BEN STEIN'S DIARY: The Last Gentleman
Stein, Benjamin J.
The Last Gentleman BY BENJAMIN J. STEIN MONDAY ooking back on when I was a lit.L tle nappy-headed boy.... When my only worry was for Christmas what would be my toy.... These are words...
...Ohman realized that if he could acquire one of Stone's 200 reproductions, it would contain a more exact image for his work than the original Declaration, since the original was damaged...
...Once this was done, every word and every letter of every word had to be placed onto the parchment exactly the same way it was according to the original Declaration of Independence...
...President Monroe charged his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, with printing 200 exemplars...
...About fifteen or eighteen years ago, when I was still on the best of terms with the folks at the Wall Street Journal, I was offered the opportunity to review a book called The Myth of Neurosis...
...I am in a lovely small suite with a fine view of the landscape of theme parks and flat brushland...
...Daniel Finn...
...Accuracy in the Media...
...I loved him for it...
...I am oversimplifying...
...These are words from a super Stevie Wonder song...
...He could do phenomenally good accents, as noted...
...That cat, renamed Artemus, sleeps on my son's bed some nights and with me many others...
...He knew geography...
...He did not return phone calls sometimes for days...
...Once our inventory has been sold, we will be unable to honor any further orders, and any payments will be returned...
...In any event, this is all a lot of fun...
...Plus, Garth Wood was probably the best-looking human being I have ever known, and somehow this gave what he had to say a certain charm it might have otherwise had less of...
...It was a job that a seasoned lawyer would have taken a month to do half as well...
...I talked to him for two hours that day and by the end of the conversation, Garth was laughing...
...He located two copies known to exist, but both were in the Library of Congress and they turned out to be printed on regular paper-not parchment...
...Then with a sigh, Garth went back...
...She was totally unhelpful...
...No one else ever did, but then Garth was unique in many ways...
...Remember, they were produced in 1955 and can never be duplicated...
...Here's what Ohman saw: " Many of the signatures were illegible, and numerous were completely gone...
...129 The Good Music Record Co...
...Wood...
...She had befriended a wealthy Englishman named Lord Lyle, owner of a vast food company, and he had settled upon her many millions of pounds as well as art works by famous painters such as Poussin...
...I can't get any lower than this," he said...
...Garth Wood, M.D...
...I still think of him sprawled on my couch, laughing and teasing Julie...
...Once when I ate with him at Malibu La Scala, I told him I was unhappy with my wife and maybe I should look for a new one...
...I can still recall the girls all winking at Dr...
...Many times when I talked to him on the phone, he would just suddenly burst into Harrow songs, again, something touching about how you would look back and recall the days of Harrow, the days on the hill, as among the finest days of your life...
...Money problems...
...Occasionally he would have an adventure treating an old school chum with various health problems, and then he would narrate it, complete with accents, at hilarious length...
...Ben," said the voice, "this is Pat Booth in London...
...When Garth left Malibu for a few weeks, I felt desperately lonely without him to hang around with...
...He wrestled with trying to get in touch with his Higher Power but never really seemed to regard the meetings as anything but a curiosity...
...And now I am in my seat...
...He had a total ability to understand, to judge, and still to sympathize even if he did not approve of what you had done...
...Then we would go for a modest dinner at that Chinese restaurant...
...29, 125 Laissez Faire Books...
...I still remember sitting at a long wood table, looking out at the wild parrots in my back yard, watching the bowl of potatoes disappear as Alex and I guffawed into the night...
...My house in Malibu, the guest house here where Garth slept, the tan trousers he accidentally left here, the paregoric he mailed me from London, the very telephone itself, the pillow where I lay for so many hours while I talked to Garth...
...No matter that he appeared to be fantastically rich, with homes in Palm Beach, Florida, Malibu, Manhattan, and St...
...Or to have any hope...
...A mildewy sponge pit of a hellhole...
...He had been put in handcuffs and taken to the Dade County jail...
...Shortly afterwards, disaster...
...Over, please...
...Garth never copped an attitude, never pretended to be better than anyone, but always could just get in there and identify...
...Where would I ever find a better wife than the one I had...
...I called her back immediately...
...111-114 Elderberry Press...
...I liked the book very much and wrote a glowing review...
...Where Have They Been For So Many Years...
...He knew medicine, he knew psychiatry...
...Why was he in for so long...
...Independence Hall has one...
...But he was not drinking (I did not permit him to drink anywhere near me) and he was as lively in his brain as ever...
...I called the desk and was promised a new room and a key to it...
...He was saved from desperation by a Cuban man in jail for drunk driving...
...I waited...
...I called Malibu for messages...
...His main regret was that he had to give up his black cat, Prince, whom he loved but who could not travel from Florida to London because of the notorious English quarantine (which does not seem to have done them a lot of good...
...These people were given an excuse to act badly either towards themselves or others by a mental health establishment intent on expanding its power by enlarging the scope of human endeavor covered by the rubric of "mental illness...
...Well, time passed and one day, far too soon, Dr...
...When I bought my little house on a hill, Garth came over and lay on the deck taking in the sun...
...He went away on Monday morning and I was supposed to see him in the afternoon but he never showed up...
...123 Mr...
...He was shivering and scared...
...I hung up the phone and started to cry...
...Many times, Dr...
...Why not just polish up the one you have...
...I am a happy man...
...The rest remained with Ohman, who sold them until 1960...
...This hotel has the best service of any hotel I have ever been to...
...Tell me about it, said Garth, I've been there, friend...
...I well recall driving Dr...
...The Last Gentleman BY BENJAMIN J. STEIN MONDAY ooking back on when I was a lit.L tle nappy-headed boy...
...All of the skill Ohman had acquired as a master lithographer was called upon to ensure that his reproduction was authentic in every detail...
...Let me be plain about this: Garth was the most fun to talk to of anyone I had ever met...
...They were all old Harrovians and Garth delighted in singing a song about the school on the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 107 hill, and came to tears retelling how Churchill, the greatest man of all time, would come to reunions at Harrow and the boys would sing school songs to him...
...On my pilot, I don't even have to pretend to have a precedent...
...His writing career languished...
...A woman from Hartford wants a time to interview me about Hillary speaking at Yale...
...Wood...
...He was the child and grandchild of English physicians...
...How could you have been so blind to how much we needed you...
...Adams and Stone agreed that the best way to accomplish their task was to produce a copper plate from which each reproduction would be made...
...But Garth, unlike most He had been put in handcuffs and taken to the Dade County jail...
...He often talked about his Uncle Hugh, who had died piloting a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain in 1940...
...Brigitte the dog was safe and so was my wife and so was Tommy...
...First, every crack, wrinkle, or blemish in the parchment had to be identified and precisely measured, then engraved into the parchment...
...Garth had gone from his boat to a club in South Beach, gotten drunk, and been arrested on the false charge (as Garth explained to me) of refusing to pay his bill...
...And will I see you when I die and get to hear you call me Benito and groan sympathetically when we talk about the stock market...
...John Quincy Adams entrusted Mr...
...Thank you, Sprint ten cents a minute to London...
...However, we are doing a very funny pilot...
...Upon completion, Ohman's Declaration of Independence would be the first authentic reproduction to be made available of the nation's most sacred document in more than 175 years...
...1823: A Mistake with Historical Significance The first attempt to reproduce the Declaration of Independence occurred in 1823...
...They went into his office and there he was lying on his carpet looking as if he were asleep...
...Again, the girls at the meetings would stare at Garth, but he never even noticed...
...By the chance of fate, the man turned out to be the author of The Myth of Neurosis, grateful indeed for my review and more so delighted that I had read his work...
...I am so tired I think I'll just get her number and call back in the morning.Wow, am I tired...
...But diligence finally paid off when Ohman discovered one of Stone's 200-but that's not all he found...
...Of course, he was right...
...Nevertheless, I would laugh just as hard as they did...
...How often he spoke of how much he loved them and especially Pat, but how beaten he felt after being in jail so wrongfully...
...I called him,"Dr...
...Room service is screaming fast, and the food is super...
...Then he went to his office with the Oriental rug and the andirons he was so proud of and he took drugs that put him to sleep forever...
...The conversation went on for a little longer, but by that time I was in shock, on auto-pilot of grief...
...Stone, the chief engraver of his time, was chosen to make the reproductions...
...He was not only unimaginably good-looking, sort of like a much better-looking version of the English actor James Fox with a little of Jeremy Irons thrown in for good measure, he was also amazingly erudite...
...He was, for me, the soul of Malibu...
...Sure enough, it was a pleasant room with real hardwood floors...
...Garth was not perfect...
...But he got harder and harder to reach on the phone.When I did reach him, he was despondent...
...It works out great...
...The basic premise, as I recall it, was that many people used mental illness as an excuse to avoid their duties and responsibilities, and especially to avoid the moral consequences of acts that could have been controlled or prevented...
...Then he would come back with a fabulous and apt comment about my problems...
...A Stone and a Negative Ohman set out on an exhaustive search to locate one of Stone's 200 reproductions...
...I told her how much fun I had...
...She sounded exhausted...
...Yes," she said...
...I really hate to leave this place...
...Anyway, Garth and I kept in touch but not as much as I would have liked...
...But as Ohman discovered, he was not the first to attempt such a feat...
...Warm empathy," was how my father once described my best quality, and Garth had warm and very funny empathy...
...and tired...
...129 F.L.A.M.E...
...Pat Booth is Garth's wife...
...And he never seemed to feel happy again...
...I promise you'll like it," he said...
...He wanted to sue the club and the county, but he was listless, filled with self-hate...
...I awoke early to help my son off to school, then got back into bed...
...I always suspected it was because someone there thought I was so perfectly neurotic...
...The Cuban gave Garth his shirt and said, "We'll get through this together," and cheered Garth for three days and nights...
...The edges of the parchment had been trimmed almost into the script of the text...
...The last time I felt that way was when I was up in Palo Alto while my Puppy Wuppy was getting run over and killed...
...But his excitement soon turned to dismay when he discovered that, prior to its protective enshrinement, the original Declaration of Independence was permanently damaged...
...He sounded very tired...
...Your pal, Gartho," as she called him...
...There will never be another Garth...
...Following his death in 1968, Ohman's wife sold the remaining inventory-not appreciating the true value or significance of what she was selling-to a family in the upper Midwest of the United States...
...A couple of years later, Peter Morton had a party marking the tenth anniversary of Morton's Restaurant...
...He was stupendously sad...
...Can you please call me...
...He had 'em...
...He had his anti-depressant and his glasses taken away...
...These resort folks are friendly, warm, cheerful, witty...
...ligently at every point I made...
...I have done my commercial for Gladware for a great group of producers, lighting people, wardrobe, hair, and a fabbers director named Mr...
...How I wish I could get a disc of that song now...
...There was an anguished woman's voice with an English accent...
...Marriage problems...
...Stone with the original document...
...Back Cover Freddie Mac . ..3 Hoover Institution ....131 Jomira/Advance...
...He was also a witty demon...
...From these two items he would be able to exactly re-create the Declaration of Independence...
...Wow, am I happy they made it here...
...I flew into LaGuardia to do a commercial...
...I can well recall laughing at two in the morning as Garth described the astonishment of a multi-millionaire peer that he, Garth, would spend the money to keep a taxi waiting for an hour to help take a friend to the hospital...
...We laugh a lot and pretend we are a judge and bailiff...
...Catastrophe...
...I went to my room...
...I think I already told you this...
...Always with a smile of understanding...
...The story I am about to relate to you is not well known to American citizens...
...Spicy tuna.Yum...
...Then back to my room...
...The guy was super funny and charming, and we all hit it off immediately...
...He did not die so that we would be under the control of Germans," Garth often said with extreme conviction...
...I know what it feels like...
...And I did a big speech on the rights of children...
...He came to visit us in Los Angeles about two and a half months ago...
...His fingers flew across a keyboard and he found me a room...
...Problems with ungrateful pals from childhood...
...Stone went on to complete the 200 reproductions (today known as the "Stone Prints") and they were distributed to the remaining signers or their heirs...
...This is a first-come, first-served offer...
...We're doing this pilot in rehearsals day and night at a little tiny studio across from a dollar-a-plate Chinese restaurant...
...I like 'em...
...27 Sun Pure Air Purifier...
...Wow, are they happy to be in Hollywood at Vine and Afton instead of in a pen about to be clubbed to death by the Khmer Rouge...
...Once completed, our nation's leading museums and archives acquired their own lithographs, deeming Ohman's reproduction an astounding likeness of the original...
...The flight was great and soon I was home with my little boy and my wifie and my Brigitte...
...More time passed and Garth changed...
...He also had almost total empathy...
...I stalked down to the desk and started yelling and screaming...
...He had been thrown into a cell with sixty other arrestees er Garth had been...
...I get to make jokes about the litigants, who all have sort of silly cases, and the bailiff makes jokes about me...
...Two weeks ago, I begged him to come up to Orlando to meet me while I spoke...
...He knew finance amazingly well...
...It would 108 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 be midnight here and eight a.m...
...I walked with him through Beverly Hills the next day and the girls stared...
...5 Cato Institute...
...15 Yorktown University...
...When we had lunch afterwards on the veranda, I could see all the girls staring at Dr...
...But Garth became sadder and sadder and more and more solitary...
...But he had an astounding ability to feel whatever I was going through and express solidarity about it in a helpful, yet amusing way...
...He devoured stories of the Declaration's signers-Franklin, Adams, and otherswhich ultimately led him to leave his homeland and immigrate to the United States...
...and gentleman...
...SUNDAY Here I am in Orlando at a huge Marriott Resort...
...Once when I was having a dispute with a network, he instantaneously laid out a simply perfect, very elaborate, persuasive, multi-pronged argument on my behalf that showed he had listened to every syllable of what I had said, understood every nuance of law and organization, and would surely have carried the day...
...Wood also came with me to my self-help group, Journey Into Self-Obsession, at our noon meeting and also our Saturday night meetings...
...I suspect he'll be gone a while, which is a shame, because I always love seeing him...
...I can see an endless range of neon at night and I like that, too...
...I called my machine in Malibu...
...An Exclusive Opportunity for American Spectator Subscribers For as little as $199, you can have an Ohman lithograph delivered to your door...
...A pleasant, capable English assistant manager said he would help...
...he also discovered a negative of the original Declaration that was taken prior to its permanent enshrinement under glass in 1903...
...We talked at Shutters restaurant...
...Alarming, I would say...
...Seeking approval for his masterful re-creation of the Declaration of Independence, Ohman sent lithographs to the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and Independence Hall...
...I am flattered but she is distinctly non compos mentis...
...any hotel at any price in Manhattan...
...Garth came up and stayed there, came to the speech, and nodded intelYorktown ]niversit Jý .com Dedicated to the teaching of the history of Western Civilization Enrollments begin July 9 for classes starting August 20 www.yorktownuniversity.com THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 109 No matter what I was going through, Garth at least said he had gone through the same thing...
...Then Garth decided it was time to economize and sold his and Pat's house in Palm Beach...
...He had never made a lot of money, never been a star in any field (except psychiatry), and felt alone...
...Garth was always a polite, even gallant fellow, always deferential, always last to speak and most quietly persuasive...
...For only $399, you can have it double matted and selectively framed to display to its best advantage...
...How can I live without my Gartho...
...From a schoolboy in his native (Over, please...
...Problems with rude help on the phone...
...I suddenly recalled that it was time to get that number of the woman from Hartford...
...I'll be back in less than a week," he said, but he said it with extreme lack of conviction...
...109 felt euphoric at the thought of such good company...
...Still he always brightened up when I called.We laughed so much in the middle of the night that my wife said she could always tell even from far away in the house when I was talking to Dr...
...Once our inventory has been sold, we will be unable to honor any further orders, and any payments will be returned...
...We love cats and dogs here, so we offered to take in the cat...
...Lithographs are limited...
...This is sort of how Ben and I feel about leaving each other...
...My car took me to the stage and then to pick out some wardrobe at Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart, and then to my hotel, the Waldorf, to check in...
...Wood told me that he and his family were leaving Malibu to live full time in Palm Beach...
...Anyway, I gave my speech, to great applause, and then spent an hour and a half visiting with my hostess from the timeshare people...
...I saw him a few weeks after that in Miami when I gave a speech at the Doral...
...106 to a super good Italian place called Trattoria dell'Arte and had the best fish I have ever had...
...Hmmm...
...He and Julie would have long, heavy drinking conversations while I, who never touch the stuff, looked on...
...Garth Wood," and he called me "Benito," for reasons I have never known...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR E Summer Reading Issue 2001 113 cation, we acquired the rights to the entire inventory and decided to give subscribers of The American Spectator an exclusive opportunity to own one of these authentic 1955 lithographs of the Declaration of Independence...
...He could never get his Prozac dose right after that sadistic treatment at the jail...
...He could have done anything...
...Did he commit suicide...
...Wood and his ignoring them...
...I've hit the bottom of the barrel.There's nothing left for me but suicide...
...The Garth who came out of Dade County jail was a different, beaten, suicidal man...
...He knew politics, English, American and European...
...He did not have anything like the helpful ideas about Hollywood life that Al Burton has or the poetry in expression that Wlady has or the Pentium IV speed of wit and helpfulness that Phil DeMuth has...
...Marriage problems...
...Theodore Ohman had a love for the Declaration of Independence...
...No one came...
...No matter that he appeared to be fantastically rich, Garth had no money and had money problems...
...No matter what I was going through, Garth at least said he had gone through the same thing...
...He never looked at any woman but his beautiful former-model wife, Pat...
...Often I would also call him when I woke up, which was about his dinner time...
...But I mean totally sullen and unhelpful...
...W The exact colors of the parchment, as well as any distinguishing characteristics such as cracks, tears, and holes...
...I recall thinking that he was so elegant that he could power the plane just with his smile...
...Always perfectly dressed over his imperial slimness...
...Who knows...
...That year, President James Monroe thought it would be appropriate to have reproductions made of the original Declaration, to give to original signers still living, or their heirs, as well as the chief branches of government...
...He could have been an actor or a politician or an investment banker...
...I felt as if, despite the immense differences in our social standing, Garth was my soul mate, and in many ways, he was my ideal...
...I don't think Alex and I have ever laughed so hard at any dinner as we did at that event...
...Let me tell you why the loss is irreplaceable, and some history helps...
...But it is funny...
...Many of them are even Civil War buffs, and that helps...
...New York Hotel Torture...
...I felt insane, as if my whole body were flying into pieces...
...He fell into a kind of lonely solitary existence in his manse in St...
...51-54 Blackstone Audio Books...
...I sometimes rendezvoused with him in New York...
...Shown much smalltter than actual size of 28" x 31...
...We talked about the stock market, about which Garth knew every detail...
...Who will ever sing of childhood days at Harrow, or tell me he understood everything, had suffered along with me, was right there with me in triumph and selfdoubt...
...I assumed he had gone to visit a friend in Scotland and so I didn't track him down...
...A super cute little nutcase keeps coming up to talk to me...
...Garth came over for a dinner of roast beef and baked potatoes and ate more baked potatoes at one sitting than any other man or woman I have ever seen...
...And he was majorly anti-Tony Blair and any idea of a Britain under the control of Europe...
...The hostess was also really friendly...
...It's run by immigrant Cambodians...
...Creases and cracks from age and poor handling had endangered its very survival...
...I went out with a friend from the cable TV business THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 We laugh a lot and pretend we are a judge and bailiff...
...I am getting to believe that Midwesterners and Southerners are the salt of this country's earth...
...He was a super bear and thought the market was wildly overpriced at every point since I have known him...
...Wood left, and it's been close on ten years now...
...He often borrowed my assistant, Julie, to babysit...
...He was totally unfamiliar with basketball, but tried gamely to play anyway...
...As a boy he had been schooled in the art of lithography, and it was this knowledge that he would call upon to accomplish his goal...
...I called my pal Garth, who lives on a boat in Miami when he's not living in his immense palace in London or his sky-high condo in Manhattan, and begged him to come up to visit me...
...After that, Garth spent almost all of his time in London...
...Garth was sad and made to sleep on the floor...
...For only $399, you can have it double matted and selectively framed to display to its best advantage...
...We had them appraised, and verified the history of Theodore Ohman, before agreeing to get involved...
...She died one day just before Garth and I had lunch at the Malibu Deli, and I can well recall his anguish and his effort to keep himself under control just before he caught his plane to London for the funeral...
...I, Benjy, was the problem, not wifie...
...It's not taught in history classes...
...He said he was going to England but he would be back soon...
...He was not always pleasant when he was drunk...
...He went to kiss his daughter and his wife and talk over the phone to his son...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR E Summer Reading Issue 2001 113...
...This is pure loss...
...I just decide whatever I like based on my mood at the moment.That's what judges do, too, only they pretend differently except for a few fine ones I know...
...2 Phillip Morris...
...I understand how you feel," said Garth...
...I started talking to him almost every night about two years ago...
...Afterwards we would walk Trixie on the sweeping lawn outside the old school where we met and Garth told me about his life...
...My wife hugged me, and then she went off to work, and I lay in my bed with Brigitte and thought about my wonderful lost pal Garth...
...I got furious...
...I am here giving a speech to a large group of men and women who develop and sell resort condominium time shares...
...citizen about two years ago, largely so he could support George W. Bush...
...I went to it and sat at a table with a very handsome, witty Englishman named Garth Wood, M.D., and his beautiful wife, a writer named Pat Booth...
...He did it in his rooms in Harley Street, but no one knew he was there...
...The lights are out now, and it's very dark wherev110 Now You CAN OWN AUTHENTIC, 1955 REPRODUCT O S OF Dear American Spectator Reader, During the height ofWorld War II, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, Theodore Ohman, created what would become known as the most authentic reproduction of our Declaration of Independence...
...I really cannot stand New York hotels, except for the Essex House.Just thinking about them makes my flesh crawl, again except for the Essex House...
...It was after this encounter that Ohman decided to reproduce exactly the Declaration of Independence...
...He knew literature and geography and chemistry...
...A judge had ordered him released right away and a jail physician had ordered his medicines returned, but the jailers had simply ignored the order and kept him in for the whole weekend...
...That night we drove to South Beach and had dinner at a place called "A Fish Called Avalon...
...Disaster.A stupendously rude desk clerk sullenly told me I had a "small suite...
...And I finally called the police...
...W The exact signatures of the signers as they were in 1776...
...MONDAY Yuck...
...You're the only one who ever calls me," he said many a time, although I did not believe it...
...the National Archives has one...
...Garth knew it...
...63 Declaration of Independence Lithograph...
...Garth's mother was apparently a legendary beauty...
...If anyone out there has even an idea of how to get Harrow songs, please let me know...
...The secretaries at his office kept telling me he had not been there, so I assumed he was traveling...
...I called home...
...I always believed in the theory of "legal realism," developed at Yale in the 1920s and 1930s, which is that judges just do whatever the hell they please, and then they rationalize it by pretending to follow precedent...
...129 NGC Golf...88 Pfizer...
...I get to make jokes about the litigants, who all have sort of silly cases, and the baliff makes jokes about me...
...Tears forever for the man who had lights in him, Dr...
...John's Wood, Garth had no money and had money problems, too...
...I often go over there for a drink called an "Orange Bang...
...From a schoolboy in his native (Over, please...
...He did go to England...
...Orlando cried at leaving his pals...
...Or maybe not...
...Oh, Garth, why did you leave when we all loved you so much...
...And that brings us to today...
...When he was in London, I often called him...
...What a disaster...
...Upon verification, we acquired the rights to the entire inventory and decided to give subscribers of The American Spectator an exclusive opportunity to own one of these authentic 1955 lithographs of the Declaration of Independence...
...His interest soon turned into passion and he vowed to someday look upon the original...
...All of these are frighteningly electric memories of the missing gentleman who understood me...
...Still, I feel decidedly strange...
...It's immense...
...Ohman's restoration would show: ? The exact penmanship of the original script...
...I have been in jail...
...It's eerie how tired and dizzy I feel...
...Money problems...
...Stone ruined the original in 1823...
...So I now offer my Stein's Law of Hotels: Any modestly priced hotel anywhere else than New York City is superior to it works out great...
...We made a plan for him to come back to California and spend a month with us in the summer, and I ADVERTISER INDEX By patronizing the companies and products posted in this issue, your positive response rewards them for advertising in one of the gems of American publishing, The American Spectator...
...He came directly from the airplane to the set and the girls oohed and ahhed...
...Wood over to a party to pick up his son, who was then about ten...
...And now here it is-a replica exactly the same as the original, as it appears today-but with the script and signatures restored to the same state as before W.J...
...Nevertheless, he was razor thin...
...It was the perfect phrase and told me perfectly what to do...
...He was what Ashley Wilkes or a Noel Coward character or even Edward VIII wanted to be...
...I have never felt quite the same about Malibu since Dr...
...One can imagine the weight of responsibility felt by both of these men as they handled the original Declaration and pondered its fate...
...Garth felt like a failure...
...He had 'em...
...He drank more...
...By further chance, Dr...
...Great to earn a living by playing games...
...A few years ago, this family contacted us and asked if we might be interested in Ohman's reproductions...
...He said he would like to, but he was just too tired, and had to fly home to London for his wife's birthday...
...I cannot imagine what his son and daughter must be feeling...
...Garth was there with their two kids, a daughter named Camellia and a son named Orlando...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 111 The Damaged Original Theodore Ohman had his first encounter with the Declaration of Independence as a young boy in his native Czechoslovakia...
...In America, life is great for everyone, and if you can just get here and stay a little bit healthy, life is golden.The miracle of these women and their saved lives in America dwarfs anything we do on our stage across the street...
...I told her it sounded fishy and asked her to give me a different room...
...Garth never even looked at them...
...Lithographs are limited...
...Remember, they were produced in 1955 and can never be duplicated...
...I look at the little Cambodian women hurrying or maybe I should say "scurrying" behind the counter...
...FRIDAY The darkest and gloomiest of days...
...I asked...
...Wood was then living in a spectacular house overlooking the ocean in Point Dume, Malibu, very close to the extremely (and I mean extremely) modest house I was renting there...
...Will it get on the air...
...Alas, that is so often true of the folks I meet...
...It was the most impressive piece of reasoning and exposition I have heard in such a short time...
...How right he was...
...The Library of Congress has one...
...An Exclusive Opportunity for American Spectator Subscribers For as little as $199, you can have an Ohman lithograph delivered to your door...
...Upon arriving in America, Ohman made the journey to the Library of Congress to see the document he had come to love...
...47 Forbes...
...Garth flew all the way here with the cat on his lap and gave it to my son...
...13 Bose Corporation...
...6 Regnery Publishing...
...THURSDAY On board American Airlines flight 117 to Los Angeles from New York...
...Paul Fuentes...
...Garth's wife was often traveling promoting her books...
...Theodore Ohman had a love for the Declaration of Independence...
...91 Center for the Study of Popular Culture...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR E Summer Reading Issue 2001 112 Lithography in the early 1800's was crude at best, and it is believed that Stone used the original Declaration to pull a "wet transfer" onto a copper plate, which would serve as a guide for his engraving...
...He also was a fanatical Republican and even became a U.S...
...he asked...
...in London and we would have long, long talks...
...It is, however, a true and amazing account of the happenings of the one document that made and keeps us free...the Declaration of Independence...
...They keep going through my head because my co-host on my pilot that I have been toiling on, a black man of super ability named Craig Robinson, sings it all the time...
...After that Garth and I were fast friends.We ate Chinese food at the Point Dume Chinese Restaurant, then bought a basketball and played at the courts at the old junior high school...
...We had a bit of a problem because the lace curtains would not open, but then it was fine...
...This is a first-come, first-served offer...
...Who else understands so much...
...Unfortunately, when Stone removed the parchment from the copper plate, the layer closest to the copper peeled off from the original parchment-leaving most of the signatures and some of the text permanently damaged...
...John's Wood...
...Ohman Completes His Masterpiece Now came the time-consuming, delicate, and painstaking task of matching the script with the present appearance of the parchment with all its rich tones and color...
...Not only had Ohman encountered the only other "Stone Print" known to exist...
...I still think of him lying on my deck every single time I go to my house...
...He had been thrown into a cell with sixty other arrestees and made to sleep on the floor...
...l THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR E Summer Reading Issue 2001 inmates, was a sensitive soul who had once planned to be an Anglican deacon...
...The experience of jail had wrecked an already fragile vessel...
...125 Silver Print Marketing...
...It was probably very late Monday night," she said...
...I have to tell you that Garth is dead...
...Now you can have one too...
...I feel as if it's all spinning around me...
...She's from Indianapolis...
...His favorite subject in these narrations was the astonishing meanness of spirit and pocketbook of the British upper classes, and this he discussed with ferocious humor...
Vol. 34 • July 2001 • No. 6
