The Wingmen, page 24
By June 1988, with the Democratic Party already aligned behind their presidential nominee, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, Glenn emerged as a popular choice for vice president.
“He’s on everybody’s short list and ought to be,” Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Kirk said a month before the party’s convention.
While Dukakis and national party advisors deliberated over the bottom half of their ticket, Republican leaders and their nominee, George H. W. Bush, did the same.
Ronald Reagan’s vice president, Bush had finished a distant third at the Iowa caucuses in early February 1988. After turning out an embarrassing showing for the long-presumed front-runner, the Bush campaign needed a boost in the upcoming New Hampshire primary. With an introduction from Sam Tamposi, New Hampshire’s Republican governor and key Bush ally John H. Sununu asked Ted Williams to help.
Bush and Williams had much in common, aside from simply the Republican Party. Before captaining the Yale College baseball team in 1948, Lieutenant (JG) Bush had served as a Navy aviator in the Pacific during World War II. Williams, who had never before met Bush, agreed to participate in the campaign.
For over a week, he appeared at several Bush campaign stops in New Hampshire. More often than not—at a rally in Wolfeboro, a shopping mall in Nashua, a fishing and outdoor show in Manchester, even Bush’s campaign headquarters in Bedford—Williams far outshone the sitting vice president. While they met with voters during a dogsled race at Opechee Park in Laconia, Williams signed multiple autographs for fans using Bush’s back as a desk.
“We tried to take advantage of Ted wherever we could, to be blunt,” Sununu later said. “I kept saying to the VP, ‘Don’t worry, we’re gonna get a big crowd: Ted’s here.’ Afterwards I said to Bush, ‘They came to see him and not you, so don’t get a big head.’ He knew that.”
Bush edged out Kansas Senator Bob Dole in New Hampshire, then won sixteen of seventeen states on Super Tuesday, and locked up the Republican nomination in early May.
That summer, well before each party held their nominating convention, Democratic mainstay and seventeen-term Massachusetts congressman Thomas F. “Tip” O’Neill spoke with Williams. Although the recently retired speaker of the House of Representatives had been a diehard Red Sox fan since the 1920s, he had never met the Splendid Splinter. So he was both surprised and thrilled to receive an invitation to the Jimmy Fund’s celebration of Williams later that year.
At some point in their discussion about the event in the fall, the conversation turned to politics and both parties’ impending choice for a running mate.
“Tip, if Glenn’s on the ticket,” Williams told O’Neill, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Ted, what do you mean, you’re a Republican, aren’t you?” O’Neill answered.
Williams then told O’Neill that “when his plane got shot up in Korea, John Glenn was on his wing and guided him back to base.”
Fortunately for Williams, Dukakis chose a different senator and military veteran—Lloyd Bentsen of Texas—to join his ticket. (Glenn just as easily could have delivered the famous “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” line to Dan Quayle in that year’s vice presidential debate.)
With a sigh of relief, Williams voted for Bush, who handily won on Election Day 1988. The next day, John Glenn flew to Boston.
In a tradition that dates back to the 1920s, the United States Marine Corps observes its birthday on November 10. Although the most prestigious festivities take place at the commandant’s annual Birthday Ball in Washington, D.C., active and retired Marines alike celebrate the holiday within Marine bases, academies, Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, civic centers, and hotel ballrooms across the world.
Ted Williams and John Glenn celebrated the Marine Corps birthday together for the first time in 1988, during “An Evening With #9: Ted Williams and Friends.”
“This is the Marine Corps birthday,” Glenn said that night. “Wherever two Marines will be gathered together there will be a cake cut sometime today.”
There would hardly be enough cake for everyone. More than four thousand people paid to enter the Wang Center that Thursday evening. The ticket sales raked in more than $250,000 for the Jimmy Fund. Some came to support the nationally known children’s charity. Others came to see the baseball royalty billed as headliners: Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Reggie Jackson, and Tommy Lasorda, manager of the recent World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. But they all came to see Ted Williams.
After an introduction, an overview of the Jimmy Fund’s purpose from head physician Dr. Stephen A. Sallan, and Suzyn Waldman’s performance of “A Tribute to #9,” sung to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” the program began.
The format was a quasi celebrity roast of Williams, minus the roasting. Brought in front of the crowd in shifts, Williams’s friends were interviewed one at a time by David Hartman. Each sat in a wicker chair, on a stage that had been made up to look like a cozy fishing cabin, complete with a bar, stools, and a fireplace.
Williams’s former teammates and rivals gushed over his baseball skills and made jokes about his disdain for reporters. Longtime Red Sox teammate Dom DiMaggio refused to answer a pointed question that asked him to name the better hitter: Williams or Dom’s brother Joe, who was sitting backstage. Two local media legends, broadcaster Curt Gowdy and Bangor (ME) Daily News editor Bud Leavitt, shared their memories of covering Williams’s playing days. And upon the close of all the interviews, a five-year-old boy named Joey Raymundo, who was being treated for leukemia at the Jimmy Fund Clinic, presented Williams with an oil painting of the baseball star known as The Kid.
One of the program’s highlights, however, came from John Glenn. At least for one evening, the failed presidential candidate erased his recent track record of tedious public appearances from the moment he sat down.
Stories about Williams’s prowess as a kroindyker and his contradictory nickname, “Bush,” incited a rise from the audience. Stories about Williams’s crash-landing at K-13 and the mission in which a hole blew through his Panther’s tip-tank provided the audience with details that most had never before heard.
Concerned that it might embarrass the man of the hour, he chose not to share the events of Mission Number Acme 33, the early-early road recce that Glenn thought had ended his military career with a court-martial. Instead, he closed with a tribute to his friend.
“As far as I’m concerned, Ted only batted .406 for the Red Sox [in 1941]. He batted 1.000 for the Marine Corps and the United States.”
Glenn then stood up and, with “The Marines’ Hymn” playing him off, walked to the side of the stage to join the other interviewees.
The program then continued with additional speakers until Williams finally came out for a much lengthier interview with Hartman.
To the fans who still viewed the youthful, svelte slugger through their memories—or had just watched the video highlights of his playing career that preceded his entrance—Williams appeared much different. Well above his playing weight, he even pulled a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket, acknowledging that the man with mythical eyesight now needed readers to see his prepared remarks.
Reiterating his unworthiness for such an honor, Williams thanked the Jimmy Fund’s founders, leaders, and supporters, then did the same for the friends that had joined him on the dais. And in another display of his newfound softness, Williams thanked the fans of New England as well.
At a few points during his questions Hartman paused to introduce additional dignitaries who wanted to congratulate Williams but could not attend in person. The first prerecorded video shown was of President Ronald Reagan, who praised Williams for his service to the nation and particularly his “ability to be strong and independent, and yet compassionate and giving.”
Immediately after Reagan’s message ended, as the lights returned to the stage, Williams paused for a moment, then spoke.
“It’s hard to beat that,” he said, a little choked up. “But I’d like to tell you one story about somebody here tonight, because I know how lucky I’ve been in my life. One of the luckiest things that ever happened to me was when I was with John Glenn on one of our missions one morning.”
Williams then shared the events of Mission Number Acme 33, leaving out no details about that predawn flight near the Rimjin River on April 22, 1953. A highly demonstrative Williams shook in his seat as he mimicked the movements of the F9F Panther, the firing of his GP at a presumed collection of Allied troops, and a nervous, sweat-covered John Glenn chewing him out.
“And all I could see [was]: ‘Williams Bombs U.S. Troops,’ or something!” he said.
As laughter from the crowd died down, Williams became serious.
“That man right there, I’m telling ya,” Williams said, pointing to Glenn. “Nobody admires you more than I do, John. Nobody.... So when he made his trip around the Earth, boy, I was proud to know you, John, I can tell you that.
“And I wish you all the luck in the world,” he continued. “My greatest regret is that you’re not a Republican.”
That was probably as close to an apology—for not endorsing Glenn as a presidential candidate four years earlier—as Williams was ever capable of mustering.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
No Cure for the Common Birthday
Ted Williams never did marry again following his third divorce. But even well into his seventies his romantic life carried on.
In the summer of 1991, Williams joined Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight on an ESPN-sponsored fishing trip to the collapsing Soviet Union. According to biographer Leigh Montville, while there Williams met a Russian woman north of the Arctic Circle, instructed the trip’s guide to purchase him condoms, then warned his roommate (Knight) that the room might soon be off-limits.
For years, however, Williams had been steadily dating a divorcee with three adult children. Louise Kaufman, whom he had known for decades and who lived a few houses down the road in Islamorada, had effectively moved in with Williams by the late 1970s. When President George H. W. Bush awarded Williams the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 1991, Kaufman joined him for a night in the Lincoln Bedroom.
But after roughly thirty years of on-again, off-again residence in Islamorada, Williams had become fed up with the traffic on Route 1 and gradual expansion throughout the Keys. His contract with Sam Tamposi also required that Williams permanently reside within the central Florida development that they had been promoting throughout the East Coast. So in 1987, he left the Keys for a temporary home in Citrus Hills while he awaited construction of a spacious four-bedroom ranch house at the top of a hill cloaked in oak trees and Spanish moss.
Kaufman moved with him.
“Gee, I’m so fuckin’ happy about Louise,” he told Pulitzer Prize−winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer. “Goddamn, she’s a great person. Have more fun with her than . . . Goddamn.”
One Christmas, Kaufman’s grandchildren gave Williams a puppy that he clearly did not want.
“The last thing we need is a goddamned fucking dog,” Williams’s daughter Claudia remembered him saying.
In short order Williams warmed to the dog named Slugger. A Dalmatian, Slugger followed Williams around the house, played fetch, sat beside him during Red Sox television broadcasts, and eventually slept in his bed. But he wasn’t terribly obedient, which became a problem since Williams preferred to walk him without a leash. He also jumped on visitors who entered through the back door.
“I love this old guy,” he said as Slugger climbed into his lap. “When I first got him eight years ago I said, ‘What do I need something like this for.’ Now, every day of my life, I pray to God that he takes me before he takes Slugger because there is no way I could live without him.”
By then, neither was in great shape. Slugger was undergoing extensive treatments for fibrosarcoma, a type of cancer found in dogs. Williams had endured a fall that broke his shoulder, two mild strokes, and a more severe stroke that significantly damaged his eyesight.
“Since I’ve become somewhat disabled, Slugger has been more protective,” he said.
The third stroke, the most serious one, occurred in February 1994, just nine days after the star-studded opening of the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame. Located two miles from his home, in Hernando, Florida, the 5,200-square foot, diamond-shaped building featured exhibits and memorabilia from all three of Williams’s celebrated careers: baseball, fishing, and the Marine Corps. Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy called the museum “not unlike a presidential library, but then again, Ted always was a little bit presidential.” Fittingly, all five living former United States presidents, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush sent messages or pre-recorded videos of congratulations to the grand opening.
Although annual ceremonies, which started the following February, would induct new members into Williams’s Hitters Hall of Fame, non-ballplayers were also immortalized within the museum. At the 1997 festivities, John Glenn was honored with a nameplate on the “Legends Walk of Fame.” Two years later, he received the annual Ted Williams Museum Lifetime Achievement award, a beautiful round, bronze-relief plaque of The Kid.
But Glenn could not attend the museum’s ribbon-cutting. Earlier that week, as ranking member of the Armed Forces Readiness Subcommittee, he had been in Munich, Germany for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Conference on Security Policy. Part of a small congressional delegation, Glenn urged NATO and newly appointed secretary of defense William J. Perry to act in response to the growing humanitarian crisis during the Bosnian War. He then rushed back to Washington, D.C., to address domestic concerns. While Ted Williams’s museum opened in the presence of sports legends such as Muhammad Ali, Joe DiMaggio, and Bobby Orr, Glenn testified before the Senate Finance Committee to endorse fellow Ohioan Mary Ellen Withrow as the next United States treasurer.
Despite missing the celebration in Hernando, Glenn hoped to visit Williams soon. News of his most recent stroke had been covered extensively by the media. Eventually, Glenn’s personal business interests gave him the perfect opportunity.
During his NASA years in the early 1960s, Glenn had met a man named Henri Landwirth. A Holocaust survivor originally from Belgium, Landwirth operated the Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn and became friends with the Mercury Seven astronauts. Landwirth eventually asked Glenn to invest in additional Orlando-area Holiday Inn properties, in Kissimmee, Altamonte Springs, and Haines City. With the creation of Walt Disney World, the businesses boomed and by the late 1970s Glenn was a millionaire.
Throughout four terms as a United States senator he kept his interests in the hotels and actively participated in management. When time permitted he visited the area. The Glenns did not have a home in Florida, but with Lieutenant General Tom Miller they did co-own a sixty-three-foot Bertram Cabin Cruiser that was docked off the coast of Maryland. Miller and Glenn had christened it the Seniram II, or 2 Marines spelled backward. The $400,000 motor-powered yacht employed a full-time captain and was often leased out for VIP charters, but in the winter the Glenns and Millers occasionally took their “mobile condo” down the Atlantic.
In October 1995, Annie and John traveled to Florida, met up with their daughter Lyn, then decided to call Ted Williams, who now lived less than a hundred miles from Orlando. Eager to see his friend, Williams invited them over then put on his best USMC polo shirt.
The Glenns drove into central Florida, hit County Road 486, and by seeing the names of the side streets, they knew they were getting close. From W. Fenway Dr. they turned onto N. Blue Jay Ter., then Ted Williams Ct., and approached the wrought-iron gate with baseballs on the posts and the number “9” in Red Sox script letters.
Along with his twenty-seven-year-old son John-Henry, Williams welcomed John, Annie, and Lyn. They sat for a few hours, ate lunch, took photos, and absolutely steered clear of politics as a topic of discussion.
“Dad asked Ted about his fishing,” Lyn recalled. “That led to lots of stories on Ted’s part . . . about the tournaments and where he’d been traveling. I think John-Henry might have gotten some of the magazines about that.”
They also talked about their military service while they studied scale models of the F4U-1 Corsair fighter-bomber that they had both flown during World War II.
As different as they were, as much as they disagreed on so many issues, especially politics, Ted Williams and John Glenn enjoyed each other’s company. That held true as young Marine pilots sitting around the mess hall at K-3 in between combat missions and as graying senior citizens sitting around the dining room table in a Florida retirement community.
And despite forty years having passed since they flew Panthers side-by-side over Nampo, Sinchon, and Yongp’o-ri, Williams and Glenn still shared a connection unbroken by time.
“When you fly in combat with somebody, there’s a bond than runs so deep you cannot describe it,” Glenn said later.
The bond ran deep enough that Glenn—never one to take the Lord’s name in vain—usually looked past the short-tempered Williams’s casual and liberal use of swear words. Annie, however, not as accepting of the crude language found on a Marine base, admonished Williams at each (frequent) use of a profanity.
“Now, Theodore, stop that,” she said.
Williams repented, then went right back to cursing.
Although Williams was “the most profane man she ever met” Annie returned to Citrus Hills with John in the winter of 1998. Again, Glenn was in Florida on business. But this time, his business had nothing to do with Holiday Inns. He was sitting on big news that he just could not yet share.
“Here it was, two weeks before the announcement and he never said a word about going back up again,” Williams later said. “I thought, ‘Jeez, he’s a helluva pal.’”
