I've had the luck to run into a lot of famous people. Mostly this was because of my job but there were also random chance meetings. Some of these encounters were barely a glance, some were short casual chats and some were pretty long term work situations. These are in no particular order of importance. I've kept a list forever and will just start working my way through them with little stories for context. This is the order I wrote them. Each name is a button to hit that will scroll you down to the story.
This is my paternal grandmother in a photograph taken in 1909 when she was 20 years old. I never met her as she died long before I was born when she was 31, of something that would be easily cured today. I have only come across a few photos of her and my Dad was just 7 when she died,so he didn't have many memories to pass along to me.
Even more sadly I have no photos of my maternal grandmother Dorothea Granat Murciak. She was just 36 in 1921 when she died, also of something easily cured today. My Mom was just 4 and had no memories she could pass along.
They weren't really famous but I wanted to give them this place on my list because I'm sure they would have been famous if they had lived long enough. At least famous for the sympathy they would have received for having to deal with me as one of their grandsons. And of course most of us will never be famous and countless others have died before they could achieve fame but that doesn't mean they have not somehow influenced someone who did. So this is also for all of you still working on getting on my famous people list.
Genevive Pool Schlagheck
Patty is the first celebrity I ever met although she wasn’t a celebrity at the time,
Thanks to the US Woman’s Hockey team, girls playing hockey is no longer out of the norm but it certainly isn’t a universal thing. When I was in grade school I met a girl who was about the same age as me and she went on to be come an iconic hockey player and so the first celebrity I ever met.
When I was growing up there was an older couple that lived down the street. Every summer their son would visit bringing his wife and 6 daughters (yes 6) for a couple weeks. This was before Title 9 passed so girls playing sports wasn’t fully supported in schools. Folks then wouldn’t have expected much but boy could these girls play sports. This was back in my grade school days and the neighborhood boys were all in puppy love with the Kazmaier girls because, in general, they were better at everything than we were. Their Dad had found them proper coaches in all sorts of sports including boxing. The boxing thing blew all our little boy minds. To be honest and put it into proper perspective their Dad wasn’t just a doting father, he was Dick Kazmaier who is the only Ivy League football player to have won the Heisman Trophy (Given to the best NCAA Division 1 football player each year) so it kind of figured he could track down good coaches. A few of the girls also played hockey but we never got to do that with them because they only came during the summer. Two went on to play D1 college ice hockey. Patty played at Princeton and had a stellar career. Sadly she died at 28 of a rare blood disorder. Her Dad worked with the USA Hockey Foundation and created the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award which is awarded to the top player in NCAA Division 1 women’s hockey every year. That is the trophy in the picture above.
I’m sure Patty is smiling down from heaven at all the girls playing hockey especially the ones on teams that win tournaments . . . that being said I would guess that if Patty was playing them at an equal age she would check them into a wall which technically isn’t allowed in most woman’s hockey but Patty did know how to box.
Patty Kazmaier-Sandt
John Alexander
The black and white photo is John Alexander the tennis player. I'm on the right pointing to his world ranking at the time of my college days.
It is a bit of a stretch to say I met John Alexander (70-80’s pro tennis player and later member of Parliement in Australia), more of a passing nod or handing him some tennis balls or serving him some food at the local tennis tournament party, but he ended up having a huge influence in my life so I’m including him here.
Back in my college days in the 70’s I was really into tennis. I got moderately good but the best I could do was getting into qualifying tournaments for proper tournaments on the circuit hoping to qualify to get into the early rounds of the main draws. My ultimate goal was to get a round or two into a local tournament and play against John Alexander. In particular because of the proper way the officials would announce the serves. I always wondered how they would get around announcing our match as “Mr. Alexander is serving Mr. Alexander”. Perhaps “Mr John Alexander serving Mr. Jon “no h” Alexander.” (My Dad said if I ever got to play him he would have beaten the “h” out of me anyway.)
At the time the circuit had a stop in Columbus and I would volunteer to help since it was a way to see some of the matches and “mingle” with the players. This was back in the time the pros didn’t travel with their own support groups so you could volunteer to help them warm up as well as help out at the party were local celebrities and big wigs got to mingle with pro tennis players for an evening. If nothing else I got to hear all sorts of great stories.
The Aussies had a reputation as the biggest partiers. Now this was my college days and I worked in a bar to help pay my way so fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) had great access to lower priced beer. One of the things we did to impress the girls was to chug a pint or pitcher of beer in one gulp. Looking back I’m sure the girls were just tolerating us but that was the game we played. We heard through the tennis party grapevine that John Alexander could not only chug a pitcher of beer but could do it without using his hands. This put him into god-like status for us and we tried to sort out how he did this having never been in a situation where we could see him do it for ourselves. I could never sort out how to do it with a glass pitcher but did get to the point where perhaps only half of what was in a lighter plastic pitcher ended up drenching my shirt. All that was just to set up the story I wanted to pass along about the huge influence he was in my life.
During my college days in the summer I worked at Camp Starlight, a private camp for little rich kids from New York City. The kids were there for 8 weeks so there was a pretty big staff that included about 50-70 college students from England on some sort of visa exchange. There was always a good natured rivalry between the Brits and the American counselors. If one of us did 50 push ups one of them would do 51. If one of us ate 6 hotdogs one of them would eat 7 etc. The camp was divided into cabins with about 12 kids and 2 counselors in each. One counselor always had to be with the kids. We did get time off at night, roughly 8-12pm each day but that meant one counselor had to be on when the other was off. So bottom line you had to have a good working relationship with your co-counselor. My co-counselor one year was Pete Cornish, a Brit. All of us college age counselors got to camp a week before the kids arrived so there was time to try sort out if there was anyone you could have a summer fling with. Between the kids and counselors there were about 700 people at the camp so they had a full time doctor and 3 nurses. One of the nurses (Laura) caught my eye. One night before the kids arrived Pete and I drove into a local small town (Hancock, NY) where there were several pubs that counselors from all the surrounding camps would hang out at. On the way in Pete asked me if there was anyone I was interested in. I mentioned Laura. He said, “Well that is a problem. I was kind of looking at her as well. And only one of us can coordinate our nights off with her.” We debated how best to resolve this and he suggested we have some sort of contest and whomever won would get to ask her out. If she said “No” then the other would get a chance. By this time we’d made it to our pub of choice (Mike’s Modern Bar) and coincidentally Laura was there as well sitting on the other side of the room chatting up some folks. The Brits always made a bit of a deal about any competition and when we settled in with some other folks from camp Pete announced what we were up to. He suggested that we chug a pint of beer and whomever finished first would get to ask Laura out. I said Laura was worth more than a pint and suggested we chug a pitcher (because of my “training” trying to match John Alexander’s “no hands” feat”). There was a lot of posturing at this point and our group got a bit loud. The pitchers came, someone counted down to the start and although I did use my hands I invoked my inner “John Alexander” and downed the pitcher before Pete. He graciously shook my hand, admitted his defeat, and wished me well.
Across the room Laura had asked what the ruckus was all about, was told, and watched from afar. This gave her a moment to gather her response. I went over and she said “So you won. I will go out with you if you can beat me in a contest.” I said “Ooookkkaaayyy, what’s the contest?” She said “Dirty jokes. We go back and forth and whomever runs out of dirty jokes first loses.” Now as I mentioned I had worked at a bar so I had a fairly large number I could repeat but there are dirty jokes and there are dirty jokes you really shouldn’t tell a woman if you are looking for a date. She had no such restrictions and as it turns out nurses and doctors have a much bigger pool of dirty jokes to pull from and because they work with bodies all the time they tend to have way fewer inhibitions. Bottom line she won that competition but she said I put up a good showing so out of pity she would go out on a date with me.
A bit over a year later we were married and we’ve been together ever since. We have four sons who take some perverse family pride in the fact that their father won their mother in a beer drinking contest. I’m not sure I could have done it without the inspiration of trying to equal John Alexander’s amazing talent.
Governor Jame Rhodes of Ohio (1963-71 1975-1983)
Just down the street from where I lived growing up in Maumee, Ohio was an old mansion, the Wolcott-Hull house. It was built in 1827 by Judge James Wolcott. It had fallen into disrepair over the years and was being restored by the local historical society in the 1960’s. In the restoration they discovered secret doors that led to hidden rooms with old artifacts that indicated this had been one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad before and during the Civil War. Back in the 1800’s there were a series of canals for commerce connecting the Ohio River to Lake Erie. The last canal emptied out into the Maumee river just above this mansion. This was the southern most part of the bay that led to Lake Erie which was then a relatively short crossing to Canada and freedom for the escaping slaves.
Some friends and I were out playing one summer and all of a sudden all these police cars and limousines were rolling into the neighborhood headed to the Wolcutt-Hull house. We went down to see what was going on and Governor Rhodes was there for the official opening. He gave a little speech and then took pictures with some of the folks that had gathered. One of his press people thought it would be good if they got some pictures of him with kids and corralled us to do this. He chatted a little with us and then they lined us up and took the picture. I have no recollection what he said but hey he was famous and I talked to him so I included him here.
The picture is a poloraid I was given. I was about 11 in this picture. With me is my friend Les and some baby I don’t know, along with Governor Rhodes. Some years later he was the one that called out the Ohio National Guard to suppress the Vietnam war protest at Kent State where 4 students were killed. If I’d known that was coming I would have kicked him in the shin and never allowed my picture to be taken with him.
This one was some time around 2010.
I live in Marin county just north of San Francisco. It is a gorgeous area with the San Francisco Bay on one side, the Pacific Ocean on the other and giant Redwood trees all around. A pretty obvious attraction for the well to do and celebrity sorts, plus back in the day the hippies of the 60’s looking for something a bit more rural than Haight-Asbury. Not that it happens all the time but it isn’t surprising to run into a famous person here or there. Grace Slick lived in the area for a while and had certainly gotten the word out in her older age that she just wanted to be left alone. For that matter even when she was younger she had a reputation for being a bit prickly. I was always a fan of Jefferson Airplane though.
One random day I was sitting at the red light at 4th and C St in San Rafael listening to some rock station and “White Rabbit” came on. Out of the blue Grace Slick was walking through the cross walk not 10 feet in front of me. I rolled down my windows and cranked up the song so she could hear it. She did, looked straight at me and flipped me off with both hands.
Now I can’t say I really met Grace Slick but who else among you can claim to have been flipped off by her one on one.
Grace Slick
Michael Jackson
I was working on “The Witches of Eastwick” tennis scene where Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson are playing doubles. Only Cher actually knew how to play tennis so they would swing away at nothing and we were adding in the tennis ball in post. This was before CG pretty much, so on a motion controlled animation stand, I was match moving in a real tennis ball using a little motorized rotator. ( The model shop had painted and rigged about 10 or so balls for us to use. The picture is one I grabbed out of the trash when we were finished as a keepsake.) The animation stands all had their own rooms so we could control the lighting of whatever we were working on. It was later in the evening and I was pretty much alone in the back of “D” building working in the Oxberry room. I was leaning over the animation stand bed with my back to the door when I got this feeling someone was behind me. I turned around and there was this guy with a satin medical face mask about 2 feet away and two of the biggest people I’d ever seen leaning over me. I had the presence mind not to scream even though they startled me. Tiny little Patty Blau popped her head around them and said “Hi! I’m showing Michael around. Could you explain what you are doing?” The masked man was Michael. With two of his body guards. One was Bill Bray and the other I can’t remember his name but he was about the size of an NFL lineman. ILM was finishing up “Captain EO” which is why Michael was around. They all were very nice as I explained what I was doing and Michael asked some pretty informed questions about the technical side of things. I told Michael that although we had not met before I had heard him a lot when I was working down at Calico Creations in Northridge in the early 80’s. I told him I was working on a very similar Oxberry stand whose room had a common wall with a recording practice studio next door that he was using during the prep for the “Thriller” album. I said it was pretty muffled but I could feel the bass for weeks. He thought that was funny.
Years later when ILM was moving offices around there were a bunch of boxes in the hallway heading for the dump. Most were just old production files (schedules, notes, etc). I found a few boxes labeled “Captain EO” and in one I found a sequined glove buried under the papers. It isn’t of the highest quality so I’m guessing it was just used for lighting tests. But Michael was known to be somewhat of a germaphobe so perhaps he had a bunch of spare gloves to use like regular folks use tissues.
Sam Andrew
The Aroma Cafe is a small place in San Rafael. For a while it was our Saturday morning “go to” place to grab a cup of coffee. There was an older fellow who used to camp out in a table next to the front window and paint. I assumed he was a grandpa because occasionally a young girl would come in with her Mom and go up and give him a hug and he kind of dressed like a grandpa. I also assumed he was one of the owners or at least an investor as he was there a lot, dressed a bit upscale and kind of held court. This is not the sort of place that has waiters so you grab your food and find a place to sit and Sam sat there a lot. Sam seemed to lean towards doing portraits. He wasn’t a photo realistic painter, leaning more to impressionistic, at times cartoonish style but you could always recognize whom he was painting if they walked into the cafe. Here’s Sam and an example.
I’ve always aspired to be able to paint that well so I’d ask him for tips occasionally as we reviewed his latest project. He was pretty self deprecating and funny about his ability. I wouldn’t say he leaned into street people for his portraits but a bunch were folks about his age who were dressed a bit scruffy
San Rafael used to have an “Italian Street Painting Festival” as a fund raiser for Youth in Arts. They would bring in some real street painters as a draw. One year they did the Sistine Chapel.
But it was a fund raiser so mostly it was local folks buying various size squares of the street to try their hand. Rosie found a great portrait of Janis Joplin that was kind of a cross between Peter Max and Van Gogh. No subtle shading or nuanced edges but you could definitely tell it was her and I thought it was kind of in Sam’s style and within our wheelhouse of ability and so wanted to show him what we were going to attempt.
I showed him the artwork we were going to work off of and he kind of chuckled. “She would really love this.” He said it with such assurance I asked “Had you met her at some point?” I knew he had lived in the area for a while and figured when young he’d had a hippie phase and since Janis had lived in Marin I assumed they may have crossed paths at some parties over the years.
He said “Yeah, we were in a band together for a while.”
I’d known Sam for a few years at this point but just on the random Saturdays at the cafe. We never really talked about anything but his paintings. Sam turned out to be Sam Andrew from Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin. He admitted he kind of punked me as in the whole time I’d known him I only asked him about painting and he found it a bit humorous that I never brought up music. It turned out some of the scruffy folks he painted were hippie musician friends from some of those other iconic 60’s bands who had just gotten older but never updated their cloths. Back then he said the band still got together about once a year to tour for a couple months, in particular when they all wanted to go to Europe because then someone else would pay for it. They would find some young singer who could sound like Janis and play clubs in cities they wanted to visit.
Sadly Sam passed on a while back but here is his website with some of his art.
Here's an example of of his guitar playing, this points you to "Piece of My Heart".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCngPse1iiI
The song's instrumentation was arranged by Sam who performed three distorted, loud guitar solos for a psychedelic touch and that's him on the opening riff.
Here's a younger Sam with Janis
This is Rosie working on the street painting of Janis
Sam Levinson
I'm putting this one in because just a few weeks ago, as I write this, Sam’s “Euphoria Season 3” was released. My knowing Sam has nothing to do with the “Euphoria” TV series which Sam created and wrote. It has to do with the fact that Sam’s father, Barry Levinson, lived in the area for a while, back when ILM was working on some of his films. It is just an odd coincidence that I worked on some of his father’s films and was Sam’s CYO basketball coach for a couple seasons in the 1990’s.
CYO stands for Catholic Youth Organization. One of their things is to run sports programs for the Catholic grade schools who play against each other in a league. You don’t have to be Catholic to join in you just have to live in the area. St. Anselm’s is in San Anselmo, CA and right next to Ross, CA which is one of the richest towns in the U.S. Sam lived in Ross so he could play on our team.
CYO tries to be inclusive so they have “A” teams and “B” teams. The kids on the “A” teams are in general the better players who will most likely go on to play in high school. “B” team players tend to be less skilled or just don’t want to obsess over the sport like a lot of young athletes (or at least their parents do). The idea is to get as many kids playing as possible. I was a “B” team coach at St. Anselm’s.
Sam was a great player for his age, the best on our team and one of the tallest. I really tried to encourage him to move up to the “A” team and prep for playing in high school. He had obviously been coached by someone who really knew what he was going. Sadly after a couple seasons he moved on. He has said that some of “Euphoria” came out of his own experiences. Perhaps playing sports in high school might have helped him navigate that a bit better. Whatever the case the lesson learned here is listen to your father and follow in his footsteps (especially if he is an Academy Award winning director), don’t listen to your grade school “B” team basketball coach.
(In the team picture Sam is standing in the back row next to me. The other picture is him all grown up.)
Leon Powe
This is story number two regarding me coaching a CYO “B” basket team and a celebrity tie-in.
My main desire as a coach was to try to get as much equal playing time for each kid since we knew we weren’t going to win any leagues anyway. Not a great strategy for winning but a good one for all the kids to have fun. On the 8th grade team one of the best players was Austin Cregg. He was average height for the age but was really fast and left handed. The only left handed player on the team. A real basic strategy with young players is to teach them to use the edge of the court to help protect the ball from their opponents. If you dribbled along the left edge of the court with your left hand nobody could sneak up on you from off court. For this reason a lot of the lower skill level games ended up being played more on the right side of the court because of all the right handers, despite our attempts to run plays. This meant left handed Austin often had more room to play and opponents collapsing on him got some of his team mates open so we actually won a few games. Austin’s dad said to me after we won our first game that season “You don’t have to win them all but you have to win one” and he was right. Austin’s dad is Huey Lewis. It was a bit past his band’s peak so he said he could be around to help out a bit and a few times offered to lock up the gym after we finished practice so he and Austin could shoot around. We may not have had a winning season but nobody could beat us singing the National Anthem before the games. After that win the kids really lit up which was great because we were headed into a tournament
Every year over the Christmas break in San Francisco there was a city wide double elimination basketball tournament for grades 5-8. I don’t recall how many teams entered but there were a lot. At the time there was no seeding so in the first round a really great team could end up playing one where the kids had minimal skills. The double elimination meant that if you lost your first match in the winner’s bracket you’d play a second in the runner’s up bracket and if you continued to win you could win that part of the tournament.
Our draw that year for the first game was the Boy’s Club of Oakland. Our team came from San Anselmo & Ross in Marin County, one of the wealthier places in the U.S. We had nice team jerseys but shoes, socks and shorts were about as mismatched as possible and in most cases looked like they’d been pulled out from under the bed, dirty from multiple uses, rather than pulled from the clean cloths drawer. The Boy’s Club had matching warmups, full uniforms including matching Nike shoes. We did typical warm ups with passing drills and layups but it was a bit sloppy with lots of lost balls. The Boy’s Club’s passing was crisp and I swear none of their kids missed a layup. My kids were in awe and then one of their kids dunked the basketball. We all just stood there a bit stunned. I went over to introduce myself to their coach.
A really nice fellow whose name unfortunately I can’t remember. I mentioned how sharp their uniforms looked. He said they were sponsored by a couple NBA players that had come out of Oakland. Often in CYO ball there are high school kids who help out as assistant coaches. I assumed the kid dunking the ball was one of those. The coach said “No, he’s on the team. Happens to be the same height Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was when he was in 8th grade.”
I gave the team the news in my pregame pep talk. I said, “Okay they obviously look better than we do but that is because they have practiced more. Most of those kids about our same size and if you play your best we might be able to keep up with them. You going to play your best?”
“Yeah Coach we are going to play our best!”
I then said, “Most of those guys look like they will be playing in high school and I do swear if most of you really buckle down and practice there is a good chance you could play in high school too. Do you want to play in high school?”
“Yeah Coach we want to play in high school”
I then, then said, “ You know if you do well in high school there is a chance for you to play in college. I know that’s a bit of a dream but would you like to play in college?”
“Yeah Coach we want to play in college!!”
“And you know that the best in college get to play in the NBA. Wouldn’t that be great to play in the NBA.”
“Yeah Coach we want to play in the NBA”
I said, “Great because you are about to play an NBA team.”
The game did not go well for us. The Boy’s Club played their starting 5 for the first quarter and then sat them down. (I was pretty sure they’d all end up playing college ball) They put in their 2nd 5 for the second quarter and then sat them down. (Pretty obvious they were all going to at least play high school ball). After the half they put in their last 5. Now these kids had better skills than we did but were at least in our league. What was really funny was the 10 kids who’d already played started shouting out to our players trying to help them. Stuff like “#10 (their team) has no left hand, go at his right and he’ll lose the ball” “Screen out and push back #5 (their team) on the shots he won’t be able to get the rebound.” “Shoot over #3 he won’t block you.” “Go left, that guy is slower than you.” We actually held our own in the second half and slowed their scoring way down. Finally one of our players made a shot and we got 2 points. You would have thought the Boy’s Club had won the game the way their bench jumped up and shouted out for us. Really incredible sportsmanship (including the one dude not dunking on us). We ended up losing 50-2 but got lots of handshakes. After the game I asked their coach for the name of the kid that could dunk the ball so I could follow his career. It was Leon Powe. He had as hard a childhood as you could have, his father leaving when he was 2, being in foster homes and his Mom dying when he was in high school at Oakland Tech. He played in college at UC Berkeley and in the NBA for the Celtics, Cavaliers & Grizzlies.
Leon Powe
Austin Cregg & Huey Lewis
Jennifer Landon
I like to keep track of favorite actors I see on the various movies or TV series I watch. The semi-delusional reason is if I ever make a movie it would be wonderful to have them be in it. These folks are more the supporting actors not the main stars. One of my favorite characters of all times was Teeter on “Yellowstone”. She’s a ranch hand that out works and is more skilled then most of the men at the Dutton Ranch and she speaks in one of the strangest accents I’ve ever heard. She is just a supporting character but a real hoot. Here’s a quote that pretty much sums up her character.
“Do I look like my fuckin’ name is ‘Peter’, you skunk-haired motherfucker?”
Teeter
I looked online to see who she was and turns out she is Jennifer Landon whom I’d met once long ago.
My son Zach was born in Los Angeles on August 27, 1989 at Cedar Sinai Hospital. ( Laura when she wasn’t birthing babies also worked in the Labor and Delivery ward there.) Due to its location on the edge of Beverly Hills and its world class reputation it was a popular site for celebrity births. Zach was born 4 weeks early so they kept him on for a few days just in case.
Jen was born August 29th. One night I wandered into the nursery to see Zach. Up to this point I’d only held him up when my wife or one of the L&D nurses was around who would then hand him to me in the correct manner. I was fumbling trying to pick up Zach when this guy walked in and grabbed his daughter from her bassinet like an old pro. He looked over and kind of chuckled and said “First time Dad?” I said “Yes, not sure exactly how to grab the little fellow.” As he held his daughter cradled in one arm he pointed with his other hand for me to “Put one hand there, the other there and bring him towards you.” I successfully got him cradled in my arms like he had his daughter. We pointed our babies at each other and introduced them. Zach just stared and Jen lay there like a little angel. We had a little chat just about new borns and he gave me some new father advice which was basically “Do whatever your wife tells you to do.” That Dad cradling his new daughter Jen was Michael Landon.
Jen was maybe a day old. I’ll never meet a celebrity who is younger than that and hope to meet her again some day to tell this story to her and how kind her Dad was to a new Dad.
Jennifer Landon Teeter Jen and her Dad
