“If I could save time in a bottle…”
Dateline: Yesterday
“I hope that memory is valued, that we do not lose memory.”
Studs Terkel
The interview never conducted, is the one that haunts me.
Haunts me still. Some 30 years later.
It took me a year to set the interview up, jumped through all the hoops of explaining to bosses, editors, the assignment desk.
Plenty of blank looks. Plenty of uninterested, “uh-huhs,” which was the “whatever” of my day.
I found out the interview wasn’t going to happen, would never happen, from a note scribbled on a pink While You Were Out card tossed on my desk.
It said simply, “Ansel Adams died.”
It was a month or two before our interview, I was to travel to Carmel, California, where he was living, it wasn’t far from where I was working in TV news in Fresno, and I was going to bring a video camera, and a bunch of video tapes.
I was going to ask one of the most important photographers of this, or any generation, just two questions. Ask two questions and let him talk as long as he wanted, talk about anything he wanted, and all I would do was listen.
Wouldn’t interrupt. Promised.
I would just set up the camera, set up the mic and lights and ask, simply this:
“Tell me what it was like when you first started doing this.”
And.
“Tell me, why, why you did it like you did.”
“…the first thing that I'd like to do…”
The greatest legacy of a sport, are the words of its pioneers.
Every play, every catch, every record is the direct result of the vision of those pioneers.
When I left college I tossed all the physics books, tossed all the Gerontology books, pretty much burned the Funk & Wagnalls, kept just three books, one by Hunter S. Thompson, one by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr…and a book called, Working by Studs Terkel.
My entire career would be built on the legacy of those three authors.
None more so than, Studs. None more so than this quote by Mr. Terkel:
“What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.”
That quote has sat above every journalist desk that I have sat behind.
Our sport, your sport, is filled with pioneers, regular arse people, “ordinary” people who have done extraordinary things.
But those people, won’t be around, forever.
“…is to save every day…”
It was the passing this week of Cotton Cordell, his passing slammed back the memory of the missed interview that haunts me.
We will now never get the chance to record Cotton’s answer to “What was it like in the beginning,” or “Why, what made you do it.”
I propose, I hope that we somehow figure out a way to record all the pioneers of our sport, an archive, a permanent record or our past, talking to our future.
We need to set up the camera, set up the lights, set the audio and ask, “Why.”
“Why,” to folks like Ray Scott.
“Why,” to folks like Forrest, “Why” to Jerry, “Why” to all of those pioneers who did something, made something, contributed something to this sport that is so important, the sport wouldn’t be like it is today without it.
Whomever made our history, made us what we are today, we need to preserve their legacy.
Some, maybe many, are gone, and unfortunately, time is not on our side.
But the grandchildren of our grandchildren need to see, need to hear, Ray Scott explain to them, “Why,” and, “How.”
And also the grandchildren of our grandchildren need to know, it is all right to pioneer, it is all right to step off the path, all right to dream.
So to B.A.S.S. I ask, plead, let's find our past, and ask them, “Why.”
Let’s find those amongst us who did things first, and ask them, “Why.”
Let’s find the giants of the sport still with us, and let them tell us, “Why,” or “How,” they did what they did.
For us.
For our future.
The Legacy Project, is all about…listening.
“…till eternity passes away.”
Time In A Bottle
Jim Croce
“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another.”
Studs Terkel
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