

You don’t know me, but I know you.
I was driving behind you in rush hour on the Blue
Route a couple of Fridays ago.
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You remember the drive, don’t you? Traffic was moving

at a crawl through a steady rain.
As we inched along in a sea of red brake lights, I had
plenty of time to watch you. It wasn’t your driving that
caught my eye. It was your cigarette.
There was something about the way you held it outside
your window, protected from the rain by your cupped hand.
There was something about the way you brought it into
your new car interior just long enough to draw a quick in-
hale. Something about the way you cocked your head up to
blow the smoke back out the open window and the way
you stretched your arm out every half minute to flick the
ashes as far as possible from your new Toyota 4Runner.
I could tell you didn’t want to stink up your sweet ride.
Couldn’t blame you; I wouldn’t, either.
But your smoking fastidiousness made me uneasy. I had
a bad feeling about where that cigarette butt was going to
end up.
“He’s not,” I wondered aloud, “going to toss that thing
out the window, is he?”
Cars have ashtrays for a reason. Americans smoke more
than 400 billion—yes, billion—cigarettes a year, according
to the Department of Agriculture, nearly all of them filtered.
A Long, Ugly Legacy

Those cigarette filters may look like biodegradable cot-
ton, but they are actually made of stubborn plastic fila-
ments that can take years, even decades, to break down.
Every year, hundreds of millions of these butts are
mindlessly flicked out car windows, off patios, over rail-
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Life 147
ings, into gardens and, of course, onto beaches where tod-

dlers gravitate to them like candy.
Not only do they become semipermanent additions to
the landscape, but the poisons they are designed to trap also
slowly leach out and find their way into streams and lakes.
Charming, huh?
So, you see, Drive-By Smoker, I was worried about that
butt of yours. One butt may seem like no big deal, but
multiply it by 100 million and you have an environmental
hazard.What would you be? Part of the problem or part of
the solution?
I watched as you pulled the smoldering butt back into
the car for one long, last drag. The moment of truth had
arrived. Would you snuff it out in your car’s spotless ash-
tray? Or would you make the world your ashtray?
I wanted to believe in you. Not all smokers are inconsid-
erate slobs, right? I’ve met smokers who are so conscientious
they carry small metal canisters in their pockets to hold their
butts until they reach a trash can. But they’re the exception.
Many smokers, it seems, have convinced themselves
that a few billion cigarette butts littering the roadsides of
America are no big deal. Each individual butt is so small,
it doesn’t really count as littering, does it?
I particularly love the smokers who conscientiously use
their ashtrays, but then, once full, dump them in public
parking lots. Pigs. Total pigs.
Not a Bad Person

I caught your face in profile a couple of times.You looked
like a pretty decent sorta guy who works hard, pays his
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taxes, maybe coaches Little League. A guy who suffers

through rush hour to get home to his family in the sub-
urbs in time for dinner.
You looked like the kind of person who would not
consider for a moment tossing a soda can or bag of fast-
food debris out your car window.
And yet here you were with a cigarette butt poised in your
hand. I watched as you expertly balanced it between your
thumb and forefinger and slowly exhaled your final puff.
And then, with a graceful flick, you sent that butt arc-
ing through the dusk and onto the shoulder of the high-
way, where it sat in a puddle of rainwater.
On behalf of all of us who will live with this little testa-
ment to your slovenly thoughtlessness for the next 25
years, I’d like to thank you. On behalf of the fish and birds
and animals. On behalf of the plants and soil and water.
On behalf of all our children and grandchildren. Thank
you for the gift that keeps on giving.
= September 9, 2003
Letting Go of the
One That Got Away
Regrets. Every life has them, some more than others.

Lately, I have had just one: the home that got away.
I saw it on my first day of house hunting in Southeast-
ern Pennsylvania, stumbling serendipitously upon it as if
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Life 149
led by divine compass. I took a wrong turn and then an-

other, and soon I was hopelessly lost on a stripeless coun-
try lane. I followed the lane down a steep hill and through
a stand of hardwoods.
And there it was.
Standing close against the trees in a meadow that hadn’t
been mowed, its limestone walls glowing in the morning
sun—an 1840s farmhouse. A glorious, lovely farmhouse
with deep windowsills, a slate roof, and a porch from which
you could imagine the original owners waving farewell as
their sons trudged off to defend the Union.
It sat on five rolling acres with a spring and a view. And
there was a for-sale sign out front. Gulp!
This was the place my wife and I had dreamed of. The
garden could go here, the chicken coop there. Best of all,
a tiny stone cottage, which I later learned was the original
homestead, still stood on the edge of the property—a
writing studio waiting to happen.
I was soon back with my wife and a real estate agent.
She pushed open the front door, and our hearts sank.
The Money Pit

Walls were caved in. Floors scarred. Ceilings buckled.
Loose wiring hung from the rafters. The kitchen was
missing in action. A hot plate and dirty dishes on the toi-
let told us where the cooking now was done.
Suddenly I knew why the house was in our price
range. Everywhere we looked we saw work—and bills.
The plumbing, the wiring, the plaster, the chimney, the
heating, the cellar all required overhauls.Tens of thousands
of dollars were needed just to make it habitable, and tens
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of thousands more—and hundreds of hours of our time—

if it were ever to reclaim its charm.
And still, after a brief ashen silence, my wife and I be-
gan plotting.
“This wall could come out,” I said.
“The kitchen could go here,” she said.
Our agent stood quietly. She had seen it all before. The
young couples with big dreams and the way these stone
seductresses lured them in, chewed them up, and spat
them out, broke and broken.
Finally, she frowned and said: “You have three young
children and a new job. In good conscience, I cannot let
you buy this place.” She knew the score. We could barely
afford the asking price, let alone the needed renovations.
And I wasn’t exactly Bob Vila.
Still, we dithered.We agonized.We wrote up a five-year
work plan. In the end, we followed our agent’s advice and
bought a sensible, suburban two-story with maintenance-
free vinyl siding and a new furnace.
And lived happily ever after.Well, almost. It was just our
luck that we became close friends with the people next
door to the old farmhouse. Every time we visited, we
were reminded of our choice. For months, the house
stood empty, and we felt only relief. We congratulated
ourselves for not stumbling into that sorry quagmire.
A Vision Realized
But then a young couple bought the place and began
doing everything we had dreamed of doing.They mowed
down the weeds, raised a barn, dug a pond, erected a split-
rail fence.
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Life 151
Then one day at dinner at our friends’, we met them.

And they invited us over to see the inside. We could not
believe it was the same house. Walls had been moved, the
plaster repaired and painted, the plank floors refinished, a
new kitchen installed.
We gushed about the wonderful job they had done.
But I saw it behind my wife’s smile, and she saw it behind
mine. Inside, we were aching.
It was our house just as we had imagined it. But it
wasn’t ours. It was the one we let get away. Regrets.
I wanted to begrudge this couple their trophy. Quite
honestly, I wanted to hate them. But they were much too
nice for that. I had to admit they possessed what I did
not: the energy, skill, creativity and, most important, faith
in their vision to pull it off.
Yes, and the money, too.
Where I saw nothing but heartache, they saw limitless
potential.
They deserve their trophy manor. And I’m learning to
love my consolation prize, vinyl siding and all.
= October 7, 2003
Haunting Glimpse at a Stranger’s Life
A month has passed, and still she haunts me.

From vastly different worlds, we came briefly together—
a middle-aged, white man from the suburbs and a young
black woman from the projects.
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We never even said our names.

I was driving into the faded Western Pennsylvania steel
city of Johnstown on assignment—and was lost.
I exited the expressway to ask directions and found myself
amid several low-slung brown buildings—a subsidized hous-
ing project.Young men stood about in groups, killing time.
On a street corner near them, a wisp of a girl stood alone.
She wore her hair in a short, stubby ponytail, and the
wire-framed glasses perched on her nose gave her the
look of a schoolgirl. I rolled down my window and asked
how to get downtown.
She began to try to direct me, and then she stopped
and looked at the sky as if trying to solve a riddle.
“You know what?” she said. “I’ve been standing here
for an hour waiting for the bus, and if I don’t get down-
town in the next half hour, I’m sunk.”
“Can I have a ride?”
Could she have a ride? In the seconds that ticked by be-
fore I answered, I thought of a hundred reasons why, no,
she could not.
We were strangers. She didn’t know if she could trust me.
I didn’t know if I could trust her. She was just a kid. In 2003,
young women do not get into cars with strange men,do they?
And men of honorable intent don’t allow them to, do they?
The Whiff of Impropriety

And there was the appearance. Older guy pulls up along-
side much younger woman on street corner; she leans in,
then gets in. I could just see myself explaining it to the
vice detail waiting around the corner.
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Life 153
Everything said no. And yet something about this

young woman told me she really needed this ride. “I
could show you the way,” she offered.
I hesitated one last moment, then blurted out, “Sure.
Hop in.”
Before I could clear the junk off the front passenger seat,
she slid into the backseat. And I knew from her expression
that this was a defensive move—the farthest seat from my reach.
“Late for work?” I asked as we drove off through the
stares of the idle young men. But there was no job.
She was 20 years old and the single mother of a 16-
month-old daughter. She needed to get to the courthouse
before it closed, she said, or else the baby’s father would
be going to jail for failing to pay child support.
“I need to tell them he’s a good man,” she said. “He’s a
good dad.”
A good dad leaves her to raise this child alone? She said
putting him in jail would solve nothing.
She told me she had grown up in Erie as a ward of the
state, being bounced from one foster home to the next.
The day she turned 18 was the day she struck out on her
own with dreams of building a better life.
Flight to Nowhere
“Why Johnstown?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Because it wasn’t Erie,” she answered.
Soon she was pregnant. By 19, she was a mother, alone
no more but with no way to support herself and her child
except for government assistance. How differently life
might have turned out for her, I wondered, had she been
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dealt the basic hand every child deserves: a stable home

and loving parents.
What if someone had believed in her worth and let her
know it? What might she be now?
A college student? An apprentice in a trade? A woman
on the first rung of her career? Perhaps she would be
something other than on public assistance facing an uphill
battle to avoid repeating for her daughter the same
poverty and dependency she herself was born into.
I pulled in front of the courthouse, and she opened the
car door.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said.
As much as you can like someone after 20 minutes, I
liked her. I wanted to tell her that it was not too late to
reach for her dreams. She was 20 years old with her whole
life ahead of her. She could still make something better of
it. I wanted to tell her she owed it to her daughter to try.
What I said instead was. “Good luck.” And I meant it.
She smiled, then loped across the street and through the
big courthouse doors with nine minutes to spare.
= January 20, 2004
Let No Chip Put This Vow Asunder
I waited until the kids were on the school bus before I

confronted my wife by the coffeemaker and said: “Honey,
I have a confession to make.”
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Life 155
She looked at me with that nervous grin she gets when

bracing for the worst.
“I cheated,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I can’t believe this,” she said.
It was true. I had violated our shared vow of carbohy-
drate celibacy and low-fat fidelity. I had strayed from our
joint diet—straight into the crunchy embrace of a bag of
Doritos. I wish I could say I didn’t enjoy it, but I did. Each
bite was pure bliss.
Believe me, I’m not proud of myself.
As my wife pointed out, we had a deal, struck during a
calorie-crazed vacation to Disney World over Christmas.
“This is it,” I said as we polished off chocolate-covered ice
cream bars outside Space Mountain.“When we get home,
we’re going on a diet.”
My cheapskate gene had finally trumped my chowhound
gene. I either had to drop 10 pounds and a couple of inches
or replace my wardrobe.
Jenny is lanky by design. But she, too, has noticed that
one of the many charming aspects of rounding the halfway
point to 90—along with those stylish Grandpa Walton bi-
focals and an utter inability to stay awake through the 11
o’clock news—is that calories no longer burn themselves
into oblivion as they once did.
Till Chips Do We Part

“I’m in,” she said. And right then we exchanged our
vows. We would support and encourage each other, on
good weigh-in days and bad, in fullness and in hunger,
through cake cravings and linguine lusts.
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Many of our friends were on low-carbohydrate diets,

and, frankly, it didn’t sound all that tough.You still got to
eat all the good stuff like steak and ham. All you were
cutting out were the things that went around them—the
rice and pasta and breads and sweets. How hard could
that be?
New Year’s Day came, and we launched our diet by
dropping in on our friends Mike and Patti for an im-
promptu pizza-and-beer party. “Here’s to our new low-
carb diet!” I toasted.
The next day, we got another invitation for pizza and
beer. “Tomorrow, we start for sure.” I vowed. And we did.
Life knows no joy like opening the day with runny eggs
without toast washed down with unsweetened coffee. My
children taunted me by gnawing on huge, doughy bagels.
By dinner (a chicken breast with salad), I was so crazed
for carbs I nearly tackled my son as he carried a bowl of
macaroni to the table. That night I dreamed of bread and
butter.
By Day 3, I was fantasizing about being locked over-
night in a bakery. On Day 7, I looked out the window
and saw plates of steaming rigatoni floating by. On Day 9,
I said to Jenny: “My wardrobe needs updating, anyway.”
And on Day 10, I spotted the Doritos.
Surrendering to Desire
The bag lay on top of the refrigerator, wantonly open,
barely folded over. O, be still my low-carb cheatin’ heart!
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Life 157
I stepped closer. The bag’s siren call filled my ears,

seeming to say: “You know you want me.” I knew I did.
My arm, of its own volition, reached up.
“Look away from the chips!” my dieting partner
barked. Busted.
But it was only a matter of time. In my heart, I had al-
ready strayed. For the next couple of days I searched for
excuses to walk past the refrigerator, shooting furtive
glances up at the little home-wrecker.
Jenny and I had each lost a few pounds. The diet was
working. But at what cost? Was a life without bread and
pie and chips and beer—did I mention no beer?—worth
living?
And so, I did it. Late that night, when everyone was
asleep, I lit into the bag. Just one chip, I promised. Then it
was two. Then three. Soon I lost count.
The next day, a few hours after my confession, my wife
called me at work. “I just ate popcorn,” she said. “With
butter.”
“Oh, that is so like a woman,” I seethed.“One little lapse
on your husband’s part and you’re dragging home Orville
Redenbacher.”
Eventually, we worked things out. The joint diet is
holding—by a thread. It may take counseling, but I think
we’re going to get through this.
And you know what? Our marriage will be stronger
for it. Assuming, of course, a warm loaf of bread doesn’t
show up at the door anytime soon.
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= February 23, 2004
He Helps Iraq’s Children

and America’s Cause
Until a little more than a year ago, Thomas Murt was just
another suburban dad.
He coached youth sports for his three children’s teams
and taught catechism at St. David’s Catholic Church in
Willow Grove.
He was an Upper Moreland Township commissioner
and made his living as an academic adviser at Pennsylvania
State University’s Abington campus. Life was comfortable.
Then on January 24, 2003, the fax machine in his office
rattled out a slip of paper that would change everything.
Murt’s Army Reserve unit was being sent to Iraq. Less
than 24 hours later, he was on a plane to Fort Drum, New
York, and within weeks found himself on the ground in
Saddam Hussein’s volatile hometown of Tikrit. “He was
gone before we really had a chance to say goodbye,” his
wife, Maria, said.
It was there in the desert sands that this man’s ordinary life
took a turn for the extraordinary. On his own, he has infor-
mally adopted hundreds of impoverished Iraqi children—and
in so doing he is helping the United States win its biggest bat-
tle of all, the battle for the trust of the Iraqi people.
Staff Sargent Murt, 43, who resigned his elected Upper
Moreland post when he was deployed, was assigned to
serve as a bodyguard and driver for his company com-
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Life 159
mander. He also provided security for civil-affairs mis-

sions into the countryside, which included the rebuilding
of local schools.
The frequent forays into remote villages gave him an
up-close look at what life was like for thousands of ordi-
nary Iraqis, nearly all of them living in abject poverty. The
children especially moved him. Most had no schoolbooks
or pencils, nor even a sweater or single pair of socks to see
them through the cold winter.
Murt has always had a soft spot for children in need. His
wife, who has been managing the family home for more
than a year now as a single parent, remembers the couple’s
1989 honeymoon to Grenada. Without telling her, Murt
brought along two large suitcases filled with clothing and
toys for children at a local orphanage.
“It’s just always been part of him,” she said.
Now in Iraq, Murt saw a whole new level of need. And
he got an idea. His coworkers and neighbors had been
sending him boxes of toiletries and gifts to share with his
fellow soldiers.
He appreciated the outpouring but felt the generosity
could be better directed. So he sent e-mails to everyone
he knew, with photos of the Iraqi children he had be-
friended, asking them instead to send old clothing, toys,
costume jewelry, and school supplies.
“Many of the things we take for granted in the U.S. are
great luxuries here,” he wrote.
From around Upper Moreland and Willow Grove and
Hatboro, the community responded, and boxes of do-
nated goods began to roll in. Dozens of boxes, shipped by
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domestic mail to Fort Drum, then aboard military trans-

port planes to Iraq, all addressed to Murt, “He was well
known at the [base] mail room,” his wife said.
His coworkers at Penn State Abington sent 35 boxes.
Boy Scout Troop 336 in Willow Grove collected 935
pounds of school supplies. At St. David’s, Sister Rita, the
principal, put out the call for children to scour their toy
chests.
Pete’s Barber Shop in Hatboro got in on the act. So did
many neighbors. Annie Gleave, who works at the Hatboro
post office and took a lead in organizing donations, said
Murt’s photos of shoeless Iraqi children touched her.
“It’s made me see what’s really important in life,” she
said.
And Murt said the community’s outpouring, in turn,
has touched the Iraqi children and their families. Many
now consider the Americans their friends.
“By working with the children and villagers, we have
a golden opportunity to teach them that we are not
their enemy,” wrote Murt, who hopes to be home in the
next six to eight weeks and asks that no more donations be
sent.
And isn’t that where victory lies? One soldier, one
community winning over a country one child at a time.
Said Upper Moreland resident Kathy Rusch, who was
involved in the donation drive: “With Tom, this is not an
unusual thing. This is how he lives his life. He is just one
of those people who gives a damn.”
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= March 11, 2004
TV Weather Is a Flurry of Hysteria
As I watched from my kitchen window yesterday morn-

ing as a few snowflakes drifted down, melting as they
touched the pavement, a terrifying chill ran through me.
Not another one, I thought. Not another flashback to
the winter that will live in infamy. No, it wasn’t the sea-
son’s weather that had me unwound.The weather was just
fine, actually on the wimpy side for Pennsylvania.
It was the television news coverage of the weather that
left me quaking. This was the year of the hysterical “We
all could die!” winter-storm alert.
No matter how modest the dusting outside, you could
turn on any of the local television stations and hear some-
thing that went like this:
(Dramatic music plays; a video montage shows howling
blizzard conditions, the likes of which have not been seen
in this region for years.)
We interrupt this program for a special storm advisory.
Anchor Brent Blowdried: Well, folks, this is what all of
us have been dreading. What just might be the storm of
the century may be heading our way, bringing with it the
possibility of death, destruction, mayhem, and indescrib-
able heartbreak.
Co-anchor Brenda Bigteeth: That’s right, Brent. This
could be one for the record books. Our team coverage be-
gins right now at the base of the Walt Whitman Bridge
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where reporter Bunny Snowsuit is standing by. Bunny,

what can you tell us?
Snowsuit: We now have confirmed sightings of at least
seven—I repeat, seven—snowflakes sticking to the bridge
behind me. And we understand they’re whoppers! If this
keeps up, commuters could have one hellish drive ahead
of them in the morning. Back to you, Brent and Brenda.
Blowdried: Chilling stuff, Bunny. It sounds like the best
bet is for folks to just stay home and stay tuned right here
to the Storm Advisory Center.
Snowsuit:That’s right, Brent. Unless you absolutely must
venture out, we’re urging everyone to stay off the roads—
and stay glued to this station for the latest developments.
Bigteeth: Good advice, Bunny. And now to give a his-
torical perspective on just how tragic severe winter storms
can be for those who venture out, national correspondent
Alexa Alarmista has prepared this report.
Alarmista: Brenda, I’m standing here at the Donner
Pass, where in 1846 dozens of westbound commuters met
slow, agonizing deaths in a snow-choked mountain pass
not unlike our own Schuylkill Expressway.
Bigteeth: And do I understand some actually resorted
to cannibalism?
Alarmista: Sadly, that’s true, Brenda. Another good rea-
son to stay home and stay glued to our live coverage. I’m
Alexa Alarmista, reporting live from the Donner Pass.
Blowdried: Well, we certainly don’t want a repeat of
that here in Greater Philadelphia. Thank you, Alexa, and
stay safe out there.
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Life 163
Bigteeth: Alexa will be back at 11 with her next install-

ment: “Avalanches—What You Need to Know.”
Blowdried: Our team coverage continues with con-
sumer reporter Dennis Dumbdown, who is standing by
live at the Sparkle Car Wash in Bucks County with a
helpful snow-safety tip.
Dumbdown: With me here is Langhorne resident
Shirley Yoojest who has survived years of winter storms
by using her wits. Shirley is going to demonstrate for us a
snow-survival technique that could save your life.
Yoojest (tapping foot against side of car):Well, basically, I
always make a point to knock the snow off my boots be-
fore I get in my car. Some people wait until they’re already
in their car.
Dumbdown: And by then it could be too late! That
harmless boot snow could be transformed in a heartbeat
into a potential killer: brake-pedal black ice!
Blowdried: Fascinating stuff.We now turn to meteorol-
ogist Alfie “Mudpuddle” Dorkman with the latest Hype-
U-Weather Forecast.
Dorkman: Clouds, clouds everywhere, people. Don’t be
lulled into complacency by the dry pavement. By morn-
ing, all bets could be off.
Bigteeth: Mudpuddle, am I hearing you say that tomor-
row would be an excellent day to call in sick and spend
the day right here with us at the Hype-U-Weather Storm
Advisory Center?
Dorkman: Bingo, Brenda. And now if you’ll excuse me,
I need to go count ratings—er, I mean snowflakes.
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= March 29, 2004
Ordinary People
Vowing to Marry
In many ways, they are a typical suburban couple.

They spend their weekends remodeling their tidy
three-bedroom house, which sits on a quiet street in the
Main Line community of Strafford. They enjoy gardening
and cooking and spoiling their dog, Cybil.
They both come from large, traditional Catholic fami-
lies, and they dote on their 17 nieces and nephews.
Now in their early 50s, they prefer quiet nights at
home to going out on the town. They pay their taxes on
time, look in on sick neighbors, and vote each election.
They are ordinary in all ways but one: Tim Dineen and
Victor Martorano, a couple for nine years, are homosexu-
als. And that puts them squarely in the middle of the na-
tional debate on same-sex marriage.
They are not the ones protesting on courthouse steps
or trying to force change by seeking marriage licenses
where they know none will be issued. As the debate rages,
they have written letters to newspapers, but otherwise go
quietly about their suburban lives. It was for this reason—
their very ordinariness—that I sought them out last week.
I wanted to see for myself just how different from the het-
erosexual majority a gay couple in a long-term relation-
ship is.
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Life 165
Marriage of the Minds

They give me a tour of their house and show off im-
provements they have made—new tile, enlarged kitchen,
hardwood floors. On the table is a vase of pussy willows
brought in from the garden. Outside, a pile of rain gutters
sits in the yard, next weekend’s project.
In their own minds, Dineen, a demonstration chef at a
Trader Joe’s market in nearby Wayne, and Martorano, who
works in the travel industry, already are married. On their
first Christmas together, they privately exchanged gold
bands that have remained on their left ring fingers ever
since. Still, says Dineen, “we will get married the day we
legally can do it.”
Some of the motivation is practical. If one is incapaci-
tated, the other right now would need a written power of
attorney to make medical decisions—a precaution they
already have taken. And as Dineen pointed out over a cup
of coffee, “If Victor died tomorrow, I would have to pay
inheritance tax on his half of our house.”
Adds Martorano: “The law does not recognize me as
his next of kin, and that is wrong. It’s just wrong.”
But more important to the couple is what marriage
stands for—a public acknowledgement of a couple’s love
and lifelong commitment. “Marriage is a stabilizing force
in society,” Dineen says, “and we want to be part of that
stabilization.”
After all, they consider themselves solid members of the
community. And so do their neighbors. As Peg Schwartz,
73 and a registered Republican, told me later: “I can’t say
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enough about them. They really could not be better

neighbors. They are delightful. They’re just nice, kind, car-
ing people, and that’s what you want in a neighbor.” Hav-
ing them next door has softened her position on gay
marriage, she said. “If that makes them happy, then that’s
all that counts.”
Battling Stereotypes
And yet, for now at least, Dineen and Martorano will re-
main the one couple on their street for whom the civil
contract of marriage is not an option. Until that day
comes, the two men believe stereotypes and prejudice will
continue.
“Gay people have a reputation for being extremely
promiscuous,” says Dineen, whose full beard and wire-
framed glasses give him a professorial air.“Well, not all gay
people are.”
Some of them lead their lives not much differently
from the straight people on their streets, sharing the same
worries and joys and dreams. And that brings Dineen to
his main point.
“If we were married tomorrow, the only thing that
would be different would be the piece of paper that grants
us our rights and responsibilities. Nothing else would
change.We would still be here just as we are today, putting
new gutters on the house, going to work, grocery shop-
ping, taking the dog to the vet.”
He adds:“I think that’s what so many people fail to real-
ize.We’re here already.We’re a couple already. For all intents
and purposes, we are married.We just lack the legalities.”
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= April 20, 2004
Sounds of Spring
Roar in the Burbs
Outside my window, it looked like the Indianapolis 500—a

sure sign that spring once again had returned to the sub-
urbs.
From all directions came the roar of engines, the smell
of exhaust, and the violent gnashing of blades.
Yes, folks, after a long peaceful winter, that darling of
the suburban experience is back in force once again:
grass-cutting season.
And last weekend, with its July-worthy temperatures,
marked the unofficial but widely observed kickoff—the
ceremonial first cut. Out where I live, this is no small deal.
I knew the big day had finally arrived when I awoke
Saturday to the growl of Toros and John Deeres. Home-
owners, start your engines!
Outside, up and down my street, I saw the same thing:
grown men (and a few women) perched on brightly col-
ored riding mowers, zipping gleefully across the landscape
at full throttle. Grass clippings flew, and the air held that
sweet perfume of gasoline mixed with crushed chlorophyll.
Honestly, my neighbors looked ridiculous out there,
perched on their low-riding mowing machines, knees up
to their chests like so many Shriners on go-carts.
My reaction was swift and predictable: “Dang! I’ve got
to get out there!”
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Conformity Calls
Here it was mid-April, and my tractor was still in the
corner of the garage pinned beneath a pile of coiled
hoses and folded lawn chairs. Late again. If I didn’t want
to get banned from the next neighborhood potluck, I
knew I had better bring my shaggy lawn into compliance
pronto.
So I spent my weekend—a gorgeous weekend, perfect
for hiking or bicycling or simply snoozing in a ham-
mock—on my knees in the garage, sharpening blades,
tightening belts, and changing oil. And then with a roar
and a cloud of blue smoke, I, too, was off to the races.
My lawnless friends from the city just don’t get it, this
communal grass fanaticism. I’m hard-pressed to explain it
myself, even as I spend two hours a week every week,
April through October, embracing it.
It’s totally crazy. And totally costly.
There is the price of the machines themselves, which
can exceed that of a nice used automobile. There are the
repairs and maintenance, the gasoline and fertilizer and
pesticides. There are the hours—thousands of them each
season in my subdivision alone—that could be spent do-
ing better things. There are the costs to the environment,
both from emissions and those millions of tiny gas spills.
And for what? A bumper crop that we neither eat nor
sell nor even feed to our pets.With the fervor in which we
grow this stuff, you would think we were all goat herders.
We fertilize it so it will grow like crazy, then we cut like
crazy just to keep up. That leaves piles of clippings, which
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Life 169
we rake and bag beneath the hot sun. And what do we do

with this harvest? We place it on the curb and pay some-
one to haul it away.
Who’s Using Whom?

It all makes you wonder who is actually calling the shots.
Are we humans exploiting Kentucky bluegrass and fescue
to tame our environment and improve our lives? Or are
the grasses exploiting us to spread their dominion across
the countryside? Think about it. When was the last time a
blade of grass spent its hard-earned paycheck keeping you
groomed?
A few hardy souls are fighting back. One couple I
know replaced their sod with a native wildflower meadow
that required no cutting, no fertilizers, no pesticides. You
want to know how well the new look was embraced in
their community? They were reported for creating a pub-
lic nuisance.
I fight back in my own modest way, which is to say I
follow the lazy man’s guide to lawn care. It’s strictly tough
love: no fertilizers, no chemicals, no raking, no bagging. I
cut it once a week, not a day more frequently.
Predictably, my lawn is a veritable United Nations of
weeds. But they all get along reasonably well, and from a
passing car at a certain speed, the overall effect keeps me
just this side of banishment from the neighborhood asso-
ciation. The difference between the über suburban lawn
and my own ragtag wannabe, I have found, comes down
to this: 25 miles per hour.
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= December 6, 2004
Earth Versus the Mall People
A government spy satellite roaming the Milky Way in

search of extraterrestrial life has picked up a transmission
coming from an unknown planet.
Buzzzzzzzz. Schplunkt!
“Commander, I have just returned from my reconnais-
sance trip to the planet Earth.”
“Ah, very good, Cygot. And what did you find there?”
“It is a strange and incomprehensible place. I landed in
a confederacy of united but deeply divided states, some
red, some blue. There was a place called Joisey, where the
people speak a monosyllabic guttural dialect. And a place
named Philly where the local language is even harder to
decipher. But the oddest findings came in the country-
side, in a vast sprawling kingdom called Suburbia.”
“What did you see in this Suburbia?”
“I saw heavily armed men dress in orange and headed
out into the woods where they blasted away at anything
that moved, sometimes hitting each other, sometimes hit-
ting four-legged life forms. And yet at the end of each day
they returned to eat an odd energy roll known as
‘cheesesteak.’”
“Strange indeed.”
“And that’s just the beginning, commander. I arrived
on a day called Thanksgiving, a tribal holiday to count
blessings.”
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Life 171
“And how do they mark this sacred day?”

“By eating vast quantities of food, sir. Some even un-
button their pants.”
“And then what do they do with all this energy they
have consumed?”
“They sleep, sir.”
A Predawn Sojourn
“A sort of hibernation?”
“Not exactly. The feast appears to be the start of a vast
national marathon they call ‘Just 29 Shopping Days to
Christmas.’ Within hours they are up again, and they head
off in darkness to giant edifices surrounded by acres of a
gray stonelike surface.”
“Their sacred temples, no doubt.”
“Yes, and they call these temples all the same name: Mall.
The worshippers wait for hours to get inside the doors.”
“And what do they do once inside?”
“They use small plastic cards to spend riches they do
not have for goods they do not need.”
“Goods they do not need?”
“Such as clear stones the slave class digs from the
earth.”
“They pay vast sums for mere stones?”
“The males hand them to the females who then agree
to bear their progeny.”
“A fertility rite! And what else?”
“The females wear ceremonial gold and buy expensive
pouches to hold their plastic cards.They buy paint for their
faces and many pairs of leather coverings for their feet.”
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“Why many pairs when they have but one pair of

feet?”
“Inexplicable, commander, but their closets overflow
with them. And the men fill their garages with the lum-
bering personal transporters known as SUVs, which suck
finite fossil fuels from the ground and force the nations to
battle each other.”
Zombie Nation
“And who commands them to buy these useless things?”
“The orders come from the Great Persuaders, who rule
from a place called Madison Avenue. They decide what
the masses must buy and send messages through the elec-
tronic tubes in every dwelling, telling the people they are
nothing without these items.”
“And the people fall for this?”
“No questions asked, sir. Especially during the Christ-
mas 29-day marathon.”
“And how is this race won?”
“It seems the household with the most items on
Christmas Day is the winner.”
“And how do they celebrate?”
“I am told they will awaken before dawn the day after
and return to the mall temples, where they exchange the
many things they acquired during the marathon for yet
more possessions.”
“And they do this to celebrate this day they call
Christmas?”
“They call it a religious holiday.”
“And what is this day? Surely, it must stand for more
than that which the plastic card can obtain.”
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Life 173
“It once did, I am told, commander. But the people be-

came blinded at the mall temples, and the original mean-
ing appears to have been lost long ago.”
“Cygot, your excellent surveillance disturbs me greatly.
Now to the decontamination unit before the Earthling
consumption disease gets loose.”
= December 13, 2004
Tow-Truck Driver
Became Her Angel
What had begun as just another family reunion at

Philadelphia International Airport escalated quickly into a
life-or-death race against the clock.
Mary Helene Wagner, 78, had just arrived at the airport
at dusk November 9 after an uneventful flight from her
home in Oakland, California. Waiting to greet her at the
gate were her sister, Katherine “Kitti” Colucci, 65, and
Kitti’s husband, Richard, of Little Egg Harbor, near At-
lantic City.
The threesome chatted as they loaded Wagner’s bags
into the Coluccis’ car in the parking garage.
That’s when it happened.
“Kitti suddenly cried out in pain and put her hands to
her forehead,” Wagner said. She moaned about an excru-
ciating headache and began to vomit.
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“She started to scream, ‘My head, my head,’” Colucci’s

husband added.
“I knew we had to move,” the older sister said. “I said
to Richard, ‘We have to get to an emergency room.’”
But where, and how? None of them were familiar with
Philadelphia, and there was no one in sight to ask. They
drove out of the garage and asked the parking attendant
for directions, but because of a language barrier, they
could not understand what he was trying to tell them.
They headed off into the darkness, knowing each lost
minute could make a terrible difference. “I was looking
around; I didn’t know the area at all. I realized we were in
trouble,” Richard Colucci said.
A Brief Touch
He pulled into an Exxon station and frantically asked a
customer for directions, but again without luck. His wife
was again vomiting out of the car, cradling her head.
That’s when Wagner spotted the least likely of guardian
angels—a member of that profession area motorists love
to hate: a Greater Philly tow-truck driver. He was filling
the gas tank on his big lime-green wrecker, and Wagner
figured he must know the way to the nearest hospital.
“I approached him for help. He was trying to tell me
what to do, but I think he could see the look on my face,”
she said. “He reached out and touched me, put his hand
on my shoulder and said, ‘Follow me.’”
Yellow emergency lights flashing, the driver led them
through rush-hour traffic,winding his way across the city until
he pulled up at the emergency-room doors of the Hospital
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Life 175
of the University of Pennsylvania.The driver hesitated just

long enough to make sure the Coluccis reached the curb.
“He tooted his horn, turned off his [emergency] lights,
and just drove away,” Wagner said. “We never saw the side
of the truck, the name or anything.”
All she knew of the mystery man was his first name,
James.
Only after they were inside did they fully realize just
what a crucial role the stranger had played in the emer-
gency. Not only had he quickly led Kitti Colucci, who
had suffered a triple ruptured brain aneurysm, to a hospi-
tal, he led her to the right hospital.
As one of the nation’s top medical centers, HUP had a
team of neurologists on duty to begin immediate aid
when the Coluccis walked in.
An Angel in Disguise?
Doctors confirmed that in such a case, every second
counted. Without the tow-truck driver’s intervention,
Richard Colucci said, “most likely Kitti would have died.
We’ll never know for sure.”
More than a month later, she remains hospitalized and
faces long rehabilitation. But she is alive, and her husband
and sister won’t forget the kind stranger.
“I want him to know we are very grateful,”Wagner said.
“I hate to think about what would have happened had we
[stopped at the gas station] and James hadn’t been there.”
Richard Colucci believes it was more than coincidence.
“I personally feel that somebody upstairs was looking out
for us,” he said. “This fellow was there for a purpose.”
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He wished he could find the driver.

“I would embrace him if I could. I would thank him,
and I would tell him that he was an angel,” Colucci said.
“That might sound corny, but I really mean it.You have
to understand, we were looking at life and death.”
Colucci might get his chance.
Tomorrow, I will introduce you to the mystery Good
Samaritan, and tell you how I located him.
= December 14, 2004
James Pratt
A Knight in a Lime-Green Tow Truck
The Good Samaritan in the lime-green tow truck is a mys-

tery no more.
His name is James Pratt, and he is a 30-year-old single
dad who graduated from Germantown High School, Class
of ’91, and served in the army in Germany before earning
a discharge because of a bad back. He now lives in Con-
shohocken with his daughter. “She turns 5 on Christmas
Day,” he said.
Pratt makes his living patrolling a stretch of I-95 under
contract with the Pennsylvania Department of Trans-
portation, swooping in to help stranded motorists and re-
move disabled vehicles to keep traffic moving.
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Life 177
He was just ending his shift on the evening of Novem-

ber 9 when he pulled into the Airport Exxon station at
Philadelphia International Airport to refuel.
That’s when his life intersected with the lives of Mary
Helene Wagner, 78, of Oakland, California; Wagner’s sis-
ter, Kitti Colucci, 65, of Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey;
and Kitti’s husband, Richard.
As I described yesterday, the Coluccis had just picked
up Wagner from Philadelphia International Airport when
Kitti Colucci was struck without warning by a searing,
violent headache and vomiting, the result, she would later
learn, of a triple ruptured brain aneurysm. The three were
lost and in desperate need of a hospital.
Wagner ran up to the tow-truck driver, and he began to
give her directions. But two things became immediately
clear to Pratt: Every second was of the essence, and the
frantic travelers were not going to be able to find the hos-
pital on their own.
“Follow me,” he told her and then, yellow lights flash-
ing, led the family through rush-hour traffic to the Hos-
pital of the University of Pennsylvania where more than
one month later Kitti Colucci continues to recover.
The Coluccis and Wagner were grateful to the tow-
truck driver who led them to the front doors of the hos-
pital, but they had no way of telling him so. He had
vanished without giving them anything but his first name.
And so Wagner called me.
Based on the little she knew—a lime-green truck and an
Exxon station near the terminal—I was able to find Pratt
through his boss, Kevin Bowe, a Conshohocken-based tow
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operator who runs Airport Exxon and has the PennDot

Expressway Safety Service Patrol contract.
“I’m not really surprised,” Bowe said when told of his
employee’s actions to help the stricken woman. “He’s a
good guy.”
Pratt downplayed what he had done. He was about to
drive back to Conshohocken anyway, he said, and the
hospital was not that big a detour.
“I just told them to follow my lights,” he recalled.“I got
them to the front door of the hospital and kept going. I
never heard anything after the fact.”
When I told him that Richard Colucci had credited his
good deed with saving his wife’s life, Pratt hesitated a mo-
ment before saying, “That’s a pleasant plus. It’s a beautiful
thing to know.” He had no idea just how significant his
small act of kindness was to these desperate strangers who
had stumbled upon him.
As a tow-truck driver, he said, he is either loved or
hated. Loved by those who are stranded and he rescues;
hated by those who are parked illegally and he tows.“You
learn to take the good with the bad,” he said.
Helping the Coluccis in their moment of need, he
added, was one of the good moments that “helps your job
balance itself out.”
And it served as a reminder to us all that even in a city
as proudly gruff as Philadelphia, in an age when people
too often shrug off getting involved, at a time when too
many ask, “What’s in it for me?” there are still those
knights among us who don’t hesitate to come to the res-
cue of perfect strangers simply because it is the right and
decent thing to do.
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Life 179
“It shows that there still are good people in this world,”
a grateful Richard Colucci said.
Responded Pratt as he headed to his next call: “Hey,
it’s no problem. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m out
here.”
= February 1, 2005
Zero Tolerance Running Amok
Today’s question: How can we adults expect our children

to respect us and our decisions when so often we act like
total blockheads?
How can we ask them to accept our edicts without
question when too often those edicts, however well-
intentioned, are so wildly misguided?
Take zero-tolerance policies in our schools. They are in
place for a reason. Weapons and drugs have no place in
schools. But the words zero and tolerance, when com-
bined, add up to one scary concept: blind enforcement
with no room for common sense.
And when that happens, what are we left with? Injus-
tice. And kids who lose faith and grow jaded. No wonder
they look at us like we were just beamed down from
Planet Clueless.
Exhibit A: The case of the crampy honors student.
As reported by Stephanie L. Arnold in Saturday’s In-
quirer, a senior on the honor roll at Haverford High
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School had the temerity to take an over-the-counter pain

medication—a generic version of Aleve—for menstrual
cramps without first clearing it with the school nurse.
Mind you, she is 18, old enough to fight and die in Iraq.
Mind you, she was not misusing the pain medicine. Mind
you, she made no attempt to hide her behavior. In fact, she
was busted after she went to the nurse and reported that
her cramping continued, despite the pill she took.
A World Without Grays

Does this sound like a crazed drug abuser to you? In the
black-and-white world of zero tolerance, the question is
moot. She violated the school’s drug policy, which bans
students from, among other things, taking medication
without permission. And she was suspended, if only for
part of one day, before she apologized and was allowed
back in school.
The girl’s mother about nailed it when she likened the
policy to “throwing a hand grenade on an anthill.”
Unfortunately, the problem is not isolated, which leads
to Exhibit B: The case of the handcuffed 10-year-old.
Porsche Brown, a fourth grader at Holme Elementary
School in Northeast Philadelphia, was suspended after an
8-inch pair of scissors was found in her book bag. But the
saga did not end there. Police arrived, handcuffed the
pint-size fugitive, and carted her down to the local
precinct house in the back of a police wagon.
Geez, I’d hate to see what they would have done had
she been packing a stapler and Elmer’s glue.
It’s more than a little ridiculous. It’s plain dumb. Everyone
agrees the child meant no harm in bringing the scissors to
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Life 181
school. Yet, at the time, the police policy was to cuff all
weapons suspects, regardless of age. And so a child was
treated like a criminal.
Schools chief Paul Vallas and city Police Commissioner
Sylvester Johnson later apologized to the girl’s mother,
admitting the principal and cops overreacted.Ya think?
A Syrup-Crusted Blade
And, finally, consider Exhibit C: The case of the sticky
eating utensil.
This one involves yet another honors student, Peter
DeWitt, a senior at Great Valley High School in Chester
County. DeWitt’s car was singled out for a drug search in
the school’s parking lot in September. No drugs were
found, but authorities did spot a small penknife and a
steak knife.
DeWitt explained that he used the penknife to tinker
with his car stereo. The steak knife had been used by his
sister, who ate a plate of waffles in the car on the way to
school with him. The parents—who, by supplying the
waffles, I suppose were accessories to the crime—
confirmed his story.
The alleged weapons never even left the confines of the
locked car. Harmless enough, you say? Sorry, no room for
reason. Under zero tolerance, DeWitt faced possible ex-
pulsion until cooler heads prevailed three days into his
suspension.
In each of these cases lurks a glimmer of justification.
Children can and do harm themselves by improperly tak-
ing medications. Children can and do use something as
innocuous as scissors or a utensil to harm others.
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There should be no room in schools for harmful be-

havior of any type. But there should be room for com-
mon sense, discretion, and intelligence.
If we want our kids to respect authority, we owe them
that much.
= March 14, 2005
It’s Unhealthy, But It Is Legal
When I was 10, my best friend and I rode our bikes to the
local bowling alley, slipped 35 cents into the vending ma-
chine, and bought our first pack of cigarettes.
In the woods nearby, we lit up—and promptly turned
green. I decided then and there that if this was what it
took to be cool, I’d gladly go through life as a dweeb.
To this day, I have little tolerance for cigarette smoke
and even less for those inconsiderate slobs who think it is
their God-given right to light up anytime, anyplace—and
then toss their butts wherever they might fall.
I confess I’m annoyed by smokers in the workplace
who spend 10 minutes of every hour out in the parking
lot puffing away on breaks their nonsmoking colleagues
do not enjoy.
Basically I hate everything about cigarettes. So why am
I so uncomfortable with the growing national jihad
against smokers?
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Life 183
It might have something to do with the fact that

cigarette smoking is legal. Unhealthy, dangerous, stupid,
but legal nonetheless.
And yet we increasingly treat cigarettes as contraband
and those who indulge in them as social pariahs.
Cities are lining up to ban smoking in public gathering
places, including bars and taverns, where smoking and
drinking often go hand in hand. The Philadelphia City
Council is set to vote Thursday on a widespread smoking
prohibition. Mayor Street said he’d like to see a nation-
wide ban.
Workplace Litmus Test

And perhaps most troubling of all, Montgomery County
is exploring a policy that would bar the hiring of smokers
for county jobs.
We allegedly live in a free country, and that means hav-
ing the freedom to indulge in harmful behavior. People
smoke and drink too much and eat greasy burgers instead
of salads and lounge in front of the television instead of
exercising. And they will die younger because of it. Their
choice.
Do we really want to go down this road of regulating
legal but unhealthy behavior? If you want to take away
my french fries, you’ll have to pry them out of my cold,
dead hand.
No one should be forced to breathe secondhand
smoke, and smoking bans in workplaces, stores, and gov-
ernment buildings make perfect sense.
But if a bunch of smokers want to sit in a smoke-filled
bar and suck in one another’s carbon monoxide over beer,
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shouldn’t they have that right? I won’t be there, but I re-

spect their right to turn their lungs into tar pits.
Conversely, nonsmokers are free to choose smoke-free es-
tablishments to eat and drink. And the more they vote with
their pocketbooks, the more clean-air joints will open.
Let the marketplace decide.
Freedom to Choose
A pub near my home went smoke-free last year, not be-
cause government put a gun to its head but because the
owner saw money to be made. He lost the chain-smoking
drinkers and gained the bigger-spending wine-and-dinner
crowd.
When the place reeked of smoke, I chose to stay away;
now I’m a regular. Isn’t that how it should work?
Montgomery County thinks it can save on health-care
costs if it refuses to hire smokers. But wouldn’t it make
more sense to simply charge smoking employees a higher
premium for health insurance? If they want to smoke,
fine, but let them pay their way. If you have ever tried to
buy life insurance, you know the stiff premiums smokers
face. Fair enough.
What Montgomery County, or any employer, should
really be concerned about is finding the best possible em-
ployee. Do you turn down a hard worker with a sterling
resume and references because he smokes? Do you hire a
nonsmoking slacker instead?
If cigarettes are really that harmful—and we all know
they are—let’s outlaw them. That might, after all, actually
send an unmuddied message to our children about what
we really think of these cancer sticks.
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Life 185
That, of course, will never happen, not so long as the

tobacco industry has Congress eating out of its hand.
Before we start placing smokers in the public stocks, we
might want to take a second look at that $10 billion (yes,
billion) buyout Congress approved for tobacco growers
last fall.
Isn’t it all just a little hypocritical?
= March 18, 2005
The Nonsense Logic

of Angry Smokers
The smokers are restless.

Agitated, defensive, defiant, at times shrill, definitely
ticked off. Their habit is under assault from all directions.
The Philadelphia City Council yesterday tabled a vote
to join a growing list of cities around the country that
have banned smoking in public places, including that
onetime smoker’s haven, the corner tappy. Montgomery
County wants to save on health insurance costs by refus-
ing to hire smokers. And in New Jersey, lawmakers are ad-
vancing their own smoking crackdown.
Like any cornered animal, smokers are lashing out. I
know. I’ve been getting an earful.
Take, for example, the message left on my voice mail by
Angry Smoker No. 1. She wants us to know tobacco for
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her is not a mere vice but a professional necessity. “To-

bacco relaxes the nerves,” she said. “It is something as an
artist and a blues singer that I require for my job. I require
a raspy voice; I require the effects of nicotine after each
sculpture and painting.”
Doesn’t prefer it, mind you. Positively requires it. Just
like the bottled oxygen she someday will be requiring.
Angry Smoker No. 1 argues that banning smoking in
public places is just the start of a downward spiral into
“prejudice and Nazism and fascism.”
As she predicts: “OK, anyone 150 pounds overweight
can’t go into any restaurants; they’re too fat and risk a
heart attack. Also, all people who eat chocolate should be
condemned because they’re causing cavities and diabetes.
And we should ban sugar. No sugar in coffee or tea!”
Cry, Baby, Cry

And while we’re at it, might I suggest we ban whining
crybabies?
Somehow, in her nicotine-addled brain, all bad habits
are equal. Chewing fingernails or mainlining heroin, it
doesn’t matter.
Then came Angry Smoker No. 2: “All children should
be refused food if they are obese. All children who are
obese should not be fed in the lunchroom. They are a
health risk and insurance will go up for them.”
And angry Smoker No. 3: “I think we should outlaw
everyone who eats tuna fish, because the secondhand
fumes from tuna cause ill health effects and make people
throw up.”
Cough . . . hack . . . wheeze.
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Secondhand smoke, secondhand food odors—no differ-

ence at all. Not a bit. Same health risks, same watery eyes,
same stench in your hair and clothes at the end of the day.
Not all smokers are this delusional. Several I heard from
said they try hard to be considerate and only smoke
where they won’t bother others. Others told me they are
not proud of their ways, but they reminded me it is a
powerful addiction.
I know many smokers who indeed are trying to quit
and are very considerate—so considerate, in fact, I some-
times forget they are smokers at all.
They just want to be left to puff in peace. Is that so
bad? As I wrote Monday, I hate the smoke but love the
smoker. I say if smokers want to crowd together in bars to
inhale each others’ soot, that should be their prerogative.
A Little Honesty, Please

But I also expect smokers to be honest with themselves
and everyone else.
When you insist on smoking in a closed car with your
three kids buckled beside you, forced to suck your fumes,
don’t ask for our sympathy.
When you light up in a “smoking section” that is feet
from the “nonsmoking section” with nothing but an
imaginary line separating the two, know you are ruining
someone’s meal.
When you toss your butts out your car windows, know
you are a pig.
When you stand in the doorway of a smoke-free build-
ing to get your fix, know you are making the rest of us run
a foul gauntlet.
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When you sneak a few quick puffs in the office rest-

room, know that we know. Hours later, we still know.
When you ask, “Mind if I smoke?” even as you’re strik-
ing the match, realize that most of us will say “no” out of
politeness but mean “yes.”
There are many considerate smokers out there. They
are not the problem. It’s the inconsiderate ones, willfully
blind to the effect their habit has on others, who have
forced the issue and brought this whole national backlash
upon themselves.
Puff on that, angry smokers.
= May 9, 2005
A Shared Concern for a Jane Doe
Jane Doe is nameless no more.

She died, homeless and unmissed, one year ago this
week after a van accidentally backed into her in a parking
lot in downtown Allentown.
Her lice-infested clothes were burned, her body laid
unceremoniously in a pauper’s field just off Interstate 78
in the shadow of a concrete plant. A small laminated card
on a metal stake was her only headstone: “Jane Doe, May
12, 2004, County of Lehigh.”
And she likely would have forever remained unidentified
if not for two women who had never met but who both
showed kindness to a lost soul haunted by mental illness.
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Suzanne Kratzer, a retired eighth-grade teacher in Al-

lentown, and Phyllis Graham, a retired nurse in Plymouth
Meeting, stumbled into each other’s lives after Jane Doe’s
death and pieced together the clues that would solve the
mystery.
The clues stretched back a half century to when Gra-
ham was in nursing school at the former Germantown
Hospital in Philadelphia. Her roommate and close friend
for three years was a petite brunette from the town of
Mount Carmel in the Poconos.
Her name: Leona Kovalick.
“She was just really a cute kid,” Graham remembered,
“bubbly, effervescent, fun-loving, carefree.”
Carefree Days
The two double-dated and spent summer Saturdays on
the beach in Ocean City. “We had tons of fun, but she
never would talk about her background,” Graham said.
Graham was married in 1950, and her old roommate
attended. “That was the last time I ever saw her,” she said.
But Graham occasionally received letters from Koval-
ick, and as the years passed she could tell her old friend
was becoming something beyond eccentric. Kovalick was
always vague about where she lived and rebuffed Gra-
ham’s efforts to visit her.
Enter Kratzer, the retired teacher who, while walking
her dog near her home one evening in 2002, spotted a
tiny, weathered woman lying on the porch of an office
building, a large bag of clothing beside her. “I walked up
and asked her if she was all right,” Kratzer recalled.“It was
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nearly dark, and I was concerned for her safety. I asked if

she’d had any dinner.”
Kratzer would later return with a plate of food. She be-
gan aiding the homeless woman she knew as Lee, helping
her secure widow’s benefits through the Department of
Veterans Affairs and trying unsuccessfully to persuade her
to check into a shelter.
She also let the woman use her mailing address to re-
ceive letters.
After the woman disappeared off the streets in April
2004, Kratzer opened a card that had arrived for Leona
Kovalick. It was from Graham.
A String of Clues
The two women compared notes. They had both read
about the unidentified Jane Doe: Kratzer in her local pa-
per; Graham in this column. The more they talked, the
more certain they were of Jane Doe’s identity.
Graham remembered that Kovalick had told her she
had a nephew in Louisiana. Graham located him, and he
contacted the Lehigh County Coroner’s office, which sent
him a photograph of the unidentified woman.
“I immediately knew it was her,” J. Richard Kanuch, a
lawyer in New Orleans, said. An old X-ray from an arm
fracture Kanuch remembered his aunt suffering provided
a positive match, said Paul Zondlo, Lehigh County’s chief
deputy coroner.
Kanuch said his aunt had grown erratic and irascible by
the time she was in her 30s. She could be sweet one mo-
ment and hostile the next. Her hygiene had become poor,
and she could be physically abusive, he said. One by one,
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Life 191
she alienated all 12 of her siblings. Eventually, she just

vanished.
“I don’t know what happened to her,” he said. “She
went through college; she did very well in nursing, dated
several surgeons. . . . It’s a sad story.”
At noon Thursday, on the first anniversary of her death,
the woman once known as Jane Doe will get a proper
send-off. Kratzer, Graham, and a handful of Graham’s
nursing-school classmates will gather graveside.
A priest will say a few words. There will be flowers and
a real headstone inscribed with a real name:
Leona Kovalick Bosker, June 1, 1928, to May 12, 2004.
= May 13, 2005
A Friend Lost in Life,

but Found in Death
Phyllis Graham stood by the small headstone in a pauper’s

field a few miles outside Allentown yesterday and opened
the leather-bound yearbook from Germantown Hospital’s
Class of 1948.
Five of her nursing-school classmates from that year, all
long retired, gathered around to see.
“There she is,” Graham said, pointing to a black-and-
white photograph of an attractive, petite woman in a
white uniform, her chin upturned slightly. “That’s Lee.”
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Leona Kovalick Bosker. She was born June 1, 1928, and

grew up in Pennsylvania coal country. She died one year
ago yesterday, an unidentified, lice-infested homeless
woman crushed by a van as she huddled in a parking
space.
What a long, sad journey it was.
As the yearbook playfully described her: “Here she is,
the ‘Blonde Bomber’ of our class. She loves clothes and
can really do them justice. Lee is the life of every party
and possesses a certain personal charm that can’t be
beaten and a laugh that can’t be mistaken.”
The yearbook entry for Bosker concludes: “We know
we need not wish her luck because it’s already headed her
way.” But nothing resembling luck graced the life of this
woman whose once bright future plummeted into the
depths of self-destructive mental illness.
The women arrived at the indigent cemetery just be-
fore noon with a potted geranium and a bouquet of lilies-
of-the-valley to place by their former classmate’s grave.
They wanted to give her a proper send-off. They wanted
to remember her as what she once had been, not as what
she had become.
“I couldn’t bear to see her go that way,” Graham said.
“None of us wanted to see her buried like that.”
Buried alone and unmissed in a pressboard box, a name-
less, faceless vagrant designated by Lehigh County author-
ities simply as Jane Doe. The woman with no name.
It took the better part of a year, but Graham and a re-
tired Allentown schoolteacher, Suzanne Kratzer, who had
befriended the homeless woman on the streets of Allen-
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Life 193
town in 2002, pieced together the clues that allowed au-

thorities to positively identify the former nurse.
Now her old classmates, who had not seen Bosker in
more than half a century, gathered to say goodbye.
“She was a fun-loving kid, happy-go-lucky,” recalled
Audrey Raby of Bethlehem.
“Very outgoing, fun to be with,” added Betty Salevsky
of New Hope.
Graham recalled giggling with Lee late into the night
in their dormitory—and losing their privileges because of
it. She talked of sneaking out for ice cream, window
shopping along Germantown Avenue, double-dating, and
returning sunburned from beach trips.
Madeleine Bowen of Willow Grove said Leona could
make her classmates laugh. She remembered one incident
in particular. Tea enemas were sometimes used in those
days to help sick children, and the first time Leona was
ordered to administer one, she looked up and asked:“Do I
put sugar and lemon in it?”
“All the girls howled about that,” Bowen said. “She was
serious. That’s what was so funny about it.”
All the women agreed they never saw any signs to
make them suspect their former classmate’s life could pos-
sibly one day come so unraveled. And yet it did. An ut-
terly ordinary life come utterly undone.
Soon, a priest arrived. The group had invited him, be-
cause Bosker had been raised Catholic. The Rev. Harold
Dagle, pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Allen-
town, stood beneath the wind-whipped sky and told the
small group that this woman was one of the many lost souls
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we pass on the streets every day. “And yet, somehow in

death,” he added,“she was found.”
The priest prayed,“Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord,
and perpetual light shine upon her.”
The women, standing in a circle clutching their flowers
and photographs and memories, responded: “Amen.”
Then Graham, her voice choking, said, “We had three
years together—laughed a lot, cried a lot, but cared a lot
about each other, too. Goodbye, Lee.”
= June 7, 2005
Honked Off by Bumper Sticker
It was one of those days on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Hot, muggy, crowded—and then came the dreaded red
sea of brake lights.
My morning commute had barely begun yesterday
when a Turnpike Commission truck with a flashing sign
announced the bad news: “Prepare to stop. Accident
ahead.” Far ahead.
Traffic screeched to a standstill; twin ribbons of stopped
cars stretched to the horizon, as if I had stumbled into the
world’s largest parallel-parking competition. There we sat,
my fellow commuters and I, baking in the sun, our dress
shirts wilting, out blood pressure rising. Together, we
formed a sea of hot and bothered humanity, all late.
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Life 195
It was into this cauldron that Mr. Cheerful merged in

his white SUV. He nudged his way in front of me, and
that’s when I saw it—a bumper sticker affixed promi-
nently to the vehicle’s rear window, right at eye level.
And what was his cheery message to his fellow road
warriors?
Was it “Have a nice day”?
Was it “If you’re happy and you know it, beep your
horn”?
Was it “We’re all in this together”?
Not even close. His bumper sticker read: “I want to kill
you.”
Great. I’m trapped on a slab of smoldering pavement,
my gas needle edging toward E, the sweat trickling be-
tween my shoulder blades—and this Einstein wants to kill
me. Just the pick-me-up I was looking for on this swell
Monday morning.
Mutual Contempt
“Want to kill me?” I muttered. “Not as bad as I want to
kill you, pal.”
Actually, I used a word considerably more colorful than
pal. What can I say? Incivility breeds incivility.
Through the back window, I could see him jawboning
on his cell phone, free hand drumming the steering
wheel. This was not a high school kid trying to get atten-
tion; not a college-age student with a warped sense of hu-
mor. The guy was old enough to know better.
I want to kill you. What kind of public statement was
that?
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Did he think he was being funny? Provocative? Outra-

geous?
Given the message’s position at eye level and its small
type, I guessed it was aimed at tailgaters. Some of those
slogans can be a hoot, like the one that goes: “If you can
read this, you are within firing range.”
That’s witty. “I want to kill you” is only creepy and so-
ciopathic. And with the number of road-rage assaults and
homicides ticking ever upward, it’s just a little chilling.
I wonder whether Douglas Heavlow, now in prison,
sported one of those signs in his pickup truck the day in
2000 he intentionally sideswiped a car he thought was
going too slow on the turnpike’s Northeast Extension,
killing a 21-year-old woman.
Or the enraged trucker on Route 22 in Northampton
County, sent to prison for intentionally ramming his rig
into the back of another vehicle, killing two men.
Part of the Problem

Or the guy who fatally stabbed another man with a sword
during a road-rage confrontation in Camden. Or the
countless hotheads who have pointed, even fired, guns at
other drivers.
I want to kill you.
Too often, the threat is real.
I had more than a half hour to sit, contemplating Mr.
Cheerful’s homicidal proclamation, and here is what I fi-
nally decided I would like to tell him:
Listen, buddy, no one is laughing. When you treat me
with respect and dignity, I’ll treat you the same. When
you’re considerate, I’ll be considerate. When you open
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Life 197
your arms to me as a fellow sufferer in the commuter

wars, I’ll embrace you back.
But when you tell me, and everyone around me, how
little you value our lives, please know that you are some-
thing worse than just a coarse and crude (and not very
original) cretin. You, Mr. Cheerful, are part of the prob-
lem.You are the abrasive that has turned society so rough
and ugly.
In the battle between incivility and decency, between
goonishness and gentleness, between those who build com-
munity and those who tear it apart, you are the enemy.
So do Greater Philadelphia a favor. Take your little
bumper sticker, and . . . and . . . have a nice day, sir. Now,
how hard was that?
= July 25, 2005
When Our Fears

Lead to Prejudices
The sin of prejudice paid me a little visit last week.

No, I’m not proud of myself.
I was visiting New York City and arrived at the Port Au-
thority late in the afternoon to grab an express bus back to
Pennsylvania. On my way into the terminal, I passed a knot
of National Guardsmen in camouflage, automatic rifles
slung over their shoulders. They chatted among themselves
as the masses streamed by, many like myself toting packages
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and suitcases. It occurred to me that there was little they

could do to stop someone whose bag just might hold
a bomb.
The bus was nearly full. Just as it was about to pull out,
a last-minute passenger clambered aboard carrying a large
rectangular package wrapped in a black trash bag. He kept
his eyes down and sat in the only remaining seat, directly
in front of me.
I felt an immediate, visceral response to his presence.
My heart began to race, my stomach to tighten. I could
feel the blood coursing through my temples.
The man was young, probably 19 or 20, with short
black hair and a closely trimmed beard. He appeared to be
of Middle Eastern ancestry.
Oh God . . . a suicide bomber.
Calculus of Terror
Instantly, I told myself I was being ridiculous—and horri-
ble. I knew nothing about this stranger, who may have
been a college student or engineer or son on his way
home to visit his parents. All I knew was that he some-
how, at least at this moment, reminded me ominously of
the faces of the young Muslim men who had detonated
bombs in London on July 7, killing themselves and 52
others.
The more I tried to dismiss the notion, the more un-
nerved I became. It all made perfect sense to me. He was
traveling alone (yes, and so was I); he was gripping a large
package with both hands. At least to my eyes, he appeared
nervous, uncomfortable. It occurred to me only later that
his discomfort might have had something to do with the
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Life 199
fact that people like me were presuming him to be evil

based solely on his heritage.
Still, the pieces fit. Young, Islamic (I presumed) man.
Alone, gripping an odd, bulky package. On a crowded bus
that in about three minutes would be deep inside the Lin-
coln Tunnel. At rush hour.
First London. Now, once again, New York. A one-two
punch. Of course!
As the bus approached the tunnel entrance, an acid
burn rose from my gut. Fear, the likes of which I had not
experienced in years.
An Unfair Assumption
I was less than three feet from him. If a bomb went off, I
wouldn’t have a chance, wouldn’t even know it. One
moment I would be wondering. The next I would be
gone.
I glanced around. If any of the other passengers har-
bored similar misgivings, they weren’t showing it. But
then, neither was I.
I like to think of myself as open-minded. I like to think
I judge individuals on their merits.Yet here I was, ready to
sprint to the front of the bus and demand the driver let
me off. And for what?
Was this any different from the white woman who pan-
ics when a black man steps onto an elevator with her?
No, it was not. I was guilty. Guilty of prejudging. Of racial
profiling. Of stereotyping.
I knew that. Still, the terror was real. As we descended
into the tunnel, I squeezed my eyes shut. If a terrorist
were aboard, this is where he would act. An eternity later,
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we emerged into sunlight. I’ve never been so happy to see

New Jersey. The man was still sitting there, gripping his
package. I began to relax, but then he opened the plastic
bag and began fumbling inside. Another wave of dread.
Another false alarm.
By the time I stepped off the bus at my stop, my would-
be terrorist was asleep. It was now clear: He was just a guy
going somewhere—no different from me. I stepped off the
bus, whispering an apology only I could hear.
The terrorist assault on free societies has many, many vic-
tims. Not all of them are hit by shrapnel and flying nails.
Curse the terrorists for what they have done. Shame on
me for what I have allowed them to do.
= October 4, 2005
A Terrorist? Moi? Twice Exonerated
I’m not the world’s most imposing man, so when I was

yanked out of line at Philadelphia International Airport
Saturday for a special head-to-toe, full-terrorist-alert
search, I must confess to mixed emotions.
Part of me was annoyed. I had a flight to catch; what
was this all about? Did I look like a terrorist?
Part of me was impressed. The Transportation Safety Ad-
ministration screeners were professional and courteous—
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Life 201
a definite step up from the private security drones they re-

placed after 9/11, most of whom left the impression they
had just been recruited from the Burger King take-out
window.
Part of me was relieved. If a middle-age dad like me
could merit such scrutiny, what chance did a real terrorist
have of getting through?
And part of me was—yes, I’ll admit it—a little flattered.
This might well have been the first time in my life that
someone considered me a threat to anything. As the TSA
screener ran his beeping scanner over me, I couldn’t help
standing a little taller. Wow, they think I just might be
dangerous!
Something on my boarding pass had set them off, a
dreaded four-digit code. As soon as I showed it to the first
guard,he opened the gate and politely said,“Follow me,please.”
He walked me into a fenced corral and called out for a male
scanner to pat me down. Gee, I didn’t get a choice?
Assume the Position

As he snapped on his latex gloves, the pat-down expert
calmly explained what he was about to do. I kicked off
my shoes and assumed the position on the two footprints
glued to the floor, my arms out in a messianic pose. “Un-
buckle your belt,” he ordered. Yikes! The banjo theme
music from Deliverance played in my head.
Officer Pat-Down ran his hands around my waist, back
and sides and up and down each leg, skirting dangerously
close to that off-limits zone my mother always told me
was no one’s business but my own.
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He had me roll down the waistband of my jeans, as if I

might be hiding a Kalashnikov in there, and worked it
over like he was kneading dough.
Meanwhile, his female colleague had my carry-on lug-
gage splayed open and was poking through my socks, un-
derwear, and toiletries. All I could think was, Please, Lord,
don’t let my wife’s pantyhose be in there.
It was not even 7 a.m., and I was getting felt up by one
stranger while another was fluffing my boxer shorts. All
while my fellow passengers filed past, gawking and no
doubt wondering what dark secrets I must hold to merit
such scrutiny.
The female screener rubbed a cloth pad over all sur-
faces of my luggage and belongings, inside and out, and
then ran the pad through a sensor in search of trace
amounts of explosives.
“Follow Me, Please,” Again?

Several minutes later, I was deemed no risk to anyone
whatsoever—there’s a news flash—and left to buckle up
and gather my belongings.
One random search I can live with. This is part of our
duty as Americans in the post–9/11 age, to put up with
these small humiliations and curtailments on our freedom
in the name of safety for all.
But the next day, as I approached the security check-
point in Chicago to come home, I was greeted by the
same polite “Will you follow me, please?” and subjected
to the same top-to-bottom search of my body and be-
longings. What was going on?
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Life 203
I asked the screener, and he had no idea. Many things

could trigger a search, he said. Had I paid cash for my
ticket? Bought it at the last minute? Was it only one-way?
None of the above. “Or it might just be random,” the
screener told me.
Twice in two days?
I thought about blaming my travel agent. It was my first
time using her, and I pictured her adding an addendum to
my ticket purchase: “I’d keep an eye on this creep if I
were you.”
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that my
ticket was paid by a third party—my book publisher—
and involved such a short stay.
What I do know is this: If the automatic triggers that
ensnared me twice in two days also pinpoint would-be
terrorists, the hassle and humiliation are all worth it. I’ll
assume the position without complaint.
But that’s a considerable if.
= December 6, 2005
Even Vicki Needs to Work on Image
I was sitting in the Granite Run Mall near Media Satur-

day, doing what married men everywhere do while their
wives are off giving the Visa card a good, plastic-melting,
pre-holiday workout.
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I sat and stared at the Victoria’s Secret mannequin.

Actually, she stared at me; I merely returned her un-
blinking gaze.
Vicki, as I named her, was hard to miss. She stood right
in the front window under bright lights, balancing precar-
iously on spike heels, curly blonde hair cascading over her
shoulders. She was tall enough to play in the NBA with
legs as long and fluid as the Schuylkill. She was as close to
naked as one can get in public without risking arrest.
Her wardrobe consisted of a hot-pink Santa hat with
matching hot-pink bra and tiny, tiny, tiny panties.
“Good Lord, there’s not enough there for a decent
hanky,” I started to say before realizing I was sounding like
my grandmother again.
I suppose it’s a sure sign of middle age when you begin
channeling long-departed relatives. One day you’re young
and worldly and rolling your eyes at the insufferable
things grown-ups say; the next you are shamelessly steal-
ing all their best lines.
Barbie, All Grown Up

I had to admit, Vicki was fetching, just like a life-size
Barbie doll, only better. Her features were even more
exaggerated, the mile-long legs, impossibly small waist,
and swelling bosom.Vicki’s hip bones jutted out beneath
a flat, sunken stomach; her arms were like matchsticks. If
this idealized female miraculously came to life, she’d
need to be rushed to the anorexia ward of the nearest
hospital.
And we wonder why so many teenage girls have eating
disorders and self-esteem issues?
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Life 205
Still, women of all ages flocked into the store, picking

over the tiny garments. It goes without saying that there
was a major disconnect between the plaster beauty in the
window and those drawn in by her.
The shoppers came in all shapes and sizes. They were
round and pear-shaped, droopy and angular, tall and short.
Most, to be honest, even the teens, were varying degrees
of overweight, a reflection of today’s overfed and under-
exerted America. The few I spotted who looked wispy
enough to actually get away with wearing the revealing
outfits in the front window turned out to be middle-
school age.Yikes!
Believe me, if there were a Victor’s Secret in the mall
with an idealized male hunk in the window, we men
wouldn’t hold up any better.
(I swear I could single-handedly put Speedo out of
business with but one brief beach stroll in one of its
stamp-size swimsuits.)
In other words, unlike the robo-model in the window,
the shoppers in the mall Saturday were human.
And we humans, fueled on supersize fast foods and
bucket-size soft drinks, are getting fatter by the hour. Not
just the adults but the children, too. Childhood obesity
has more than doubled over the last 25 years.
Reality-Fantasy Chasm
And, for once, metropolitan Philadelphia is a leading cul-
tural trendsetter. All hail the caloric cheesesteak!
What are we doing about it? Gawking at life-size fan-
tasy dolls that hawk clothing nearly none among us could
or should attempt to wear.
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No matter. The marketers ever more relentlessly ratchet

up the perfection standard, extolling wildly unrealistic
virtues of beauty. Each day, the chasm between reality and
fantasy grows. As we grow pudgier, the models in the dis-
play cases grow slinkier. At this rate, it’s just a matter of
time before the malnourished mannequins seize control
and begin sucking the nutrients out of us, which might
not be such a bad thing.
As I sat taking in the crazed mall scene, I decided we
should all work on one collective New Year’s resolution.
All of us should vow to eat better and exercise more, to
curb the empty calories and get up off the couch and ac-
tually live a little.
While we’re doing that, for better health and longer
lives, we should all let our daughters know that they don’t
need to be cartoonish toothpicks to be valued in our
thin-obsessed culture.
No offense,Vicki, but you could really stand to put on a
few pounds.
= December 9, 2005
When Music Died, Words Were Born
Do you remember what you were doing when John

Lennon was shot? I don’t, but I do remember, with a sear-
ing clarity, the moment 25 years ago this morning when I
belatedly heard the news.
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Life 207
I was a year out of college and working as a copy editor

at a lackluster little newspaper in western Michigan. Be-
cause the paper was published in the afternoon, my shift
began at an ungodly 4:45 a.m. My job was to clean up
the copy of others—the best I could often hope for was
to nudge the truly awful up to merely mediocre—and
then put a headline on it.
On December 8, 1980, I went to bed early without
turning on the television or radio, clueless about the seis-
mic shock waves emanating from the west side of Central
Park in New York. The next morning I walked into the
newsroom unaware, and the other copy editors—older
men who reveled in pushing my buttons—gleefully
awaited me, Associated Press copy in hand.
“Your little hero Johnny Lennon bit the big one last
night,” one of them, a washed-up back-bencher named
Brandon, said.
I literally reeled backward. I stuttered and stumbled.
“He what?” I asked, trying to process it. They all found
this immensely amusing.
I walked to the empty sports department and called my
older brother in New York, waking him. “Did you hear?”
I asked.
No Words Needed
He had, the night before as he walked home from work
through Central Park, and he had joined thousands of
others in the impromptu vigil outside the former Beatle’s
apartment building. We just sat there on the phone, not
saying much, not needing to.
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Other icons of our age had “bit the big one,” as Brandon
would say—Elvis, Jimi, Janis, Morrison—and yet this was
different.
The others had died of their own excesses. Lennon, pub-
licly and painfully, had worked through his, finding peace in
the simple joys of fatherhood. And he was killed by one of
us, a deranged fan carrying a copy of J. D. Salinger’s The
Catcher in the Rye.
If the Beatles provided the soundtrack for my youth, J. D.
Salinger provided the written text. Holden Caulfield—
crazy, pitiable, confused, unpredictable Holden—was a little
bit of all of us from that time, just as was Lennon, struggling
to find his way, wearing his anguish on his sleeve.
And these two towering cultural icons came crashing
together outside the Dakota apartments in a way that no
one anticipated. Instant karma’s gonna get you. . . . And
yet, not like this.
The fact that his death came just one day after the an-
niversary of another generation’s cultural earthquake—
Pearl Harbor—only intensified the feeling that this was
something far more than just a celebrity murder.
Inside Treatment
Back at the copy desk, the news chief, a World War II veteran
who as a 19-year-old had dropped bombs on Berlin, had rel-
egated Lennon’s death to two paragraphs on an inside page.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
Two hours later, the paper’s editor, a no-nonsense vet-
eran who had survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
arrived. He glanced over the news budget, stopping at the
Lennon story, slated for the “In Brief ” roundup.
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Life 209
He looked at me, and for the first time sought my

opinion. “This is big, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It’s really big,” I told him.
He seemed to grasp what my coworkers could not: that,
like Pearl Harbor, this event was about to shut the door
forever on a generation’s blissful naïveté and innocence.
All you need is love. . . . Right.
We ripped up the front page that morning and stripped
the Lennon story across the top. Then my editor, this relic
from a simpler time when good and evil were more clearly
defined, turned to me and asked if I would write a first-
person commentary on how Lennon’s death affected me.
It was the first column of my life, and when I had com-
pleted it, I knew this was what I was meant to do.
In the crazy snowball of unanticipated circumstance
that is life, four shots on a New York City sidewalk rever-
berated outward, touching many of us in unique ways.
For me that day, something inside died. And something
was born.
= January 6, 2006
You’ve Got Spam

AOL’s Trial CDs
As I hauled the fifth bulging bag of trash to the curb after

the holidays, I knew I had finally had enough.
The packaging that comes with nearly every purchase
in this country, be it fast food or appliances or underwear,
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was totally out of hand. Do we really need that pint-size

action figure double-boxed and shrink-wrapped and
bound to a cardboard slab with nylon straps? Are we wor-
ried he’ll escape?
Do we think those zucchini will somehow taste better
sold on a foam tray and wrapped in enough cellophane to
cover the Wachovia Center?
I had recycled as much paper and plastic as I could, and still
my family of five was contributing mounds to the landfill—
most of it useless packaging that came into our house with
gifts and immediately went into the trash. It was obscene.
That’s when I spotted the enemy. In the top of an open
trash can, waiting to join the parade of flotsam on the
curb, sat two unopened, plastic-wrapped boxes that had
appeared in my mailbox days earlier like so many unin-
vited packages before them.
If an old flame were mailing me unwanted items, I’d be
filing a stalker complaint with the local police. But these
weren’t from an old flame.
They were from America Online.
One was addressed to me by name, the other to “Cur-
rent Resident.” Both contained identical materials: shiny
new CDs and an offer to “Try AOL 90 days risk-free!”
An Uninvited Guest
The only problem was I didn’t want to try AOL, risk-free
or not. I’d been there, done that, and moved on to another
Internet service provider years earlier. And yet, with the
regularity of rainfall, the unwanted CDs showered in. As
soon as they would arrive, I would drop them in the trash.
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Life 211
Maybe it was the postholiday grumpies, but I said out

loud, “Not this time.” I pulled the two AOL boxes out of
the trash and scrawled in bold letters across them: “Re-
fused! Return to sender.” Man, it felt good.
The next morning, before dropping them in the mail, I
decided to check with the post office. I explained I was
fed up by these unsolicited mailings.
“It’s trash,” the clerk said. “Throw it away.”
“But I don’t want to throw them away,” I said. I tried to
tell her about the landfills and the packaging and the bags
of trash, but she cut me off.
“We will not deliver it, sir.”
I called a second post office and got the same answer.
The bulk-rate postage used by AOL and other mass mail-
ers does not include return service. “Unfortunately, you’ll
have to get rid of them yourself,” the clerk said.
I scoured the AOL Web site, thinking it must have in-
formation on how to return these unwanted disks at the
company’s expense. I clicked on “Discover All Things
AOL” and discovered everything except how to give the
cursed things back. I clicked on “spam” (after all, wasn’t
that what this was?), but again no luck.
Headed for the Trash

In my Internet searching, I discovered a group (www
.nomoreaolcds.com) dedicated to ending the wasteful
practice of sending out millions of unsolicited CDs,
many of which will end up in the trash. The California-
based group is collecting unwanted AOL CDs, and when
it has gathered one million, it plans to truck them to the
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company’s headquarters in Virginia and dump them on

the front steps. I want to be there for that.
I contemplated mailing the CDs back to AOL (22000
AOL Way, Dulles, VA 20166). But why should I pay to
return something I never asked for?
Finally, I found a toll-free number (1-800-466-5463) and
quickly got through to a helpful AOL sales rep named Mike,
who was eager to sign me up.When I told him I just wanted
to be removed from the mailing list, he said,“Hold, please.”
Of course, I was disconnected.
On my second call, after navigating a maze of automated
prompts,I reached a polite man named Mbuso in South Africa.
I never knew Pennsylvania could be pronounced so many
ways.Mbuso took my information and promised that my days
of receiving these ecological obscenities were behind me.
That still doesn’t solve the problem of the two double-
disk boxed sets cluttering my desk.Who knows, maybe I’ll
take up target shooting.
= February 17, 2006
With This Ring, Show Some Class
All right, men. We need to talk.

About The Ring.
Yes, that ring. The one Mario Mele, a former Mont-
gomery County commissioner, gave to his then-sweet-
heart, Janet Grace, last spring.
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Life 213
The ring that made a very big statement about love and
devotion and lifelong commitment. A statement to the
tune of two and one-third carats and $35,000.
The ring that Mele several weeks later wanted back af-
ter he decided that, you know what? Maybe marriage
wasn’t the best idea after all.
That ring.
Women, feel free to jump in here, but this really is a dis-
cussion we men need to have. And the question is this:
Guys, when you give a girl a ring and then decide you’ve
made a big mistake, what’s the right course?
Not the legal course or the financially savvy course.
The right course.
The honorable course.
As the whole nation now seems to know, the spurned
bride-to-be did not return the mammoth mineral. In-
stead, she sold the princess-cut diamond, gave the money
to charity, and kept the setting as a reminder, one guesses,
of the hard knocks that can accompany even the biggest
rocks.
Mele, 64, sued his 46-year-old ex-fiancée, demanding
the full value of the ring, plus $100,000 for his trouble.
She dug in her heels. Ah, fickle love, from gauzy romance
to embarrassingly public fights over the division of property
before the first fistful of rice ever had a chance to fly.
A Gentleman’s Choice
The lawsuit was surging forward until this week, when
national media attention suddenly put the fickle suitor
and his jilted bride-to-be in the spotlight. She came off
looking sympathetic; he came off looking, well . . .
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A guy proposes and less than two months later un-

proposes? He gives an extravagantly expensive piece of
jewelry—and then asks for it back?
No man likes to look wishy-washy, and no man likes to
look cheap. Mele was looking a lot like both.
With the national spotlight on them, the former love-
birds quietly resolved the lawsuit this week. And they
both lived happily ever . . . Oops, wait. Wrong ending.
And they both agreed not to disclose terms of the
agreement. There we go.
We know what Pennsylvania case law says—that an en-
gagement ring is considered a “conditional gift” that still
belongs to the suitor until the moment the deal is sealed
with a kiss on the wedding altar, at which time it becomes
the property of the bride.
But what does the human heart say? Come on, men,
help me out here. When you give a woman a ring, what’s
your intention? Are you really giving it to her, or just al-
lowing her to hold your property on her finger until she
coughs up her end of the bargain?
It’s more than that? Or at least isn’t it supposed to be?
Rules of Engagement
If I were making the rules, they would come down to
this: A gift is a gift, and givers don’t take back what
they have bestowed. Men, when you give a ring, the
ring is hers.
Women, if you change your mind and dump your
suitor in the dust before ever getting to the whole “till
death do we part” part, at least have the decency to return
the ring, even though you don’t have to.
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Life 215
Men, if you are the ones doing the dumping, say good-
bye not only to the no-longer Miss Right but also to the
large chunk of your savings that helped your local jeweler
send his children to really good colleges.
In the bigger scheme, the ring is chump change. Even a
$35,000 ring.
Here’s the moral of the story:
If you need to ask for the return of your ring, you
spent too much for it.
If you need to wonder if she’s worth it, she’s not.
If you wake up one day after proposing with a pit in
your stomach, and you know—just know—that it’s all
wrong, that this is not the person you want to spend the
rest of your life with, listen to your gut and be thankful
you’re figuring it out now, not on your honeymoon.
If you’re a gentleman, you will let her down as gently as
you know how.
You’ll blame yourself.
You won’t mention the ring.
You will know you’re getting off cheaply, even without
getting it back.
= May 2, 2006
A Helping Hand, a Helping of Grace
After December’s tsunami claimed countless thousands of

lives and left millions more homeless, many Americans
opened their checkbooks.
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The Rev. Stanley Hagberg packed a sleeping bag, kissed his

wife goodbye, and caught a flight into the heart of darkness.
For two months, Hagberg, a Conservative Baptist minis-
ter from Hatboro, slogged through muck and debris on the
Indonesian island of Sumatra, helping in any way he could.
He carried sacks of rice, delivered cooking oil, shoveled
mud out of homes, painted flood-stained classrooms.
Mostly, he listened as grief-stricken villagers who had lost
everything—their homes, their livelihoods, their children
—bared their souls. “Everyone had a story to tell,” said
Hagberg, 66, who arrived back in Philadelphia last month.
The territory of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra,
where he arrived February 7, was the closest landfall to
the earthquake that spawned the tsunami that struck on
December 26. A wall of water estimated at 100 feet tall
slammed the western coastline, wiping out everything in
its path. The official casualty count was 126,000 dead and
40,000 missing, but Hagberg said locals believe the num-
bers to be far higher.
“As far as the eye could see in all directions, it was just
nothing but leveled foundations,” he said last week from
his office at the Normandy Farms Estates retirement
community in Blue Bell, where he is chaplain.
A Higher Calling
When the call had come asking him to join a Baptist re-
lief mission to the devastated area, Hagberg hesitated.
He was no stranger to the country, having spent 16
years with his wife, Nancy, as Baptist missionaries in In-
donesian Borneo.
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Life 217
But that was nearly a quarter-century ago. He won-

dered if he was still up to the rigors of such a job. “I was
thinking of all the reasons I shouldn’t go, but I realized it
was just something God wanted me to do,” he said.
Today, the minister believes the experience changed his
life.
From the depths of one of the worst natural disasters in
recorded history, he found a bright, shining light. It was
the light of a shared humanity that transcended cultural
and religious differences.
Aceh, the territory where he volunteered, is a stronghold
of fundamentalist Islam. It is also a hotbed of a long-running
rebel insurgency against the Indonesian government. Before
the tsunami hit, Aceh was largely a closed society, suspicious
of outsiders.
Enter the bespectacled and soft-spoken Hagberg, who
kept his Christian beliefs to himself, knowing he was
there to help, not proselytize.
A Conservative Baptist minister thrown together with
fundamentalist Muslims in a ravaged and chaotic land?
You might think this would be a recipe for a whole new
level of seismic upheaval. But as Hagberg slogged through
the mosquito-infested heat and humidity, he found just
the opposite—something beyond beautiful, approaching
the sublime.
New Friendships
He came expecting suspicion; he left having found that
most elusive state of grace—brotherhood blind to race,
creed, or nationality.
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“They were just very kind, loving, and affectionate,”

Hagberg said of the people whose lives he touched and
who touched his. They were profoundly grateful to know
an American traveled so far for no reason other than to
hold out a helping hand.
“You really become part of each others’ lives in that sit-
uation,” he reflected. “Talk about feeling a person’s pain.
You want to weep with them for their loss, you really do.”
One man told him, “You are a member of my family.
You are my brother.”
A local leader, overwhelmed with gratitude, offered to
build a house for Hagberg so he could return with his
wife to live in the man’s village. “That, I think, is the
greatest compliment I’ve ever been given,” Hagberg said.
He took some lessons home with him. He knows now
that actions speak louder than words, and that empathy is
a gift returned many times over. He learned that in mat-
ters of life and death, differences melt away.
Through the jungle of despair, he glimpsed an elusive
path—the one that leads to peace on Earth.
= August 7, 2006
Summer and Smoke
The year was 1967, and in the Summer of Love, as it

would become known, the world seemed to be pulling
apart from all directions.
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Life 219
Two of my cousins were fighting in Vietnam; the others

were protesting the war in Ann Arbor. My older brother
was growing his hair long; my mother was saying extra
rosaries that she wouldn’t lose him entirely.
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Who stormed the
country at Monterey, and the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album that filled our home all
summer from the stereophonic record player with the
flip-up turntable.
In my little world, it was the summer my best friend,
John Rosser, and I set off to buy our first pack of cigarettes.
We were 10 years old.
As memory serves me, it was more Rosser’s idea than
mine, but I was a willing co-conspirator.
Many of the older kids in our neighborhood, which
was nestled against a lake outside Detroit, were smoking.
The young teens with their go-karts made with lawn-
mower engines; the older teens with their souped-up Ca-
maros and GTOs; the high-school girls we could only
dream about, all blonde and bronzed, who worshiped the
sun down at the neighborhood beach.
They smoked and looked beautiful. We wanted to, as
well. So on a hazy hot morning we set off on our match-
ing Schwinn Typhoon bicycles for the Sylvan Lanes
Bowling Alley, several miles from our homes and well be-
yond the bounds of parental permission. Between us we
had 35 cents—the exact price of one pack of cigarettes.
We chose the bowling alley because it had a vending
machine in an outer foyer. We chose morning because we
knew the place would be empty.
We were quaking with fear.
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I played lookout, waiting with the bikes while Rosser

went in. He returned seconds later to report he had got-
ten one dime in the machine before hearing a noise and
fleeing.
It was my turn. I strolled in as nonchalantly as I could,
my knees knocking, and pushed the quarter into the
slot—then sprinted out as though a rottweiler were fast
on my heels.
We stood together in the parking lot summoning our
nerve. All that was left to do was select our brand—it had
to be Marlboro; all the cool kids smoked Marlboro—and
pull the knob. This time we went in together.
“You pull, I’ll grab,” Rosser said.
I spotted the Marlboro placard and pulled. The wrong
knob.
Out came a pack of True cigarettes. Rosser could not
have looked more horror-stricken had a rotting rat fallen
from the machine. Oh no, girl cigarettes!
There was no time to lament. We could see adults
inside.
“Let’s go!” Rosser yelled, cramming the pack of Trues
down the crotch of his shorts. We hopped on our bikes
and pedaled off full speed, not stopping until we reached
the vacant waterfront lot across from my house. There was
nothing on it except a rickety stairway leading down a
steep, wooded slope to the lake.
Near the water’s edge was an oak tree with a hollow in
its trunk—our stash spot for all sorts of juvenile contra-
band over the years. It was there we peeled off the cello-
phane, tugged open the foil wrapper and each placed one
of the slim cigarettes between our lips.
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Life 221
Rosser struck the match, and we lit up. We must have

looked ridiculous, puffing and coughing, our eyes water-
ing, our heads spinning, our stomachs churning.
For being cool, smoking sure wasn’t much fun. Nonethe-
less, we finished our cigarettes, then lit a third, passing it be-
tween us.
For good measure as we smoked, Rosser and I shouted
every curse word we could think of into the treetops.
Just for the thrill of it. Just to spite the Catholic nuns
who taught us at Our Lady of Refuge up the street. We
wanted them to know they hadn’t won the indoctrina-
tion war yet.
How grown up it seemed, smoking and swearing in
the very same breath. (Neither of us would go on to
smoke as adults, though we both occasionally still swear
at the treetops.)
Rosser and I buried the butts and stashed the cigarette
pack in the tree hollow, then headed to my house,
where we crept past my mother at the kitchen sink and
locked ourselves in the bathroom to swish toothpaste in
our mouths. We felt like soldiers after battle. With blus-
ter and bravado, we laughed and jabbed each other at
the sink.
We were 10 with no cares or worries in this troubled,
confusing world. We were romping through the dog days
of summer at full, blissful gallop. We had just conquered
our first cigarette, as awful as it was.
It only made sense to celebrate by giving Sgt. Pepper
another whirl before heading to the beach where the
pretty girls with the burnished skin waited to ignore us
once again.
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= August 14, 2006
One Violent Summer,

Two Worlds Collided
My uncle is an old man now, a retired priest who lives in

a log cabin in the country and spends his days growing
vegetables to give away.
But in the summer of 1967, he was the pastor of St.
Catherine’s Catholic Church, an inner-city parish in De-
troit that was 40 minutes and a world away from the lake-
front suburban neighborhood where I was growing up.
To his parishioners, he was Monsignor Vincent
Howard. To his nieces and nephews he was simply Father
Vin, an irrepressible practical joker who would greet you
with a slap on the back—and drop an ice cube down your
shirt. Or tell you to look out the window, then gleefully
steal the cherry off your sundae.
On July 23 of that year, a Sunday night, my uncle was
not joking. He was scared for his life.
Without warning, a large swath of Detroit had ex-
ploded in what would become one of the country’s most
violent race riots, a five-day conflagration that would
claim 43 lives and entire blocks of the city. Stores were
burning, firefighters were taking gunfire, the police were
pinned down in their precinct houses—and my uncle was
trying to protect his flock.
“The riot was going on all around us. That night I had
35 people staying in the rectory,” he told me recently.
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Life 223
“They slept on the steps and on the floors. We couldn’t

raise our heads above the windowsills; we had to crawl
because we were afraid we would get shot.”
He was particularly worried about two families with
young children whose homes were close to the violence.
Early the next morning, he picked up the telephone.
“I called your mother and she welcomed them out
there,” he recalled.
That is where my memory begins.
I remember that morning, watching Detroit burn live
on the television, and Father Vin’s Chevrolet pulling into
our driveway, loaded with children. Seven of them poured
out, each holding a paper grocery sack of clothes.
As I recall, the youngest was about 8 and the oldest 15,
a mix of boys and girls from two families.
Until that day, my world was my quiet neighborhood.
It was swim lessons and horseback riding, Little League
and touch football. I was 10 and had only the vaguest no-
tion that places like Detroit, with their poverty and fester-
ing racial tensions, existed.
These kids, scared and visibly impoverished, were just
as shocked by my world as I was by theirs. We considered
ourselves middle class—one car, one black-and-white
television—but I could tell they saw us as impossibly rich.
We had a modern house on a park-like lot, and, down the
street, a neighborhood beach and a dock with a sailboat
tied to it.
In my suburban world, I had always thought I was
pretty tough. I wasn’t tough. These kids were tough. I was
instantly intimidated. We eyed each other with awkward-
ness and suspicion.
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My mother ordered everyone into bathing suits and

down to the beach. Her purpose, I later would learn, was
to have the opportunity to wash their clothes.
Only when we reached the water’s edge did I realize
that not all kids grow up with such a privilege. They
stared nervously at the water in which I was so at ease.
Not one of them knew how to swim.
The children stayed with us for five days while the riots
raged to the beat of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the
City” on the radio. The girls took over the bedroom and
the boys slept in our tent-trailer in the backyard. My
mom, her mother-hen instinct in overdrive, whipped up
huge batches of hot-dog casserole and baked beans, and
ordered her new adoptees, just like her own kids, to get in
the tub and not come out until their feet were clean. At
night, we roasted marshmallows and stared up at the stars,
invisible to them in the city.
Gradually, we became friends. We rode bikes through the
neighborhood together, ran through the woods and splashed
in the water. I taught the boy closest to my age how to dog
paddle, and he taught me how draw comic-book characters.
Day by day, hour by hour, we were figuring out that,
for all our differences of place and privilege, we were not
all that different.
In the end, we were all just kids. Kids who loved ice
cream and hated baths. Kids who liked bare feet and
dreaded the return to school. Kids who hid from chores
and found mischief.
Through violent upheaval, our paths had crossed.
Serendipitously, our separate worlds had come together,
not with a crash but with a gasp of mutual awe.
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Life 225
For them, I imagine my life was a fairly tale, a tantalizing

dream from which they soon enough would awaken.They
had been plucked from their burning block and deposited
here where all was safe and clean and well.They stayed just
long enough to taste what lay beyond their grasp.
The greater lesson was mine to take. These children
were my wake-up call. Never again could I so blithely
take for granted all my parents had worked to provide. No
longer could I presume that children grow up equal or
that life is an even playing field.
On that last day, when it came time to say goodbye, we
hugged and promised to write. Then they piled into Fa-
ther Vin’s Chevrolet and headed back to the smoldering
ashes of their neighborhood. Their happy, gleaming faces
smiled back at me as they disappeared into the distance.
Talkin’ ’Bout the Generations
The first time I saw The Who, I was a high school senior,
and my lasting memory of that day was the terrifying sen-
sation that I was about to be crushed.
It was December 1975 at the Silverdome in Pontiac,
Michigan, a cavernous venue that was then home to the
Detroit Lions. Tens of thousands of fans surrounded the
place, waiting for the doors to open. General admission.
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My best friend, Ray, and I had arrived early and were

near the front. The crowd began to surge forward even
though the gates remained locked. Tighter and tighter we
were squeezed until I could not move my arms and
could barely breathe. And then we were squeezed even
tighter.
Just as panic began to sweep the crowd, the gates swung
open and we poured forward, like flotsam in a raging river.
It was a fitting start for a night of volatile, reckless rock-
and-roll—music like I had never experienced before.Vis-
ceral, raging, ear-piercing, all cloaked in a haze of marijuana
smoke.
The second time I saw The Who—the two surviving
members, that is—was last week at the Wachovia Center.
My, how we’ve all changed these last 31 years.
As my colleague Dan DeLuca noted in his review, the
packed house was dominated by middle-age parents with
their teenage children. Fathers and sons in matching Who
T-shirts. Moms and daughters singing together, “. . . we
won’t get fooled again.”
A Family Affair
There were plenty of young adults in attendance, too—a
testament to the intergenerational pull of this iconic rock
band—but all around me the gathering had more the feel
of soccer camp than a reunion of arguably the wildest bad
boys of rock.
I did not detect a single whiff of marijuana.
My wife and I had brought our three children, ages 14,
12, and 9, Who fans all, to experience this cultural phe-
nomenon before it was too late.
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And by the end of the night, I acutely felt the push of

time.
Pete Townshend, still hard-rocking, was grizzled. Roger
Daltrey, that ethereal, blue-eyed pretty boy every high
school girl once craved, was noticeably slower, his vocal
range diminished, his microphone gymnastics a shadow of
his earlier days. During one song, he missed his cue and
apologized, “I can’t hear the beat.” Later he complained
about being half-deaf.
It was like watching a pair of proud lions, the once un-
challenged kings of their jungle, fighting back against
their inevitable decline. They could still rock, no doubt
about it, but there was a poignancy in their performance,
an unspoken acknowledgement that their days of filling
arenas and blasting out power chords were numbered.
In the men’s room, a fan who appeared to be in his 50s
said to my 12-year-old, “Remember this night, kid. The
night you saw Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey to-
gether onstage.” He knew what I knew: that the sun was
setting on yet another icon of the ’60s rock revolution.
Passing the Baton

If they were not the same rock stars, I was no longer the
same fan. I realized that as I watched drummer Zak
Starkey, son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, come amaz-
ingly close to capturing the frenetic majesty of The Who’s
original drummer, Keith Moon. I felt a swell of emotion
in my chest. A father’s emotion. I leaned over to my wife
and said, “His dad must be so proud.” And I meant it.
This was a rock concert, and I knew I should be, well,
rocking. But I found myself glancing at my own children,
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their heads nodding to the music, and wondering where

life’s magical mystery tour might take them. Surely some-
where I could not even imagine.
The baton was passing from one generation to the
next, from the lions to the cubs, from fathers to sons. The
future was theirs now.
After the last song, the crowd gave the aging rockers
the standing ovation they deserved, perhaps as much for
what they were, what they will always be in our collective
memory, as for what they are now.
Then Townshend darted off the stage with adolescent
agility while his cohort hobbled off gingerly on what ap-
peared to be arthritic knees.
As another graying rocker put it, rock-and-roll will
never die. But its practitioners—those once eternally
young gods of the stage—will indeed fade away.
= October 9, 2006
Dogged Writers in the Big House
So I’m at the White House having breakfast with the First

Lady . . .
I know, it sounds like the opening line of a bad joke.
But there I am on a recent Saturday, noshing on salmon
and French toast beneath a giant portrait of Benjamin
Franklin.
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The closest I’ve ever been to power was in 1968 when

I held the flag for the governor of Michigan. I’m pretty
easily starstruck.
“Is this really happening?” I whispered to my wife.
She opened her blazer to show me the embossed paper
hand towel she’d snatched from the powder room. “It’s
really happening,” she answered.
I glanced at the marine guards in their dress uniforms
and wondered what federal laws we were breaking.
Yes, we. I reached into my pocket and showed Jenny
that I, too, had purloined a souvenir—a cocktail napkin
stamped with the words: “Seal of the President of the
United States.”
“Guantanamo, here we come,” I said.
For the record, Jenny and I weren’t the only ones nab-
bing souvenirs. The word was out among the 150 or so
breakfast guests that the presidential paper products were
the hottest ticket in town.
We were all there for one simple reason: Many of us
had written books. And Laura Bush, that former librarian,
loves books.
She loves them so much that six years ago she launched
the National Book Festival with the Library of Congress
to bring authors and readers together to celebrate the
written word.
Each year the festival has grown. And on that Saturday,
100,000 readers of all ages poured onto the National Mall
to attend book readings and signings. If you fear the writ-
ten word is on the verge of extinction, and that electronic
gadgetry has eclipsed old-fashioned words on paper, the
scene on the Mall would brighten your outlook.
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The crowd included every imaginable demographic slice.

But it was the young people who caught my eye. School
children collecting autographs, high schoolers with pierced
eyebrows, college students taking notes. One student told
me she drove all the way from Amherst, Massachusetts.
The written word was boldly alive on the Mall that day,
as big and brazenly virile as the Washington Monument itself.
But before the festival came the breakfast, and before
the breakfast—the previous night—came a black-tie gala at
the Library of Congress for the authors and sponsors,
attended by President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials.
“Hey,” I said, spotting Attorney General Alberto Gonza-
les, at the next table.“It’s the torture guy!”
But we weren’t there to debate torture or unconstitutional
detainments or the ever-bleaker quagmire in Iraq.We were
here to agree on one thing: the value of words on paper.
The invited authors, poets, and illustrators covered the
spectrum. Legal thriller writers Scott Turow and (Philly’s
own) Lisa Scottoline were on the program. So were inves-
tigative reporter Bob Woodward and Khaled Hosseini,
author of the acclaimed The Kite Runner, as were Pulitzer
Prize winners Doris Kearns Goodwin, Taylor Branch, and
Geraldine Brooks.
Yeah, and bringing up the rear, me—that columnist
who wrote about life with an insane Labrador retriever.
All invited by Mrs. Bush to send the message that
books matter.
She thanked the writers “for the many solitary hours
you spend working to enlighten and inform and inspire
and entertain all the rest of us.” When I had a few
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moments with her, I thanked her for championing some-

thing that matters.
In the English language, it all comes down to this:
Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create
magic. Twenty-six letters form the foundation of a free,
informed society.
Whatever you think of the president and his adminis-
tration—and, frankly I don’t think much of them—let’s
give credit where credit is due.
Laura Bush is doing more to promote reading and liter-
acy than any First Lady before her, and perhaps more than
anyone in the country today. She is using her substantial
bully pulpit to spotlight reading and literacy and to hook
children—the next generation—as lifetime lovers of books.
The president’s legacy might be in question; his wife’s is
secure.
Well done, Mrs. Bush.
And thanks for the cool napkins.
= October 13, 2006
A Searing Lesson in Forgiveness
In hindsight, I realize I was driving too fast, especially

given the rain-slicked roads.
Ahead of me at an intersection, a car was stopped with
its left blinker on. I bore down, expecting it to turn out of
my path at any second.
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But the car did not turn. By the time I hit the brakes it
was too late. I skidded and slammed into its rear end, cat-
apulting it into cross traffic.
Miraculously, the other vehicles all avoided the car, but
I realized instantly my moment of poor judgment could
easily have resulted in the death of an innocent stranger.
Across the intersection, we both pulled into a parking
lot. The man inside looked like he could have been a bar
bouncer, large and intimidating.
He wasn’t hurt and neither was I. His car did not even
have a dent where I hit it.
“Man, you almost got me creamed,” the driver said.
I apologized profusely.He had every right to be angry,and
I was braced for him to get in my face, poke a finger in my
chest and dress me down with a string of obscenities.People
had been beaten up, even shot, over lesser transgressions.
Then he did an amazing thing. The stranger shook my
hand and said, “It was an accident. Don’t worry about it.”
The F Word
That was years ago, but the moment has stuck with me
because it put me on the receiving end of an important
lesson. I had erred and he had forgiven.
Forgiveness.
We all want to think we are capable of it. And for most
of us, most of the time, we are.
We can forgive a child who disobeys. Or a delivery
driver who accidentally knocks over our mailbox. Perhaps
even a thief who takes what is ours.
But what about an offense far worse? Unspeakably,
unimaginably worse?
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What about a stranger who barges into a country

schoolhouse, lines up 10 innocent children against the
chalkboard—and opens fire?
What parent, what community, could forgive that?
We now know the answer.
Within hours of Charles Carl Roberts IV’s murderous
assault on the Amish school in Lancaster County on Oc-
tober 2, the local Amish community was already express-
ing forgiveness.
Even before they had a chance to bury their dead
daughters. Even as they huddled bedside as other victims
clung to life by the most tenuous of threads. Complete
and total forgiveness.
What was done was done, and the killer, too, was now
dead. No amount of anger or vengeance-seeking would
bring the children back or the killer to justice. The Amish
had two choices: Descend the dark staircase into bitter-
ness, or follow the tenets of their faith and rise above it.
They believe all acts, even one as monstrous as this, are
part of their God’s inexplicable plan.
And so they forgave.
Mercy Amid Grief

Amish neighbors went to the killer’s home to console his
wife and other relatives. They attended his funeral and in-
vited his widow to attend at least one of the murdered
girl’s funerals. As thousands of dollars poured in from
around the world to help the families of the victims, the
Amish set up a fund for the killer’s own children.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable and somehow beautiful all at once.
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It is the stuff sermons are built around. If the Amish can

forgive such a ghastly violation, can’t we all try to be just
a little more forgiving of the slights and hurts and wrongs
of daily life?
The simple people know what many of us still have not
figured out, that the ever-escalating violence of vengeance
has no end, and that the acid of revenge etches the human
heart with deep and permanent scars.
Imagine if the ethic of unilateral forgiveness could en-
velop the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, the Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland, the Jews and Palestinians in Israel.
Imagine if it could permeate the streets of America,
where rival gangs kill over colors and young men settle
scores over respect with 9mm Glocks.
The Amish have found the road to a higher place.
The rest of us could do worse than to be a little more like
them.
= November 3, 2006
Flying’s Fearful New Annoyances
It says something about my state of mind that I found

myself on a flight from Pennsylvania to Texas last week
counting the contents of my in-flight snack.
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I dumped the bag onto the tray table and used the
eraser end of a pencil to line up the contents in little rows.
My “premium blend” power snack consisted of exactly
nine and a half soy nuts, five and a quarter sesame sticks,
and five lonely mini-pretzels. Together, this gastronomic
feast totaled a whopping one-half ounce.
Bon appetit, passengers!
Isn’t it nice to know the airlines are doing their part to
address the national obesity epidemic? I’m just grateful
they didn’t stick me with the “dieters’ blend.”
I don’t normally spend my time obsessing over snack
mixes, but this is what the sorry state of air travel in Amer-
ica has done to me. Turned me into a raving soybean
counter.
Remember the good old days when fliers loved to
hate the airline food? Back in those days of yore when
there actually was airline food?Yes,I know.I’m giving away
my age.
Shoes Off, Please

The food is just a small part of it.
The joys of modern air travel now begin at the security
check-in line where we line up like cattle, removing shoes
and blazers, whipping off belts, clutching trousers to keep
them from heading south.
No one wants to grumble about measures to keep the
nation safe from terrorism, so we shuffle silently through
in our stocking feet. But honestly, some of the security
rules are plain dumb.
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Somehow I don’t feel any safer knowing that the

grandma in front of me in line just had to throw out her
four-ounce bottle of Oil of Olay.
Immediately after the liquid-explosive scare several
weeks ago, anything liquid or gel had to go. Thousands
of dollars worth of cosmetics and soft drinks were
tossed out. The terrorists, I’m sure, were mightily
amused.
Then the Transportation Security Administration
tweaked the rules to allow travelers to carry whatever liq-
uids and gels they could fit into a one-quart plastic bag, as
long as no one item was more than three ounces.
I was in the security line a couple of weeks ago and the
man in front of me had his toiletry kit boiled down to the
bare essentials—tiny travel sizes of toothpaste, deodorant,
and mouthwash. But he forgot the plastic bag.
The TSA inspector told him, no baggie, no go. The
man dumped them in the trash. And for what?
When my turn came, I had my essentials in the baggie,
having learned my lesson on a previous flight when all my
liquids were confiscated.
But one of my items was a six-ounce toothpaste tube.
“This container is too large,” the TSA inspector said.
“But it’s nearly empty,” I told him. At best, it had an
ounce left in it.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We go by the container size,
not the contents.”
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Life 237
Some Common Sense

I wanted to retort: “So it’s OK to have six ounces of
toothpaste in two three-ounce containers, but not one
ounce in a six-ounce container?”
I knew where arguing would get me.“Whatever,” I said
and tossed it.
We need security, I realize that. We need rules. But a
little common sense would be nice, too.
The overzealous security rules wouldn’t be so bad if
checking luggage was not such a crap shoot.
My son and I flew from Philadelphia to California for a
long weekend a few months ago, and I did something I
never do—checked our luggage. Big mistake. The bags
didn’t show up until we were nearly ready to return home.
Even when bags are not lost, the waits to retrieve them
in baggage claim can exceed the flight time. Especially
here in Philadelphia, home to the why-hurry-I’m-hourly
school of customer service.
U.S.Airways’baggage delays and losses in Philadelphia have
become so embarrassing, the airline’s top brass went public
with a plan to fix the problem. I’ll believe it when I see it.
For the beleaguered passenger, the choices are bleak:
Check your bag and pray you’ll someday see it again, or
carry it through security and face the toothpaste gestapo.
The only consolation is knowing, once you finally
make your flight, a hearty half-ounce snack awaits you.
Just try not to spoil your appetite.
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= November 10, 2006
Mortality Check
Is in the Mail
The letter arrived unannounced at my home, hidden amid

junk mail.
It came in a plain envelope with a simple street address on
the back.There was no outward hint as to its contents, and
for good reason. I would have promptly thrown it away.
Yes, it was that letter. The one no one wants to receive
but all one day will. The letter that makes an IRS audit
seem like a lottery prize.
The one that slaps you hard on the face and tells you
once and for all that you never again will fit into those
30-inch-waist jeans.
“Dear Mr. John J. Grogan,” it began.
I scanned the opening paragraph, picking out the oper-
ative phrases:“fully eligible . . . membership . . . benefits . . .
life over 50.”
Life. Over 50.
I began to pray. Oh, Lord, please, no. Not that. Anything
but that.
For whom does the American Association of Retired
Persons troll? It trolls for me.
My official AARP membership card, No. 1567627, was
attached.
“Honey,” I called to my wife. “Where’s the bourbon?”
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Life 239
Counting the Days

For the record, I am not 50. Not even close. Fifty remains
a faraway speck on the horizon. I remain a proud member
of the forty-something decade. Some of my best friends
are thirty-somethings. A few are even fresh-faced twenty-
somethings.
I still do ridiculously foolhardy things like teeter from a
high ladder holding a chain saw.
I am not 50, OK? That’s still four months, 10 days, and
17 hours away. Not that anyone is counting.
But could the AARP wait?
The letter tried to lure me in with a long list of “bene-
fits and services” aimed at nascent geezers-in-waiting.
A safe-driving course, for starters. I couldn’t help con-
juring up a horrible premonition of me in a Buick Sky-
lark tooling along at 43 mph in the high-speed lane of
Interstate 95. Nooooo!
My membership comes with a magazine to remind me
that I’m on the downhill slide to 100.
It offers regular updates on Social Security, an entitle-
ment program I am perfectly happy never to qualify for.
I also can use my AARP card,and I quote,“to save on shoes.”
All colors, or just white?
I won’t deny it.The arrival of my AARP card threw me
into a total funk. This was my parents’ organization. Why
was it bugging me?
I tried to put the best spin on it. Finally, those bushy
eyebrows I’ve always craved would be coming into their
own!
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The Eternal Paterno

But there was no denying the harsh reality. Life’s best
chapters may still lie ahead, but any way I spun it, the
story line ended the same way.
At the cemetery.
That’s when I thought about Joe Paterno. What better
role model for the second half-century?
The Penn State coaching legend will turn 80 next
month and still gets up every morning to go to work.
Saturday he was flattened by two players who crashed
into him, breaking his leg, but not his intensity.
I loved the photo of Paterno being carted off the field
with his injured leg up. His face, equal parts disgust and
impatience, said it all: Get the damn leg fixed so I can get
back to work, will ya?
Not that I harbor fantasies of coaching college ball. But
when I grow up, I want to be like Jumpin’ Joe Paterno.
Not a stubborn-as-a-mule coach. But someone who
refuses to relent to the ravages of time. Someone who
embraces his passion without compromise and won’t let
go. Someone who tells age what it can do with itself.
A guy who won’t slow down.
My father was a bit like Paterno that way. He hurled him-
self at life full bore every day, right up to his last. I would
have put him, at 89, up against men 20 years younger.
An automotive engineer, he liked to say, “The worst
possible thing for a car is to let it sit and idle.” The same
rule applies to the human machine.
Bring it on, AARP. Bring on the membership cards and
senior discounts.
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Life 241
Fifty may be right around the corner. But as a great

coach might tell his players in the halftime pep talk of life:
You’re only as old as you let yourself be.
= November 24, 2006
Just Say No
to Black Friday
Good morning, shoppers.

Today is the big day. The one that sends crazed bargain
hunters into a salivating frenzy. The one that sends retail-
ers and credit card companies into a heroin-like state of
bliss. The one that sends anyone still clinging to the real
meaning of Christmas into the dumps.
Yes, today is the appropriately named Black Friday. A
dark and gloomy and cynical day.
Around our region, tens of thousands of shoppers will
work off yesterday’s big turkey dinner by rising before
dawn, jostling for parking spaces, racing up and down
aisles, lunging for the latest must-have toys and electron-
ics, and waiting in long lines to pay.
Tempers will flare, heads will throb, feet will ache. But
it will all be worth it because at the end of the day our
cars will be filled with . . . stuff. Stuff to show our loved
ones how much we care.
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You wouldn’t think we famously materialistic Ameri-

cans would need our own special day to ratchet the
spending orgy up. But that’s what today is.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate. Today actually began
yesterday. That is, the Black Friday shopping kickoff actu-
ally got started at many stores on Thanksgiving afternoon
or evening.
Why spend the holiday at home with your family
when you can get a head start on the purchases that mean
so much more?
Finding Balance
It’s hard, I know.
As parents, my wife and I struggle to find the right bal-
ance. In our minds, we’re giving our children a nice as-
sortment of gifts without going overboard. Then they
compare notes with their friends, and I see the disap-
pointment on their faces. That Monopoly game instantly
loses its luster when Tommy up the street whizzes by on
his new all-terrain four-wheeler.
The new meaning of Christmas comes down to this:
guilt. To avoid it, we buy like there is no tomorrow.
There’s not much joy in it, but at least we’ve covered.
Baby Jesus would be so proud.
May I make a modest proposal?
Just say no.
Say no to the rat race.
Say no to the hype.
Say no to the notion, carefully planted by marketers
and advertisers, that good parents who really care shower
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Life 243
their children with obscene amounts of toys and gifts—

even if they need to max out their credit cards to do it.
Look away from the light, my friends. Block out the
white noise. Ignore the “only X shopping days left”
pitches.
The season is not about buying junior 26 different toys,
most of which will be obsolete, broken, or ignored within
weeks. It’s not about spending on steroids. At least it
didn’t start out that way.You don’t need to be particularly
religious to recognize that.
Pricey Playthings
A teen in Allentown laid out $600 for the newly released
and wildly hyped PlayStation 3—and minutes later was
robbed of it at gunpoint.
I’m not sure which distresses me more: people robbing
one another with guns, or Sony shaking down kids for a
$600 toy that, mark my words, will be out-of-date in 24
months.
Last year, I wanted to give a special gift to a special
friend who did a lot for me in the previous months. I
bought into the hype, thinking I needed to spend several
hundred dollars to convey the proper level of apprecia-
tion. In the end, I spent zero.
Instead, I holed up in my basement night after night
and slowly crafted a simple keepsake box out of a black
walnut log that came from the woods behind my house. I
sawed the log into planks, planed the planks into boards,
fitted the boards together, then sanded and varnished and
polished.
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I’m no master craftsman, and the final product reflected

that. But my friend was touched by my efforts in a way no
purchased gift could touch.The real gift, though, was to me.
I rediscovered the true joy of gift giving. A joy unbur-
dened by guilt or pressure or competition.
Here’s the secret: It’s about giving of yourself.
Today I plan to observe Black Friday by sitting home in
front of the fire with a good book.The mad march on the
mall can be somebody else’s crusade. Care to join me?
= December 11, 2006
An Army of One Takes on Litter
On any given morning in Roxborough, you might spot a

middle-aged woman bundled against the cold, making her
way along Ridge Avenue, stooping to retrieve anything
she finds in her path.
You will know her because she will have a mixed-breed
dog at her side, and, almost always, other people’s discards
in her hands.
She might stop to scoop up tossed fast food or a
crumb-filled doughnut bag or a beer can with one last
swill inside.
“If it’s too disgusting I won’t pick it up,” she says. “If it’s
oozing or gooey, I won’t touch it.” Her name is Diane
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Bones, and she wants you to know that she is not bag lady
looking for her next meal. She is a gainfully employed
homeowner and proud resident of the neighborhood
who is waging a one-woman battle against what she con-
siders Enemy No. 1: litter.
It’s everywhere—blowing down the streets, covering
the sidewalks and tiny yards, Bones says.
When she moved into the city from Media, shortly af-
ter getting married in 2000, she noticed it immediately.
And it drove her crazy.
“I love living in the city,” she says. “I love everything
about it. My only complaint is the litter.”
Daily Good Deed

And so Bones, 53, took it upon herself to pick up the
messes left by strangers. She has turned her morning
power walk with Samantha, the shepherd mix, into a
street-sprucing mission.
What does she snag on a typical walk?
“Soda cans, cigarette packs, candy wrappers, potato-
chip bags, newspapers, milk jugs, beer and booze bottles,”
she says. “On our street, litter is just an accepted way of
life. People just walk right by it.”
Bones lives across from an Acme, and she often picks up
discarded packaging from items customers have just
bought. Plastic bags from the nearby Rite-Aid blow about.
A couple of doors from her home sits Levering Elemen-
tary School, which Bones says is a source of a lot of the
trash. Children drop their wrappers and soft-drink bottles
without seeming to realize they’re littering, she says.
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Her route takes her near Roxborough High School. She

has watched students exit a nearby doughnut shop, drop-
ping their trash as they walk.
Sometimes she confronts them.“I will literally yell across
Ridge Avenue,‘Pick that up!’” she says. Usually they do.
“They look startled. They don’t think they’re doing
anything wrong.”
The culprits are not just children. She has caught plenty
of adults in the act, too, including a neighbor who blithely
tossed a worthless lottery ticket out the window of her car.
“She didn’t win, so we all lose,” Bones grouses.
A Symbol of Surrender
What bugs her almost as much as the litterers are those
who simply step over the trash, even if it is in their own
yard or in front of their business.
She admits she’s a bit obsessive about litter. She sees it as a
cancer that eats away at civic pride and community fabric.
“Even through it seems like a minor problem, litter sets
the tone for a we-don’t-care attitude,” Bones says. “It’s
symbolic of an apathy, a surrender. It’s saying, ‘You know
what? I give up.’”
Bones is not about to give up.
When she moved in, there were no public trash cans
near Levering Elementary, and neighbors told her that was
just the way it was. She made one call to then-Council-
man Michael Nutter, and two trash receptacles soon ap-
peared outside the school.
One person’s efforts really can make a difference.
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Every morning, Bones picks up what she can, even as

passersby stare, thinking she must be crazy or homeless or
both. The next day, more trash always awaits her.
“Sometimes it does feel futile,” she admits. “Some days,
I ask why I even bother.”
Still, she soldiers on.
“Have I made a difference? Who knows? I can’t be re-
sponsible for the whole world, but I can be responsible for
the little spot in front of my house.
“If my little corner of the world can look better, maybe
it will start to snowball.”

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qxd 7/23/07 10:07 AM Page i

Bad Dogs Have

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Bad Dogs Have

Copyright © 2007 by The Philadelphia Inquirer

Hardcover edition first published in 2007 by Vanguard Books

The articles in this book were originally written by

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available

Vanguard Press books are available at special discounts for

Who’s a Father? A Guy Who’s There 49

Weather to Croon and Swoon Over 115

viii Bad Dogs Have More Fun

A Terrorist? Moi? Twice Exonerated 200

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= January 24, 2003

Deaf Girl Provides

4 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

A Long, Hard Battle

“It’s taken a tremendous amount of concentration and

6 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

Her performance over, Caitlin hurried off the stage.

= April 14, 2003

Food for Thought

The book arrived unannounced in plain brown paper.

We each have two boys and a girl of similar ages. We

8 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

Kindlon’s research and a number of other national stud-

about parents supplying food to their kids that cements

= April 21, 2003

Phila. in Spring, and Free Parking!

Some vacations just aren’t meant to be. Our long-antici-

10 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

A friendly little stomach bug known as rotavirus had

Been There, Done That

We pedaled north along the east bank of the river and

12 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

We sat on the sidewalk and ate semi-petrified hot dogs

= June 10, 2003

A Refresher Course in Parenting 101

Good morning, class, and welcome to Parenting 101.

I apologize in advance if some of these points seem

14 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

Real news items: A Southwest Philadelphia woman was

another parent, the Hawks’ president, in the nose during a

= August 29, 2003

Girl, 4, Offers Hope

At Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Doylestown

16 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

who faced down cancer with a bravery and optimism sel-

March 22:“I am feeling OK and even asked my mom if

18 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

the update that we knew was coming but we never

= September 19, 2003

Dateline: SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania.

Watchung, New Jersey. And she had been on her way to a

A Snowstorm and Death

20 Bad Dogs Have More Fun

touched her. It was Elizabeth Wainio, the young woman