The Queen Mary – Luxury Liner, Troop Carrier . . . and Haunted

by Bob Sparrow

G&L2     In an effort to get our readers and myself into the ‘spirit’ of Halloween this week, I visited, what has been billed as, ‘one of the most haunted places in the world’ – the Queen Mary. Not the actual queen, although by the looks of her picture in the grand foyer, she could have haunted a house, but I’m speaking of the ship the RMS Queen Mary, now docked in the port of Long Beach. Two ‘Haunted Tours’ were offered, I took both of them, but first a little history of this grand ship (Don’t worry, I’ll make this the Reader’s Digest version).

      Commissioned in 1936 as a luxury liner, she was soon put to work as a troop carrier when World War II broke out. In fact, she still holds the record for the most people (troops) transported across the Atlantic in a single voyage – 16,683! She was painted gray to help avoid detection and was ironically called the ‘Gray Ghost’, long before any ghost stories about her emerged. Hitler actually had a bounty on her, offering over $2 million to any U-boat captain that could sink her. There were two reasons the mustachioed maniac never had to pay up, 1) the Queen Mary was actually quite fast and could outrun a German submarine, and 2) the code breaker, Enigma, helped identify the location of German U-boats.

qm troop carrier

Troop carrier

      After the war she went back to being a luxury liner and for a mere $1,400 you could cross the Atlantic on her. Doesn’t sound like much now, but the average income in the U.S. in the late 40s was right around $2,000 . . . a year! Which is why the ship’s manifest included such names as, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Greta Garbo, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable and Elizabeth Taylor.

      OK, let’s get to the spooky part. The first tour I took was called ‘Ghosts & Legends’ and was much like Disney’s ‘Haunted Mansion’; it was a walking tour that took a group of about 12 of us into the bowels of the ship, down narrow stairs and dark passageways with special effects along the way. We stopped at one of the two indoor pools where we could hear people splashing and playing – real water drops hit our face, despite the fact that the pool has been empty for decades. We continued further down in an elevator, but when we exited, the doors jammed behind us and we had no way to get back up. Just then, leaks began to appear in the ships ironclad walls and water came pouring in – we seemed doomed, but we escaped just in time as our guide lead us to a secret passageway to safety. This tour is definitely not for those afraid of the dark or the claustrophobic.

b340

Room B340

      The second tour I took was called ‘Haunted Encounters’, where a guide took us throughout the ship and related real ghost stories evoking such characters as the last captain of the ship, a ‘lady in white’, a young girl who still swims in the pool, a crew member who was crushed to death in the engine room by the closing of ‘Door 13’, as well as other various ‘shadow people’ and balls of light. One of the most intriguing stories was about Room B340, where a man was purportedly murdered, faucets turn on by themselves and bed sheets fly across the room. The room has provided so many paranormal experiences that it is no longer rented out, in fact, as the picture I took when in the room shows, it is completely bare of furniture.

      The tour ended with our guide telling us of several ‘ghost stories’ that he     experienced personally including seeing wet footprints by the pool that’s been dry for decades. I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or he had to make up those stories so he could keep his job. Either way, the stories were very entertaining. The tour ended and we were left to wander the ship on our own to see if we could have any encounters of third kind.

foyer

Grand Foyer

      As I walked through the Grand Foyer and poked my head into the Grand Ballroom to get a peek, I was struck by how truly grand this ship is, even today. The art deco décor was so 40s that it seemed ‘in’ today. It truly must have been magnificent in its day.  My visit to the Queen Mary was complete, including a honest-to-goodness paranormal experience . . . or was it just a coincidental iPhone malfunction?

     Oh, the paranormal experience? I swear this is true; back when I was visiting room B340 I waited until everyone had cleared out of the room so I could take a picture of it with my phone. I took the shot you see here and then my phone vibrated and showed the ‘Ringer Silent’ and the symbol of the bell with a line through it (putting my phone on vibrate), then it vibrated again and the symbol ‘Ringer’ and the bell with no line through it; that happened three times in a row! Yes, vibrating frantically each time as it went on and off, and I never touched the vibrate on/off switch – honest!

 Have a Happy Halloween – may the ‘spirits’ be with you!

AN ODD PLACE FOR GOOD NEWS

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

How I started my morning

How I started my morning

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it very hard to find any good news these days.  This morning our local paper was a virtual smorgasbord of bad tidings….ebola, ISIS, a volatile stock market…all things that are probably in your newspaper as well.  In addition to the scary national and world news, I also have to absorb all of the LOCAL bad news.  Today’s lowlights include stories about an 8-year-old found starving in a drug den, the shooting of a police officer and more layoffs at a major employer.  As if all that weren’t enough, my favorite ice cream parlor has closed!  Some days it’s just too much to handle.  I admit that I am a dinosaur when it comes to getting my news – I still like a newspaper.  I guess it comes from being the daughter of a newspaper publisher.  I suppose I could limit my reading to the more frivolous fare downloaded on my iPad so my day could start with TMZ reports or updates on Pinterest.  I would probably be a lot happier, albeit less informed.  But for now I’m sticking to the printed page and I have found a spot where I can consistently find good news:  the obituaries.

 

I need to state right off that there are definitely categories of obituaries that are NOT uplifting.  Any notice about children is tragic on the face of it and often brings a tear to my eye.  I also feel for the people who die “before their time”, although I guess if they’ve died it was their time.  My definition of dying too young has changed a bit over the years.  I used to think that anyone who died before age 60 was sad but not completely unexpected.  Now as I approach Senior Citizenship, I’ve decided that anyone who dies before they get to collect their Social Security checks has died too young.  After all, if you make contributions all of those years and never get to collect, then it really was a bad deal and you could have spent that money on wine, (wo)men and song.  Luckily, the vast majority of obituaries are written about people who are well past Social Security and most of them have lived pretty darn interesting lives.  In fact, rather than finding the obituaries depressing, I think of them as living history – reading about the people who were part of our community and how they fit into the fabric of our lives.

A typical obit picture of a man who died in his 80's

A typical obit picture of a man who died in his 80’s

I love the quarter-page obits, where you learn interesting tidbits such as where the deceased went to grammar school and what their favorite type of pie was.  But even the ordinary tributes often give a wonderful insight into a life well-led.  Today there was a notice about a woman who was described as outgoing, loved a good card game with her family, took part in an animal rescue organization and danced with a senior citizens group.  Makes me wish that I had known her.   I did read one recently that listed EVERY job the man held at an oil company over a thirty year career; that was a bit over the top even for me.  The best obituaries are generally written by children and include great tributes to the departed’s love of family, favorite jokes or legacy of examples set.  These days there are a dwindling number of obits about WWII veterans but being somewhat of a connoisseur of the well-written obit, I assure you that they are almost ALWAYS the most interesting.  Often they include the theaters of operations the person served in, the major battles, and oftentimes something about how fond the deceased was of his fellow “buddies”.  As if to prove just how important those years were, the photo accompanying the story is not of the person in old age, but as they looked during their time in service 60 years ago.  Of course, obituary pictures in general should never be relied on for accuracy since most people choose a photo that resembles them only on the most flattering day of their lives.  There was a decade or so where those old “glamour shots” were a popular obit choice and believe me, nothing looks more out-of-place than a story about an 89-year-old woman accompanied by a picture with the wind machine blowing so hard she looks like a dog with its head out the window.

Finally, there are the truly humorous final notices.  Generally these have been written by the deceased and serve to set a tone of how they wish to be remembered.  There was one circulating on Facebook this past summer about a ex-advertising man in Pennsylvania who wrote, “Kevin J. McGroarty, 53, of West Pittston, died Tuesday, July 22, 2014, after battling a long fight with mediocrity.”  He went on to explain about his mis-spent youth and exhorted his friends “don’t email me anymore, I’m dead”.  It was a fairly long piece and you get the feeling that Mr. McGroarty took great pleasure crafting it in his final days.  That’s a luxury, I suppose, that we all would like to have.

So as you read the paper or watch the news over the next few days and you begin to feel depressed, turn to the obituary page.  I promise you’ll find something to boost your spirits, inspire your day or, if you’re really lucky, make you laugh.

A Tahoe Tribute to Mom

by Bob Sparrow

two glasses

Cheers to Mom & Dad in their final resting place

     This past week was an occasion for another family gathering; our ‘mostly annual’ trip to Lake Tahoe in October. We go in October to miss the tourists, even though we are technically tourists, we really don’t think of ourselves as such, since we’ve been going up to ‘The Lake’ since 1951. That was the year that dear friend of the family and lifelong bachelor, Dick Schieck, or ‘Uncle Dick’ as he was known around our house, bought a cabin about two blocks from the lake in Pineland, 4 miles south of Tahoe City. In those days it was a pretty sleepy resort area, the Winter Olympics had not yet come to Squaw Valley and the Silicon Valley dot com-ers had not yet arrived in droves to drive up prices.

     From 1951 on, every summer vacation and nearly every long weekend was spent at Tahoe, except maybe a few in the winter when Donner Pass, then a two-lane road, was closed due to snow. A few years after I graduated from college, my college roommate and I bought the cabin right next to Uncle Dick’s and in 1979, brother Jack bought a restaurant in Tahoe City and lived there for the next 15 years. Needless to say, ‘The Lake’ holds a very special place in our family history, which is why our parent’s wishes were to have their ashes spread there when they passed.

Tahoe Tavern

Tahoe Tavern – built in 1901

      Our dad passed away 13 years ago and Jack found the perfect spot for his ashes, in the rocks in front of a place we rent, high on a ridge overlooking the entire lake – it’s the most spectacular view of the lake I’ve seen. Our mom passed away last year, but because of various travel conflicts, we did not get to Tahoe last October, so we took her ashes up with us this year and placed them with our dad’s. Dad would have turned 100 this year, so he is celebrating his centennial by being joined once again by his wife of what would have been 77 years.

Mom 1939

Mom’s high school graduation picture

      As you may have picked up from our blogs over the years, our father was one terrific human being, kind and gentle as could be, always having something good to say about everyone and possessing a great sense of humor. He could make people laugh in virtually any situation. He also knew his way around a good martini. Mom was always the ‘straight man’, more serious, lots of attention to detail, a great businesswoman and the disciplinarian in the family. So of course her personality paled compared to Dad’s – everyone’s did. Her role was always having to be the ‘bad cop’, who could never threaten us with, ‘Wait ‘til your father gets home!” We knew he wouldn’t harm a fly. But she knew how to have a good time as well – she loved music, gin rickeys, and could party and dance with the best of them, and our dad adored her. They had such great times at ‘The Lake’, hitting old haunts like the classic Tahoe Tavern, sitting on the deck at Sunnyside Resort, before it was chic, and going over to ‘The Line’ (California-Nevada border) to dine and gamble at CalNeva, in its heyday, when Frank Sinatra was an owner and the ‘Rat Pack’ made guest appearances. Mom always dressed to the nines on those occasions, especially if they were dining at the very-posh-at-the-time, North Shore Club. But most of the time was spent just sitting on the deck at Dick’s cabin with the BBQ going and a gin and grapefruit juice in hand, enjoying the tranquility of this extraordinary place.

M&D

Together forever

     I always felt that I got my dad’s sense of humor (thank God!), but my fondness for music, writing and the arts came from mom. They made a great team and they made three pretty good kids – if I do say so myself! The three of us can look back and be thankful that we grew up in a wonderful time and place and in a wonderful home, thanks to both Mom and Dad.

It took too long, but their ashes are finally together in a place with an incredible view of one of the most beautiful lakes in the world and a place filled with great family memories. They indeed are now resting in peace together.

 

 

MR. GOODELL: IT’S NOT THAT HARD

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

He must be rolling in his grave

He must be rolling in his grave

I am a football fanatic. Not just a casual fan, but someone who wears my team’s colors on game day. Mostly I follow college football, but I still watch an NFL game or two on Sundays and I always watch the 49ers. I’ve come a long way in my football knowledge over the years. Then again, I had a long way to go. When I was a Pop Warner cheerleader I came home from a game and my dad asked how it had gone. I replied with great enthusiasm, “Great! We had a lot of fourth downs!”. These days I understand a whole lot more about the game; now it’s the players who have me perplexed. The prima donna behavior, exorbitant salaries and off the field antics all get in the way of me enjoying the game. I’d give anything to see someone score a touchdown and simply toss the ball to the ref. Or, as the great coach Vince Lombardi once exhorted his players, “Act like you’ve been there before”.

So as a more than casual fan, I have followed all of the recent events surrounding the domestic violence and child abuse charges against players. It was with great anticipation that I watched the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, hold a press conference to outline what he was going to do to remedy the problem. As he spoke I kept waiting for some action words, like “fire”, “permanently ban” or, as he droned on, “resign”. Nothing. He spent 15 minutes saying nothing. Oh, except when he said he was shocked – shocked! – that women’s shelters and abuse counseling centers are underfunded. If he were any more clueless he’d have to be watered twice a week.

More Clueless than Alicia Silverstone

More Clueless than Alicia Silverstone

But what really got me slack-jawed was his statement that the NFL was going to work on a policy to address these issues and he hoped to have it in place by the Super Bowl. In February. I was so stunned by that statement that I immediately went online to make sure I’d heard him correctly. I had. FIVE months to come up with one policy.
A number of years ago, when I worked for one of the major banks we entered into what was, at the time, the largest nation-wide bank merger in history. There were eight people from each bank selected from the various business divisions to put together all of the policies for the combined bank. I was selected to represent Human Resources for my employer. For FIVE months we all worked in our various disciplines and met the deadline of the merger date. So while I don’t underestimate all of the constituencies that Mr. Goodell has to satisfy, it is really not that hard to carve out one policy. Most of corporate America has to deal with complicated issues and make decisions that meet the demands of shareholders (team owners), employees (players), and customers (fans) and do it every day.  Heck, he could really expedite things by calling Adam Silver, his counterpart in the NBA.  Surely they already have a policy in place given all the miscreants in that sport.

So the fact that Mr. Goodell wants to take five months to establish a policy on spouse and child abuse tells me one thing: he doesn’t think it’s important. And then there’s this: October is national Domestic Violence awareness month. But despite Mr. Goodell’s “enlightenment” about the woefully underfunded organizations that support domestic violence victims, the NFL will adorn themselves in pink from their helmets to their jock straps this month to honor Breast Cancer awareness month.  There is no doubt breast cancer support is a very worthy cause, but given what the NFL is going through right now and his statements about helping, wouldn’t it be nice to throw a little support to domestic violence support groups? Or was he once again just giving the problem lip service?

One of the Good Guys

One of the Good Guys

It seems to me that if the domestic violence problems within his organization was uppermost on his mind, he would get the right people in a room and tell them to come up with a policy – within weeks. Because as disquieting as this is to us fans, one can only imagine how upsetting it is to the vast majority of NFL players who are good guys. Guys like Larry Fitzgerald of my hometown Arizona Cardinals, who do fabulous work in the community and whose conduct is above reproach. This is what Fitzgerald had to say about the infamous Ray Rice video: “It’s disturbing to say the least. It was really tough to watch that video. The important thing is to just live life right. Do the right thing and you don’t have to worry…”. Are you listening, Mr. Goodell?  YOU have had too many fourth downs.