Hi. This isn't what you'd expect, but in 1996, when columnist Bob Scheer escorted Dear Abby into the Ash Grove on the Santa Monica pier, I was dumbstruck. I'd relished her column since early college, but quitely, to avoid hectoring by 'intellectual', radical or snobby new friends. She had the rare ability to talk sense to regular folks; to a mass audience about common, personal concerns, using humor, brevity and humane (progressive) insights. I've known many now-famous folks; Dylan, Fonda, Jagger, et al- but with Abby, my inner kid muffled me. I'd also long given up identifying my 'landsleutern' by sight (Lauren Bacall, eg), but with Abby, what went through my mind was 'that's funny, you don't look Jewish". I didn't have the chupzpah to say it; we chatted - mostly Bob, about the club - and then they were seated. That's my Abby story. What a full life, and a gift to so many. Alevai, shalom ! Just below, another brilliant candle light. -Ed <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/opinion/collins-the-girl-of-my-dreams.htm l?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130119> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/opinion/collins-the-girl-of-my-dreams.html ?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130119 The Girl of My Dreams Gail Collins NY Times: 1/19/2013 There is nothing the world loves more than an athlete whos playing the game on behalf of a dying loved one. <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/16/opinion/Collins_New/Collins_ New-articleInline-v2.jpg>
Earl Wilson/The New York Times In the land of sports, people who have terminal illnesses are always more interested in the teams fortunes than in having their son/brother/lover/best friend at their bedside. The storys been a staple ever since the expiring Ronald Reagan told <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers ity_of_notre_dame/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Notre Dame to win just one for the Gipper in Knute Rockne All American. And now we have Manti Teo, the star linebacker for Notre Dame, whose dying girlfriend turned out to be imaginary. But imaginary with a lot of team spirit. Babe, if anything happens to me, you promise that youll stay there and youll play and youll honor me through the way you play, she told him when she was critically injured in a car crash, fell into a coma and then emerged to learn she had leukemia. When she was conscious, she devoted much of her time to writing inspirational letters to Teo before each game. Such a girlfriend does not exist. Somebody made her up, and the sports world is currently debating whether Teo was the victim of a hoax, or part of the conspiracy. All I can say is, the story tells you a lot. Fans cheered when Teo played through what he said was the day of the funeral of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, who died on the same day as his actual grandmother. (I knew...that my girlfriend and my family would want me to be out there. They wouldnt want me to be sulking over things, he told Sports Illustrated.) Its the American way. But as the story unfolded, it turned out that she didnt ever require his presence. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Teo said that at one point, he was on his way home to Hawaii for summer break when the comatose Lennay almost died in a hospital in California. They were scheduled to pull the plug while I was in the air, he told Sports Illustrated. It didnt seem to occur to him that he might have dropped by. Do you think this is a young-man fantasy a girlfriend so lacking in neediness that you dont even have to visit her in the hospital while shes in a coma followed by leukemia? In fact, there was apparently never any physical connection. They talked on the phone. Texted all the time. But the star linebacker who reportedly saw other flesh-and-blood girls on campus didnt seem to feel this special romance was lacking anything simply because it had no three-dimensional aspects. Maybe in an era when dating seems to mean send texts about whether to get together later, this counts as a fulfilling relationship. Its possible Teo was the credulous victim of an elaborate trick. But he was surrounded by a veritable army of coaches, chaplains and mentors, who were presumably privy to the Lennay saga from the start. Certainly they knew all about it when the Notre Dame publicity machine made it a core part of the football teams undefeated-until-the-championship-game season. But nobody seemed to raise an eyebrow. If you listened to the story while sitting next to Teo on a bus, you would have warned him not to tell a national TV audience about this girlfriend until he got some proof she actually existed. (We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular, he told Sports Illustrated.) But nobody at Notre Dame seems to have paid enough attention to figure out that the girl at the center of their winning-season story existed in the same universe as the Little Mermaid. Right after Christmas, Teo told his coach that a woman who sounded like the dead girlfriend had called him to say she wasnt deceased after all. The coach told the higher ups, and Notre Dame hired an outside firm to investigate the case. When an exposé broke on the Web site Deadspin, the schools athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, held a press conference to tearfully announce that the investigation showed that Teo was the victim of a very elaborate, sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we cant fully understand. But it had a cruelty at its core. This all occurred a couple of years after the Notre Dame team was involved in a genuine tragedy when a freshman from a neighboring girls college reported she had been sexually assaulted by a football player. The school did not order up an outside investigation. In fact, there appeared to be no investigation at all. After a period of dead silence in which she received a threatening text from another player, the girl died from an overdose of medication. Nothing else happened. Writing this week in The Washington Post, Melinda Henneberger, a Notre Dame graduate, noted that my alma mater held the kind of emotional news conference for the fake dead girl they never held for the real one, Lizzy Seeberg. Games over. Notre Dame loses. _____ No virus found in this message. 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