BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Playing Fields
Stein, Benjamin J.
B E A Tommy, could see Tommy on this field, he would probably be the happiest he ever was in his life. Maybe he can see it. Maybe he can see it. I have to say it to myself and believe...
...He had no money, knew maybe one person, and did not have any idea what was to become of him...
...He's just figuring out that you and as we hurtled over the can get hurt on a football field...
...It really hurts to not know history, Peter...
...I felt wildly uplifted...
...We would be ashes without them...
...Should they be there...
...If you are lucky, that's what it is...
...He and I spoke for a while, and he said, "I started as your father's teacher, but I realized very soon that he would soon be the teacher...
...So I will pray, and I will mostly be grateful for what God has sent me in the way of a son and a father and a wife and a mother and a sister, in this uniquely wonderful America...
...Anyway, Tommy's team nar his youth comes in this little anecdote: He made friends with a senior named Taylor Ostrander, who was a teacher or maybe a teacher's assistant in Econ., and Mr...
...He was a skilled tool and die maker, and for a Jewish man to reach that level at Ford Motor and GE in that era was a sign of great ability...
...Louis vs...
...Again, I was crying like a crazy person with pride...
...If anyone knows that song, maybe he or she could sing a bit of it to me," I had said in my speech...
...They loved him cheerfully with the other side, and gave him an honorary degree damned happy bowed to them, and then went back in 1980 or 1985...
...to their buses...
...THEN, OFF I WENT in my immense limousine to Williams College...
...Again, thanks to Taylor Ostrander, he got well placed at the University of Chicago, but that is another story...
...In my speech, I mentioned Taylor Ostrander and what a pal DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 61 BEN STEIN'S DIARY he had been to my father...
...How about the tens of thousands murdered in Hussein's jails every year...
...So much of life is continuity...
...Your father's father was not an assembly line worker...
...How can I not write about that school...
...He answered, "No, I was just damned happy to have a job in the worst depression in history...
...But will things ever get better there...
...Then I suddenly had a chill, thinking of our soldiers in Iraq...
...Be proud of him...
...I in the worst hurt out there...
...Then I gave my speech...
...S YOU CAN WELL IMAGINE, I was in transports of emotion...
...I know I write about my father and about Williams a lot, but my father was a huge part of my life and all of our fathers are huge parts of our lives, and Williams made my father, in many ways, the man he was...
...This is a small liberal arts college in extreme northwestern Massachusetts, in the heart of the Berkshires...
...He loved the peace of the Berkshires...
...Maybe someone should have realized that...
...And suddenly, there in the audience was Taylor Ostrander...
...Hey, Peter...
...How about the Marsh Arabs whose entire civilization was erased by Saddam...
...Could you think about that...
...But how do we ever get our fighting men and women out of there...
...Sigma Chi did not admit Jews, period...
...What a place...
...The whole key to my father and why he was a great man even from into a marvelous peace...
...He invited me to his 93rd birthday party the next week...
...My father entered this college as a 15-year-old boy in 1931, as the Great Depression was squeezing the life out of the economy...
...What can we, in this cradle of luxury, ever do to pay them back for the glory they heap upon us...
...I am a leaf between these mighty currents of the past and the future, blown every which way, but what blessings to be borne aloft by these currents...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, and economist in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...This scares me...
...They are just fighting to stay alive, in atrocious conditions...
...Ostrander, a Sigma Chi, got Pop a job washing dishes at the Sigma Chi house, where Pop worked in the downstairs kitchen with some black men from Williamstown...
...I am so impressed, to have a job Tonight, after my son's footmy son," I said to him...
...I looked at him...
...Mohawk Trail in the limo, I fell in history...
...It was almost all about my father at Williams, and it got a fabulous response...
...Probably they all would in a time of genuine need...
...What you're saying is that Moscow under Putin is more violent than it was under Stalin...
...But he blossomed at Williams...
...They are not on playing fields...
...These are the same stars and the same clouds my Pop saw and my son sees at Williston Northampton, I thought...
...Then my marvelous hosts took me on a tour of Williams Hall, where my father had lived, and sang another song to me called, I think, either "Our Song" or "My Song...
...He has just put on a segment about how much more violent Iraq is now and how many more violent deaths there are now in Baghdad than there were before the Americans came...
...Philadelphia, and smelling the grass as it was cut outside Williams Hall Annex...
...But Arab states are notoriously difficult to keep in a conquered state...
...In my teens, I asked Pop if he resented Sigma Chi for that exclusion...
...Anyway, at Williams, he flourished, was a star student, star debater, had friends, and left a man very much on the move...
...How about that, Peter...
...I ate dinner with some smart, well-turned-out students from Williams, and then visited the President's House and had a fabulous tour of that palace from Mimi Schapiro, wife of the President of Williams...
...And God bless Williams College and all who sail upon it...
...I am watching ABC-TV news with Peter Jennings, who must be in the grasp of some sort of delusion, I guess...
...How amazing to read on the walls how many Williams men gave their lives in the Civil War, World War I and World War II...
...You played ball game, I am on my way to so well, and you could get really Williamstown to give a speech...
...And then more tears, and then away into the night back to the Northampton Hotel...
...The best house you'll ever see without having to pay admission," as Mimi said...
...I do know that every time I read about our soldiers finding mass graves where whole villages have been killed, with children buried alive clutching their toys, I don't think we did the wrong thing...
...Anyway, we are there now, and we cannot be anything but proud of them and support them...
...Or have we just put our men and women out as target practice for terrorists forever...
...Then, as we wended our way back across the Mohawk Trail, I lowered the window and could see the clouds and the stars between the clouds...
...How about the whole villages gassed...
...I want you to know something," he said...
...I fell asleep at once dian...
...At 92, almost 93, he had come out on a rainy, cool night to hear me speak...
...To learn about where I came from, to learn in such a flattering way from such a fine source was intoxicating...
...I sure did not see all of this terrorism coming...
...Williams was my Pop's real rowly lost the game, but not for lack family from 1931 to 1935 and he "No, I was just of great playing...
...Then, we arrived in West Adams, next to Williamstown, where my Pop used to go to at least one movie a day in college, and then to McDonald's, and then to Chapin Hall...
...B E A Tommy, could see Tommy on this field, he would probably be the happiest he ever was in his life...
...I think I learned this from him, amplified it and taught it back to him again...
...How about the millions tortured...
...What can we ever do about them...
...Again, I felt wildly moved...
...God bless Williams College...
...I wonder how many serve now...
...They don't have famous fathers, by and large...
...There is magic in that place...
...62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004...
...I sure hope I am too worried...
...They are our heroes, and they redeem the whole nation with their courage...
...I don't know any longer...
...Then a visit to the Chapel, where my father had taken attendance for compulsory chapel, when FDR and Hoover were President, and a prayer for our fighting men and women in Iraq...
...have trouble finding my way in Tommy laughed and said to his New England at night so I am depression teammates, "See my dad's a come-being driven...
...It is the same building where Pop got his honorary degree and it brought back many a memory...
...The magic of caring, of knowledge, of peace...
...There is some craziness going on at ABC...
...Now I have to pause...
...They shook hands loved the college...
...I have to say it to myself and believe it...
...Oh, well, prayer changes things...
...They never stopped caring about him or loving him all the days of his life once he got in there...
...I mean, if Israel could not subdue a little bit of Southern Lebanon, maybe it's not a good omen for us in central Iraq...
...I was so touched I can hardly tell you...
...Here I was, bracketed by the emo ion of pride in my son for his courage on the field, and pride and gratitude for Pop and for Williams and for Taylor Ostrander...
...I had mentioned a school song called "The Mountains" that my father used to sing...
...I hope that every day is a day of gratitude for these wonderful men and women, and every day a day of grief shared by the nation when they die and are wounded...
...Then I shook hands with him and something even better happened...
...And this was Pop's genius: look for reasons for gratitude, not for anger...
...He said long afterwards that his happiest moment of his youth was just lying on his bed listening to the World Series of 1931, St...
...I am sure I was being visited by my Pop, but then I often think that...
...After I posed for photos and signed things for about half an hour, a group of about fifteen students stood in a crescent and sang me two whole verses of it in perfect harmony, along with the chorus...
...Now, here come the amazing parts...
Vol. 36 • December 2003 • No. 7
