Dion DiMucci - The Wanderer Checks In

Dion DiMucci – The Wanderer Checks In

The Wanderer – Dion’s Story (Beech Tree Books, William Morrow Press, NY, 1988)


If you remember the Sixties they say, then you weren’t there. It’s a cliché that holds true, at least in part for Dion DiMucci.

The Wanderer, who is still married to his high school sweetheart, Runaround Sue, is still wandering and playing rock & roll, but the wonder years are a thing of the past, and mostly a blur in his memory banks that were shortcircuited by booze and drugs.

Dion, who had ten songs in the top ten charts in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, hasn’t had a drink or a taste of drugs since April 1, 1968, and hasn’t had a hit song since then either. He’s a survivor however, and he’s lived to tell the story of the heydays of rock & roll, at least what he remembers of them.

I caught up with Dion at the Island Highroller longe, just off the Sands casino floor, shortly after a Labor Day weekend performance. Most people didn’t recognize him since he was wearing a baseball hat instead of his trademark floppy Andy cap. The Papparazi Queen noticed him though, tugged my arm and said, “There’s Dion over by the jukebox.”

Dion and the Belmonts – Dion’s original group of singers included Freddie Milano, Angelo D’Aleo and Carlo Mastrangelo, all kids from the hood – which in his case was centered around the corner of Crotona Avenue and 187th Street, near Belmont Avenue in the Bronx.
They fused a motley conglamoration of R&B, country, side walk acapella and doo-wop into a new stream of rock & roll. While most of the Belmonts drifted off into a jazzy acapella realm, Dion stuck with rock & roll.

Since I had him cornered I went up to the Juke Box and put some more money in and he looked at me as if to see if I wanted to fight, and then smiled. I introduced myself and he asked us to join them at his table.

Asked how it differs today from touring in the early days of rock & roll Dion said, “I think it’s difficult, sometimes for the later generations of rockers to appreciate a time when there were no rules, no expectations, no luxury busses, no stage monitors. We were just a bunch of street singers who were regarded by society as degenerate infidels, one small step away from jail or the gutter, you know? But it was a lot of fun because it was a very creative time. Rock & roll didn’t exist, since we were making it up as we went along. And it was very cool traveling with guys like Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly.”

He’s been on the road since he was 14 years old, playing honkeytonks, roadhouses, school auditoriums, arenas, concert halls and casinos. He was Bobby Daren’s roommate on one tour, and was with Buddy Holly, Frankie Vallens and the Big Bopper when they decided to get off the bus and rent a plane, but Dion didn’t have the $38 a seat.

“It was sub-zero degree weather and we didn’t have those beautiful luxury converted touring buses that we have today,” he recalls. “It was just a school bus, and we slept in the luggage racks, and it kept breaking down. I was supposed to be on the plane, we were recruiting people, the more people the less the fare would be, and when I found out it was $38, I bowed out. My parents were paying $38 a month rent in New York City at the time, and it was a lot of money.”

“I was baffeled. I was 19 at the tiem, Februray 1959, and we were riding on top of the world at the time, and the rug was pulled out from under me.”

Like Runaround Sue, there really was a Wanderer, a guy by the name of Jackie Burns. “He was a real character,” Dion explained, “a real guy with a lot of swagger. He had Flo tattooed on his left arm. When he broke up with Flo, he had it covered with a panther,” and he kept going until he had to cover them all with a battleship. “I like writing about strong characters,” Dion quipped.

Besides a 1987 tribute concert at Madison Square Garden that featured Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Bruce, and a tribute album that features Brian Adams, Phil Spector and Patti Smyth, getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was his biggest thrill. “That meant a lot to me. It was a great night. I was inducted with Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones, the Temps and Otis Redding.”

“And to look out into the audience and see Sprigsteen, Bob Seeger, Paul Simon – they came there to honor me. It was a wonderful feeling.”

Does he ever get tired of the old songs? “Well, you know, it’s a funny thing. You’d think I’d be tired of them, but those particular songs, those hit records have become more valuable to me as time moves on. They mean more to mean, and I think they mean more to the people that come and see our shows. I see the response. We hold these songs in a very fond place in our hearts and I enjoy singing them today.”

I had bought a copy of his book at the concert, so I asked him if he would sign my copy of his book, and he was happy to oblige.

After telling him that “Runaround Sue” was one of the most popular songs on the Anchorage Tavern jukebox he looked up at me and smiled before writing, “To Bill Kelly and the gang at the Anchorage – Dion,”

He then wrote down September, and looked up and asked, “What year is this again?”

The Wanderer – Dion’s Story (Beech Tree Books, William Morrow Press, NY, 1988)

[Bill Kelly – billkelly3@gmail.com]

Tony Summers' The Eleventh Day

Tony and Robbyn Summers' new book - The Eleventh Day - The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden will be out on July 19, and excerpted in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

Synopsis

September 11 2001 is a date no-one can forget. On that day, the largest terrorist attack the world had ever seen sent two passenger aircraft crashing into New York's famous twin towers, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth, believed to be headed for the White House, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand people lost their lives that day. And the world changed forever. The consequences of those attacks have shaped the first years of the twenty-first century. The world is a less safe place because of them. War in Afghanistan and Iraq followed. Thousands more have now died. But what exactly happened on that day ten years ago? Reports have been written and dismissed. Conspiracy theories abound. This book has been four years in the writing. Leading investigative writer, Anthony Summers has pored through thousands of documents, hundreds of hours of interviews, and examined all possible testimony and evidence to produce this definitive history of what really happened on that tragic day.

On Sale: July 19, 2011

Writing with access to thousands of recently released official documents, fresh interviews, and the perspective that can come only from a decade of research and reflection, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan deliver the first panoramic, authoritative look back at 9/11.For most living Americans, September 11, 2001, is the darkest date in the nation's history. What exactly happened? Could it have been prevented? How and why did so much acrimony and bad information arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a quiet field in Pennsylvania? And what remains unresolved? What is certain: Discord and dissent continue to this day.


Beginning with the first brutal actions of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, The Eleventh Day tracks the precise sequence of events and introduces the players: pilots, terrorists, the airliners' passengers, and the innocents who died on the ground. Drawing on previously classified records and raw transcripts, Summers and Swan investigate the response of President Bush and the U.S. military that day, and the failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. They document the untruths told afterward by U.S. officials and, as a counterpoint, thoroughly consider the contentions of the "9/11 truth" movement. With meticulous research, they examine the personalities of the men behind the onslaught, analyze the motives that drove them, and expose the U.S. intelligence blunders that preceded the attacks. They note how afterward—without good evidence—the Bush administration persisted in trying to link 9/11 to Iraq. And they confront, finally, the question the 9/11 Commission's report blurred: Were the terrorists backed by powerful figures in another foreign nation—one the U.S. had long viewed as a friend?

Riveting, revelatory, and unforgettable, thoroughly sourced and complete with extensive endnotes, The Eleventh Day is the essential one-volume work on a pivotal event in our history.

September 11, 2001 is the darkest date in the memory of most people alive in the West today. The day ten years on when Osama bin Laden was killed was one of jublilation in the United States, yet uncertainty about what may come in the future.

What exactly happened on 9/11? Could it have been prevented? How and why did so much acrimony and bad information arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a quiet field in Pennsylvania? And what remains unresolved?

Beginning with the first brutal actions of the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, The Eleventh Day tracks the precise sequence of events and follows the players: pilots, terrorists, the airliners' passengers, and the innocents who died on the gound. Drawing on previously unreleased records and raw transcripts, Anthony Summers and his co-author Robbyn Swan investigate the response of President Bush and the U.S. military that day, and the failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. They document the untruths told afterward by U.S. officials and, by counterpoint, thoroughly consider the contentions of the "9/11 Truth" movement. They analyze the motives that drove the men behind the onslaught, and expose the U.S. intelligence blunders that preceded the attacks. They note how afterward - without good evidence - the Bush administration persisted in trying to link 9/11 to Iraq. And they confront, finally, the questions the 9/11 Commission's report blurred: Were the terrorists backed by powerful figures in other foreign nations - including some that have long been treated as friends?

Riveting, revelatory, and unforgettable, thoroughly sourced and complete with extensive endnotes, The Eleventh Day is the essential one-volume work on a pivotal episode in our history.

Anthony Summers - Home

Bestselling biographer and journalist Anthony Summers has covered the pivotal stories of the past hundred years, and in many cases forced a rethink.

He has reported onthe conflict in the Middle East; the Vietnam War; the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations; Watergate; the rise and fall of the American Mafia; the Hiss and Profumo espionage cases. He has explored the lives and deaths of the powerful and the famous: from Tsar Nicholas II to Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. Now in 2011 he brings the sharpest focus yet to a full account of 9/11, the events that led up to it, and the troubling questions that remain.

Somers Point Ghost House

Somers Avenue, Somers Point (NJ) Ghost House

Gregory Young and other people who have lived in the old house thought they were going crazy, or at least some crazy things were happening to them.

The house on Somers Avenue in Somers Point doesn’t stand out among the other quaint bayside cottages, but what happens inside has spooked residents and visitors alike.

When the current residents began to experience some unlikely events, and began to think the house was haunted, they learned that a previous owner thought so to, and even wrote a book about it, that’s now a series of books.

Gregory Young’s “A Father, A Son and A House Full of Ghosts” was first published a few years ago, but since that was published, he’s also written, Book II, “the continuation of a true story of the paranormal events that a father and son experienced after purchasing a house which was occupied by ghosts.”

And now we have book III to complete the trilogy, and compliment his other books, “Kindred Emotions: Quotes of Wisdom,” “10 Holiday Plays for 4th,5th and th Graders” and “Over 100 Reasons Why Men Should Never Marry,” all privately published and available from Jetty Books (http://www.jettybooks.com/events.htm) or Infinity Publishers (http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/peek.aspx?id=3329).

The strange events began when he first bought the house in 2000 and began renovating it. As the bizarre occurrences began to add up, he investigated, and learned more of the history of the 100 year old house and who had previously lived there. Giving the accounts of others as well as his own experiences and those of his son, his books document the events while he speculates on the possibility of reincarnation and of angels watching over us.

As Gregory Young puts it, “The unexplainable occurrences in this house were happening more and more frequently. I couldn’t go on living like this. No matter where I was, I would be thinking about it. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. None of it made sense. I would tell these stories to people and they would look at me like I was crazy. I Must Be Crazy. They thought something was wrong with me. I began to think it myself. Was I losing my mind? Was this all in my head? Or, was I going through something extraordinary, something so rare and unbelievable that there just isn’t anyone to talk about it with. I was becoming more and more confused. I constantly though about it and I never knew what was going to happen next or when. I needed some answers.”

“The stories were adding up,” says Young. “There was certainly something in this house. There had to be. Both my ten year old son and I were becoming increasingly convinced. This is nothing that I would have ever wanted to expose him to, but he was here a lot of the times when these strange occurrences occurred. He witnessed them too. He could see the fear in my face and hear the panic in my voice. He and I would talk about it and try to come up with explanations, but just couldn’t.”

Lucky for them, the ghosts appear to be friendly, and only play with the electric, appliances and moving inanimate objects about. “With the many strange occurrences that have happened in this house, I don’t remember a time when either one of us were truly scared. It was more a case of being shocked, shocked at what we saw or what had happened. I didn’t have any answers, but I had a lot of questions, and the most formidable question was, is there something living in this house with us?”

Young says he eventually figured out, with the help of psychics, there are at least four ghosts, including Danielle, a fifteen year old African American slave from the 1700s and two mischievous children, Sarah, a four year old girl from the 1920s, and Jonathan, a ten year old boy who died of measles, and is dressed as a Boardwalk Empire extra.

Young has actually seen Agnes, and who hangs out primarily in the kitchen, and based on her behavior, wasn’t too keen on the recent renovations.

“Actually, I’m flattered,” noted Young. “I feel blessed to have such an extraordinary experience happen to me. It was nothing I was looking for, nothing I had planned. I guess I can say I enjoy it. It’s very friendly, nothing mean going on. It’s very good natured.”

“I was documenting all of the occurrences,” said Young. “I just kind of kept quiet and kept moving forward. Then I thought the best way to get this out would just be to write it all. I realized I had a great story here and I decided to publish it.”
With the complaints of strange events by the current occupants of the house and the publication of the latest edition of his book, Young has embarked on a local book tour of the area that includes the Cape May Farmer’s Market (July 12, 19, 26, Aug. 2, 9, 19), Cape May Tomato Festival (Sept. 3) and Jackson St. Fair (Oct. 1), Absecon Historical Society (Oct. 3), the Cape May Lima Bean Festival (Oct. 8) and Atlantic City Teacher’s Convention (Nov. 10-11).

Somers Ave Ghost House - Somers Point NJ

John Barry - An American Hero in the Age of Sail

John Barry - An American Hero in the Age of Sail - By Tim McGrath.

A New Bio of Commodore John Barry – America’s Forgotten Hero

By William Kelly

There is a monument to John Barry at his birthplace in Wexford, Ireland, a suspension bridge named after him and a statute at his grave in the cemetery behind Independence Hall in Philadelphia, not far from where he lived for most of his life. There have also been a number of US Navy warships and a bar in Qatar named in his honor.

There’s been a concerted effort to honor his memory, but John Barry is one of America’s forgotten heroes. As the author of a new biography, Tim McGrath notes, “Visit that statue on a bright sunny day, as the tourists leave Independence Hall and invariably one sightseer will ask, ‘Who was Barry?’”

As most school children know, John Barry was an American Revolutionary War hero who is generally recognized as the “Father of the US Navy,” but after that, the details get fuzzy.

A serious biography of John Barry is a once in a lifetime occurrence so we are lucky to be able to get Tim McGrath’s John Barry – An American Hero in the Age of Sail (Westholme/Yardly, 2010), which gloriously details what the school texts leave out.

It’s been 75 years since the last real biography of Barry, William Bell Clark’s Gallant John Barry – the Story of a Naval Hero of Two Wars (MacMillan, 1938), which rekindled the debate over whether or not John Barry actually deserves the title of “Father of the US Navy,” but McGrath decisively answers that question without really outright saying so.

Barry’s presence is still felt as he is buried in the graveyard behind Independence Hall, where a larger than life statute guards the back door of where they signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, though few of the tourists actually know who he is or what he did.

Since Philadelphia is Barry’s adopted hometown, many if not most of the significant events in his life took place in or around Philadelphia, which is also Tim McGrath’s hometown, and McGrath paints an interesting and accurate portrait of the man and the revolutionary times in which he lived there.

The Commodore Barry Bridge spans the Delaware River – the same river that Barry sailed from to fight the British, the same river Washington crossed to surprise the Hessians at Trenton, using artillery from Barry’s ship, and it’s the same river forged by the cattle drive Barry helped lead to Valley Forge to supply Washington’s army. It’s the same river overlooked from the porch of Barry’s once famous home - Strawberry Hill, four miles north of center city.

Besides the bridge and the statute of Barry that stands over his grave behind Independence Hall, the local Hibernians named their clubhouse after him. Among the many ships named USS Barry, there’s a destroyer on active duty today and one full of treasure that was sunk by a Nazi U-boat during WWII. The treasure ship was salvaged by treasure hunters who opened the John Barry Bar in Muscat Oman. There too, they want to know, who is John Barry?

President John Kennedy knew who Barry was, and when he visited Ireland, stopped to pay his respects and lay a wreath at the monument to Barry in Wexford, which is where Kennedy’s family also hailed from. JFK also owned Barry’s sword, which was close at hand during the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, and now resides at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston.

The library describes it as: “John Barry’s Sword. Date made: Late 18th century
Dimensions: 33 inches. Steel sword said to have belonged to Commodore John Barry, father of the American Navy. The cutlass has a single curved full blade, split knuckle guard, and turned wooden hilt. The blade is inscribed "Pro Gloria Et Patria" (for glory and country). The handle has a gilt, gargoyle head pommel from whose mouth extends the guard. The blade has numerous nicks indicating it saw battle. The sword hung in President John F. Kennedy's Oval Office.”

Barry’s sword was also previously owned by John Paul Jones, the only pretender to the title of “Father of the US Navy,” and who McGrath berates as a braggart who exaggerated his exploits. Some have also argued for John Adams, the lawyer who defended the British troops responsible for the Boston Massacre, but they all have strikes against their names. Jones was accused of killing one of his own sailors for insubordination, dodged one controversy after another, and pales in comparison to the exemplary and modest manner in which John Barry conducted himself. Yet, McGrath doesn’t come right out and say it – that John Barry is the Father of the US Navy, which he most certainly is.

Besides Barry’s Revolutionary War exploits at sea, capturing the first and last British ships of the war and defeating two British warships at once, he also distinguished himself on land during the British occupation of Philadelphia. Without a ship to sail, Barry conducted hit and run missions against British ships all along the Delaware and helped lead a vital cattle drive from the South Jersey to Valley Forge to help supply the rebel army at their winter quarters.

But John Barry isn’t the Father of the Navy because of his exemplary Revolutionary War record, which compares favorably to that of Jones, nor because President Washington named Barry the first flag officer of the reconstituted US Navy, which alone should be enough to lay claim to the title.

John Barry is the “Father of the US Navy” because he followed Washington’s order to raise a class of midshipmen to serve as the first officers of the US Navy, and they went on to distinguish themselves and establish style and traditions that are upheld by the US Navy today.

When he first met them Charles Stewart, Stephen Decatur and Richard Somers were mischievous young school kids who engaged in fisticuffs in the cemetery where Barry is now buried. They were selected and mentored by Barry, and often visited him at Strawberry Hill and the shipyard in South Philly where Barry oversaw the construction of the USS United States, one of the first frigates of the new US Navy. The building of a frigate was a fascinating spectacle and the launching of the battleship was a major civic and social occasion that drew most of the population of the city to witness it.

As the first Flag officer in the Navy, appointed by Washington, Barry chose Stewart his first officer and Somers and Decatur as midshipmen, and they went on to become navy heroes in their own right, with ships, streets and towns also named after them.

Aside from all that, Barry can be credited with expediting the approval of the Constitution of the United States, which some delegates kept from being passed by their absence, preventing a quorum and ratification. Barry led a group of ruffians they called the “Compellers,” who went out and rounded up the missing men and escorted them to the proceedings so their presence could be counted and the Constitution approved.

While McGrath’s academic biography of Barry may not reach those who want to know, perhaps someday Hollywood will make a swashbuckling movie about Barry, and those who visit his birthplace or his grave, transit his bridge and drink at the John Barry bar, will no longer have to wonder who he was.


William Kelly, Jr. is a freelance journalist from Browns Mills, New Jersey, and author of “300 Years at the Point” – a history of Somers Point, NJ, and “Birth of the Birdie” – the first hundred years of golf at the Atlantic City Country Club. He can be reached at Billkelly3@gmail.com (609) 425-6297

Recently, some members of the Wisconsin Legislature left the state so as they would prevent their congress from having a quorum and enact legislation they were against, a tactic similar to that used by those members of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia who were against the adoption of the constitution. John Barry however, saw to it that they made the meeting.

John Barry and the Compellers – An exerpt (I believe I can get McGrath’s permission)
From: Tim McGrath’s John Barry - An American Hero in the Age of Sail (Westholme/Yardly 2010) p. 358-361:

“Around four, Barry rejoined the crowd in the gallery to witness the Federalists’ victory. The representatives ambled in – only not nearly as many as had left earlier. The clock stuck four. All nineteen anti-Federalists were missing. Their absence was their trump card: now, there was no quorum. There could be no vote.”

“The sergeant-at-arms was ordered to search for them. Before long he returned, having found seventeen representatives at Major Boyd’s boarding house, he reminded them of their duty, only to be told that ‘there is no House.” Mifflin, reviewing the Assembly’s by-laws, found no clause that forced members to attend, only a fine for their absence. The Federalists had been outfoxed…”

“A collective grown came from the gallery as the forty-three Federalists cast dismayed eyes at Mifflin…Barry and the crowd stomped down the steps and out into the Indian summer weather. Everyone knew what would happen the next morning: another no-show by the anti-Federalists. Without a quorum, there would be no convention, perhaps no ratification for a year. How may absent assemblymen were needed to have a quorum? Barry knew the answer: two.”

“Having celebrated their victory with a fine meal, spirits and a good night’s sleep, most of McCalmont’s anti-Federalist allies had already left town. Only two were still tarrying at Boyd’s: McCalmont and his roommate Jacob Miley of Dauphin County (Pa.), another tough frontiersman. When accosted by the sergeant-at-arms, they simply ignored him and refused to return. Everyone in the room looked to Mifflin. Now what?”

“With a nod to his companions, Barry and his men elbowed their way out of the gallery, jogged down the steps of the State House and out to Chestnut Street. Whether Mifflin was in on Barry’s plan is not known – but as Barry’s band exited, Mifflin ‘left the chair.’ By doing so, he delayed adjourning the assembly. Others in the gallery also followed Barry, but at a distance.”

“Barry’s companions strode up Chestnut to Sixth, then turned and headed right to Major Boyd’s. They forced their way in the front door, and then stomped upstairs to find McCalmont and Miley. The crowd trailing Barry turned into a mob, shouting curses and thowing stones through the boardinghouse windows. Barry and company did not bother to knock before entering.”

“As Barry’s toughs circled the two assemblymen, he gave the a choice: they could walk to the State House under their own power, or be carried there. Other politicians might have been struck with fear, but McCalmont and Miley were made of sterner stuff. They responded with their own profanity-laced declaration; they were not coming to the State House, despite the escort service confronting them. There was a second of silence. Then, ‘Take’em!’ Barry commanded, and the ‘compelling’ began.”

“The two ex-militiamen put up a fight. Fists were thrown, clothes were torn, and fingers were bitten or pried off the banisters. The representatives from Dauphin and Franklin counties punched and kicked in every direction, but to no avail. Messrs. McCalmont and Miley bid adieu to Major Boyd’s, without settling their bill.”

“Once outside, the two men were hoisted up and carried, as one newspaperman reported, with ‘their clothes torn and after much abuse and insult.’ Slowly but surely, ‘they were finally dragged’ down Chestnut Street. By now the clamor could be heard on the second floor of the State House. Peering out of one of the windows, Mifflin saw his two colleagues being assisted back to work, and then quietly excused himself from the chamber. Barry’s gang reached the State House doors. Moving to and fro, sideways, backward, sideways, forward, his toughs got to the stairway. They scuffled up the first five steps to the landing while McCalmont and Miley squirmed to free themselves, lashing out at their bearers, whose fingernails dug into their necks and hands, drawing blood. Their clothes torn in proportion to resistance became shredded rags.”

“The next two flights of stairs were sixteen steps each. A five-foot wide stairway is more than broad enough for a crowd to use – the prisoners easily negotiated Franklin’s sedan-chair daily – but his band, carrying two thrashing public servants, found it a narrow passage. The last flight of five stairs took the longest. To their credit, neither McCalmont nor Miley stopped fighting. When they could, they dug their feet into the stairs and flailed their arms. Finally, Barry and his men got through the doorway, literally throwing the two men over the rail that divided the gallery from the austere chamber of official government business. Thanks to Barry there was bedlam, but also a quorum.”

“The other assemblymen returned to their seats, Miffling, ‘assuming the chair, and the roll was called.’ The two manhandled legislators, bloodied, bruised, and half-naked, glared at him. Panting heavily, they felt for cracked ribs and broken fingers. When their names were called by the clerk, they were still out of breath – but their colleagues happily responded for them. ‘HERE!’ they cried. Mifflin acknowledged, to laughter and cheers, that a quorum was present. The session, delayed but not adjourned, began at last.”

The Sundance Kid - The Man & the Myth

The Sundance Kid & the Sting’s Atlantic City Connections

Robert Redford and Paul Newman made two memorial movies together – Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and the Sting.

Redford played Butch Cassidy’s sidekick the Sundance Kid while Newman was Charlie Gondorf in The Sting, both historical characters with Atlantic City connections.

Gondorf, the King of the Big Con confidence men of the early part of the last century, was an Atlantic City bartender when he wasn’t playing the inside man in big time swindles as portrayed in the movie The Sting.

Then there’s the legend that Harry Longabaugh – the Sundance Kid, was from Atlantic City, which turns out to be partially true.

In the movie Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid, there’s a scene where they get off a train in a desolate place in South America, and Butch Cassidy, whose idea it was to go there, says, “It could be worse. You get a lot more for your money in Bolivia, I know, I checked it out.”

The Sundance Kid then responds, “This might be the garden spot of the whole country. People may travel hundreds of miles just to get to this spot where we’re standing now. This might be the Atlantic City of all Bolivia for all we know.”

Cassidy says, “Look, now I know a lot more about Bolivia than you know about Atlantic City, New Jersey, I can tell you that.”

“Ah, ha! you do, huh?” says the Kid. “I was born there. I was born in New Jersey. Brought up there.”

Incredulously, Butch Cassidy looks up, “You’re from the east? I didn’t know that.”

Donna and Paul Ernst, who lived in Ocean City, NJ, saw the movie and didn’t think anything about it, but were startled when they read a National Geographic Magazine article “The Outlaw Trail,” by Robert Redford, in which he mentions that the Sundance Kid’s real name was Harry Alonzo Longabaugh. And there is a town in Wyoming near the Hole in the Wall canyon where they hung out called Atlantic City.

“Well, Longabaugh isn’t exactly Smith,” said Donna Ernest, who wrote to the magazine, whose historian sent her a detailed Longabaugh family history that showed that the Sundance Kid was the brother of Paul Ernst’s great-grandfather.

Paul then remembered his “grandpop” at a holiday dinner if the family was interested in hearing the story of his “uncle Harry, who had a sidekick, and were like Jesse James. They robbed banks and gave it to poor people, and died in South America.”

But then he said, “Na, isn’t anyone’s business, forget it.”

His grandfather repeated the story a number of times over the years, but the family just thought he was out of his head, and he was senile when he died in March, 1976.

Unfortunately, Grandpop went to his grave with the details of the story of his “Uncle Henry,” the Sundance Kid. “He never told anyone all he knew,” said Donna, “and he died in silence, taking his memories with him.”

Once intrigued however, Paul and Donna took up the trail of the outlaws and learned a lot over the following twenty years.
Harry Alonzo Longabaugh – aka the Sundance Kid, was not actually born in Atlantic City, as the movie attests, but rather in Mont Clare, on the Schuylkill Canal in Pennsylvania.

According to Donna Ernst, “Because Mont Clare, Pennsylvania is extremely small, historians thought it was actually Mont Clare, New Jersey, and that assumption eventually caused the line in the movie where Redford, as the Sundance Kid, claims he was born in Atlantic City.”

Harry – the Sundance Kid, had a brother Harvey, who did live in Atlantic City, and is credited with helping to build the first boardwalk. Since his brother had a place at the Shore, Harry frequently visited him, and thus the Atlantic City connection was firmly established.

Becoming entranced with the subject, Donna and Paul began an intense search of family history in order to learn as much about Harry Longabaugh as they could, digging through old family and official records. According to Donna, “We discovered a Conrad Longabaugh had immigrated to Philadelphia on December 24, 1772, aboard the brig Morning Star. He fought in the Revolutionary War and then raised his family in Eastern Pennsylvania. His descendants eventually settled in Mont Clare, where during the spring of 1867, Harry Alongzo Longabaugh was born.”

On August 30, 1882 the restless fourteen year old Harry left to go West with some cousins in a covered wagon, eventually settling in Cortez, Colorado, where they lived for four years. After working a cattle drive to Montana in 1886, he went to the Black Hills area, where at Sundance, Wyoming, on February 27, 1887, he allegedly stole a light grey horse, a gun and a saddle form an employee of the VVV Ranch. After being caught, the 20 year old attempted to escape by jumping off a train, but was recaptured. The local Yellowstone Journal newspaper compared him to Jesse James and attributed some other local crimes to him. In response, from the Sundance jail, he wrote a letter to the editor.

“In your issue of the 7t, I read a very sensational and partly untrue article, which places me before the public not even second to the notorious Jesse James. Admitting that I have done nothing wrong and expecting to be dealt with according to the law and not by false reports from parties who should blush with shame to make them, I ask a little of your space to set my case before the public in a true light. In the first place, I have always worked for an honest living…and was arrested…and charged with having stolen a horse at Sundance, where I was being taken by Sheriff Ryan, whom I escaped from by jumping from the cars, which I judged were running at the rate of 100 miles an hour. After this my course of outlawry commenced, and I suffered terribly for the want of food in the hope of getting back south without being detected, where I would be looked upon as I always have been, and not as a criminal. Contrary to the statement in the Journal, I deny having stolen any horses in Canada, or anyplace else, up to the time I was captured, at which time I was riding a horse which I bought and paid for. Nor had I the slightest idea of stealing any horses. I am aware that some of your readers will say my statement should be taken or what it is worth, on account of the hard name which has been forced upon me, nevertheless it is true. As for my recapture by Deputy Sheriff Davis, all I can say is that he did his work well and were it not for him ‘playing possum’ I would now be on my way south, where I had hoped to go and live a better life.” Signed Harry Lonabaugh.

When Harry Lonabaugh got out of jail the newspaper reported, “the kid has been released from Sundance,” and the Sundance Kid was born.

As Donna Ernst relates, “Stealing horses soon became robbing banks and holding up trains. Sundance and his pal Butch Cassidy were the leaders of a loose-knit group of thieves better known as the Wild Bunch. And together these men were so skilled at escaping the law that the American Bankers Association and the Union Pacific Railroad hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to capture them – at any cost.”

In the course of their two decades long quest to learn as much as possible about their renegade relation, Donna and Paul spent their summer vacations traveling the West’s “Outlaw Trails,” where they visited banks their great-uncle once robbed and the cabins in the mountains where they hid out from the law.

They also found another Atlantic City connection – Atlantic City, Wyoming, one of the ghost towns near Hole-in-the-Wall Wyoming.

They trailed the Wild Bunch to Fort Worth, Texas, where the gang regrouped and had the famous photograph taken. “Sundance and Butch saw their way of life changing before their eyes,” Donna relates. “Their fellow outlaws were all being killed or caught and jailed. It was time to move on, to take a trip to South America, and to start a new life. So the Wild Bunch met in Fort Worth for a good-bye celebration. One of the things they did was have their picture taken together, but unknown to them, the photographer placed the picture on display in his window, where it was seen by a Wells Fargo detective who recognized one of the men.”

With the heat hot on their tail, says Donna, “the Sundance Kid returned home with his wife, Ethel Place, to see his family, brother Harvey and his sisters Samanna and Emma, and meet his nieces and nephews, some born in his absence. Then he explained his decision to move to South America and told his family he was going to settle down, buy a ranch and go straight.”

According to the reports of the Pinkerton Detectives who were after him, Sundance and Ethel were seen “frolicking” at the beach in Atlantic City, where the Sundance Kid’s brother Harvey lived at the time. “We suspect they visited Harvey’s family at the beach,” says Donna, “and at that time Grandpop was about eleven years old.”

According to the legend, and the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled to South America and were the two American bandits killed in a shootout in San Vicente, Bolivia on November 8, 1908.

But Lula Parker Betenson, Butch Cassidy’s sister, wrote a book Butch Cassidy, My Brother (Bringham Young Press, 1975) in which she claims her brother returned home years after he was reported killed in South America, and told the family that he last saw the Sundance Kid and Ethel Place at a bullfight in Mexico City.

In 1991, research historian Dan Buck and Anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow exhumed the bodies of the “bandito Yankees,” killed an buried in San Vicente, Bolivia, and conducted DNA tests to match genetic material with descendants of Cassidy and Longabaugh. The negative results left the case open to historical debate as to whether Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed in South America or merely encouraged the rumors of their death in order to get the Pinkertons off their trail and to start a new life outside of crime.

As a result of their research and travels, Donna Ernst wrote a book, Sundance – My Uncle (Creative Publishing Co, Box 9292, College Station, Tx., 77842, 1992), which chronicles the full story of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, at least what could be learned today.

At a meeting of Western Outlaw-Lawmen History Association, Donna Ernst said, “While I am not a professional writer, I don’t mind doing a lot of research. I have mixed my desire for accuracy and my access to private family information together with the historical details of Sundance’s life. In the process I have found some new information, and have tried to correct a few inaccuracies.”


Next: CHARLIE GONDORF – THE STING’S ATLANTIC CITY CONNCTION

Me and Rod Serling - Enter The Twilight Zone

Rod Serling

Witness one Rod Serling – Standing alone, flesh, blood, muscle and mind. A frustrated actor turned writer, he stands forever in the nightmare of his own creation, pressed into service in the role of narrator for a weekly television drama – The Twilight Zone.

For those who watched and listened, he showed how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real and that which is a product of our own minds.

There is that hauntingly repetitious four-beat score that opens the show, as Serling, dressed conservatively in dark suit and tie, steps out of the shadows and stands in the starry night. With his hands clasped in front of him, he says in his distinctive voice, talking out of the side of his mouth:

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is also an area we call the Twilight Zone.”

Marc Scott Zicree, in his book The Twilight Zone Companion (Bantam, 1982) tells us that the original music for the show was composed by Bernard Herman, who also did such classic film scores as Citizen Kane, Psycho and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Zicree describes it as, “a subtle and lonely piece scored for strings, harp, flute and brass,” but that was replaced after on season “by the more familiar rhythmic theme by French avant-guarde composer Marius Consant.”

As for the name of the show, Serling said, “I thought I’d made it up, but I’ve since heard that there is an Air Force term relating to a moment when a plane is coming down on approach and the pilot cannot see the horizon, it’s called the twilight zone, but it’s an obscure term which I had not heard before.”

Since then the lexicon should show that the CIA psychologists used the term to denote the state of mind of subjects to whom they administered LSD.

But from now on the term “Twilight Zone” will forever be associated with Serling, who conceived the idea for the TV show and wrote many if not most of the scripts. He made the show unique, parlaying an award wining TV drama into the half-hour weekly program that didn’t have the continuity that plots and characters give sit-coms and soap operas.

When word got out that the show would be scary, Serling rejected the advances of agents representing various monster and robot actors who monopolized other sci-fi shows, politely telling them he had something else “in mind.”

And indeed, the Twilight Zone would stimulate endless nightmares, portraying ordinary people in frightening predicaments. But it made people think, and come back for more.

Serling’s contract only called for him to write 80% of the shows, and for Orson Wells to do the narration, but when Orson Wells required more money than they were allocated, and others just didn’t seem right, Serling volunteered to do the narration himself. While it turned out to be the most familiar and endearing part of the series, it was also Serling’s own personal nightmare, as he had stage fright.

The producers and director were at first skeptical of Serling himself doing the opening dialog, but then, as Serling put it, “They looked at me and said, ‘Hell, at least he’s articulate and speaks English, so let’s use him.’ Only my laundress knows how frightened I was.”

According to Zicree, “Serling had more problems adjusting to his on screen role than just stumbling over the occasional word.”

Director Lamont Johnson said, “Rod was a very nervous man before the camera. When he had to do lead in time he would go through absolute hell. He would sweat and sputter and go pale. He was terribly ill at ease in front of a camera.”

Like all successful TV programs, they last only as long as the scripts maintain a certain quality, and writing is what Serling did best.

Born Rodman Edward Serling on Christmas day 1924 in Syracuse, New York, Serling was the second son of Ester and Samuel Serling, his father a wholesale meat dealer.

Popular, outspoken and confident, Serling read pulp paperback novels and mimicked movie actors as a kid. He went in for dramatics in high school, and served as a paratrooper in the Philippines during World War II. After the service he attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and started writing radio scripts and bad poetry.

His wife Carol, who published a Twilight Zone magazine that featured original short fiction, recalls that Rod’s writing habits got him up at dawn. After grabbing a cup of coffee, he would “dictate his scripts into a tape machine.” Often, if the weather was nice, he’d take the machine outside with him and sit by the pool.”

One friend noted, “He is the only person I knew who could get a tan and make money at the same time.”

After five seasons of the Twilight Zone, Serling hosted another TV weekly, The Night Gallery, which also developed short story themes.

Then, years after Serling’s death, they made The Twilight Zone movie, which adapted a few of the original shows to film. It partially succeeded, but the death of actor Vic Morrow and two children in its making put a stigma on the production.

While Serling wrote most of the Twilight Zone TV segments, only “It’s a Grand Life,” about a spoiled boy with supernatural powers, was written by Serling that is included in the film. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which originally stared William Shatner, was written by Richard Matheson, and first published in the Anthology “Alone By Night” (Ballentine, 1961), while “Kick the Can” was written by George Clayton Johnson.

Johnson once said, “On the Twilight Zone, there was an attempt to keep it literary, to keep it bright, to keep it good. No one in the show ever suggested that something would be good enough – although that’s common today in commercial television. Just to do it good enough. Quality control counted in the Twilight Zone.”

In his last published interview several months before his death, Serling said, “I just want them to remember me a hundred years from now. I don’t care that they’re not able to quote a single line that I’ve written. But just that they can say, ‘Oh, he was a writer,’ That’s sufficiently an honored position for me.”

In May, 1975, Serling suffered a mild heart attack while scheduled to give a lecture at a college in upstate New York, and had to have a coronary bypass operation.

When I read in the news papers that he was in the hospital, I sent him a small note, mentioning that I too had attended classes at Antioch College while a student at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and included a poem by William Bulter Yeats, from Supernatural Songs – The Four Ages of Man.

“He with body waged a fight, but body won, it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart, innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind, his proud heart he left behind.
Now his war on God begins; at stroke of midnight, God shall win.”

A few days later, on June 28, 1975, after ten hours of open heart surgery, complications arose and Rod Serling died. I heard about it on television at home in Ocean City, and wondered if he ever got my note.

The next day I went out on the porch and took the mail from the mail box and was surprised to see one postmarked from upstate New York. The corner of the envelope said it was from Rod Serling.

I could hear the music from the Twilight Zone as I opened the envelop – Da da, da da, da, da, da da....

It was brief and to the point, typewritten, apparently dictated and signed, thanking me for the poem, and saying that he was really worse off than what the newspapers had let it out to be, and that he wouldn’t be working on any projects for awhile.

And now he’s stuck in that middle ground between light and shadow, and is remembered not as a writer, but as our host in his personal nightmare – the Twilight Zone.
Now whenever anything strange or unexpected happens, we hear the faint strains of that music, and quickly turn around, half-expecting to see him standing there, in dark suit and tie, hands clasped in front of him, welcoming us.