Well, yahoo!! If you’re reading this, count yourself among those who actually were able to heed the sage and persistent advice to survive ’till ’25. And save for a few thrilling moments involving some New York baseball teams, good riddance to 2024.
We’ve been on sort of a holiday from our usual musings of late, attempting to focus on predictions and wishes for the New Year. But yet again death did not take a holiday of its own. In the last days of ’24 we saw several more notable departures that got tacked on to an already lengthy list which virtually every publication of consequence published their version of. Yesterday morning, ABC NEWS.com dropped a truncated necrology that rattled off an awful lot of familiar names and evoked plenty of memories. Many lived well into old age; some tragically not even close. And I should know, because it seems like an awful lot of musings both on this site and on our sister site Double Overtime dealt with passages.
I devoted musings to the likes of Phil Donahue, Peter Marshall, Chuck Woolery, Bob Newhart, Richard Simmons and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Double Overtime added tributes to Pete Rose, Jerry West, Bill Walton and Willie Mays, among others. I didn’t even get a chance to properly acknowledge that no less than 20 per cent of the 1969 Miracle Mets all passed last year as well.
In recent days, I was reminded how connected I felt to Jimmy Carter, who unlike so many others of late actually did make his 100th birthday and apparently cast a vote for another Democratic presidential candidate. Carter was the first presidential candidate that I had the opportunity to vote for, a term that primarily overlapped with my college years in upstate New York. Through the lens of folks most definitely not from New York City I saw first-hand how someone I initially saw as a breath of fresh air, youth and opportunity, whom my Kennedy-loving grandparents actually drew favorable comparisons to, someone who helped broker an unlikely peace between Israel and Egypt, erode into someone who was eventually ridiculed for what was perceived as ineptness on the domestic front. I listened intently as Republican townies fell hook, line and sinker for the rhetoric and glibness of Ronald Reagan, because then as now a polished TV performer with superior debating skills can be seen as a savior. If nothing else, seeing the overwhelming number of Reagan signs on those townies’ lawns prepared me to some extent for what we’ve seen lately.
The same holds true for CBS sportscaster Greg Gumbel, who also passed last weekend. I knew plenty of folks with personal connections to him as colleagues both in the sports world he inhabited for more than half a century and a very brief dalliance with game show hosting, fronting an ill-fated and rushed reboot of the classic $64,000 QUESTION quiz show at roughly the same time that numerous other attempts to glom onto the overnight success of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE failed, and CBS honcho Les Moonves quickly pivoted away from shiny floor unscripted series, instead giving an order to a wild Mark Burnett idea called SURVIVOR. Given the fact that the latter show has just completed its 47th season with reasonably decent ratings, I’d say he made the correct call.
But I also lost plenty of people both famous and not that I knew far better. Shannon Doherty’s tragic passing from cancer this summer touched me deeply. Business connections and friends such as Dick Block and Shelly Hirsch evoked fond memories for me and many others who were still closer. And just last week we learned of the passing of a groundbreaking producer and one of the more intriguing colleagues I’ve worked with just four months after he enthusiastically celebrated his 90th birthday. It took THE NEW YORK TIMES until yesterday to tell the world about him via Clay Risen:
Woody Fraser, an Emmy Award-winning television producer who helped invent the daytime talk show format with programs like “The Mike Douglas Show” in the 1960s and “Good Morning America” in the 1970s, died on Dec. 21 in Ojai, Calif. His death, in the home of his daughter Madeline Fraser, with whom he had been living, was from heart failure, Ms. Fraser said.
Mr. Fraser’s career began in the late 1950s, not long after the dawn of network television itself. As a young director with the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, he was tasked in 1960 with developing programs to fill the endless hours between the morning news and evening sitcoms.
His answer, “The Mike Douglas Show,” became a model for daytime television for the decades to come.
In 1975, ABC executives approached him with a new challenge. NBC was dominating the morning with “The Today Show,” and ABC needed a response. They had a title, “Good Morning America,” but told Mr. Fraser the rest was up to him. He pushed for more on-the-ground, live reporting, but also for a heavier emphasis on entertainment. Initially hosted by David Hartman and Nancy Dussault, it was a hit, and by 1980, when Mr. Fraser left the show, it was regularly beating “The Today Show” in the ratings.
My association with Woody came in the form of what his former ABC friends and fellow carousers now at The Family Channel had hoped would be their answer to GMA, the original HOME AND FAMILY (sorry, Mr. Risen, the 2012 version for Hallmark Channel that you claimed was the first iteration was a reboot; I guess those ten days you had to properly research his background were wasted) . As we noted in detail in our memorial musing about Woolery, the show’s first male co-host, the two-hour live daily gambit from a “real, honest-to-goodness house” built to his specifications on the Universal Studios back lot was a tour de force and a reunion for him and one of the hosts of the previously produced ABC series THE HOME SHOW, which served as the inspiration for much of what HOME AND FAMILY did, Cristina Ferrare. Who just happened to be my boss’ wife, and said boss and his cronies fondly remembered Woody’s success with ABC as they rose through the executive ranks. Which effectively meant as long as Woody didn’t go over budget he could just about do anything he pleased.
Woody’s version of research was to grab a few visitors to the set and stage an impromptu focus group with himself as the moderator. Woody apparently did that with studio audiences at THE HOME SHOW. Nothing like being confronted by the guy responsible for your free taping day for unbiased, honest feedback. My team was not always greeted all that warmly. But eventually I learned that the way to get him to listen to his actual audience was to frontload our findings with how enthusiastic they were about some of the proposed new segments and personalities that his ever-churning brain would persistently supply. We’d contrast that with comparisons to those on the air that were struggling. Woody responded to opportunity far more positively than criticism, and we eventually became friends.
It’s those personal connections that I once had that I’ve lost that has me wistful as a new year and theoretical fresh opportunity dawn. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Woody in more than 20 years, and I regret that now more than ever. And as time marches on inexorably, I know all too well that there will likely be more losses in 2025. Friends I’m closer to are also aging and every time someone goes the urgency to reconnect grows in my impatient mind all the more. One I’m due to celebrate a golden anniversary commemoration with next month is now in his mid-90s. He has no significant health issues, but you never know.
Especially when I think about a current work colleague who shockingly passed this past spring completely unexpectedly. That untimely demise came of the heels of a more prominent past colleague who was a year younger than me. When I mused about them both, it was emotionally draining. I still wear the memorial pin for Juan Flores on my work uniform every day.
So I’ll begin this fresh start with a familiar refrain. We never know when we won’t get another chance to tell someone in person that they matter, that we care about them, that we love them. And now that I’ve somehow survived ’till ’25 despite the fervent wishes of at least two people I once knew I’ll triple down on my request that since you have as well you find a few minutes at SOME POINT to make a phone call, schedule a lunch or maybe even go to a movie or a ballgame. You know, the way we all used to do far more spontaneously before some of us got older, busier and in some cases exceptionally paranoid?
It might provide me some opportunities for some more upbeat musings than the many that seemed to pour out of me last year. Here’s hoping there’s fewer losses and more reconnections of consequence in 2025. You and me both.
Until next time…