Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Accidental encounters with a celebrity.

My only claim is on my first weekend at college, I tried to dial the number of a chick in the dorm and ended up talking to the president of the university for a half hour. He was a nice guy and somehow I impressed him. He invited me to drop by his office. I don't know if you'd recognize the name-- Warren Bennis. He ended up becoming part of Al Gore's entourage.

My father, however, was really big on that sort of thing. Growing up, I was always amazed by the number of people he'd had a drink with at one time or the other. Some of them sounded impossible, but if you went back and fact-checked him, the stories stood up.

For instance, he used to talk about running into the Prince of Lichtenstein while he was in Austria. The prince invited him back to the house. Yeppers! Sure enough, Prince Franz Joseph II was a hearty partier. I looked him up. He was the first of the line to actually live in Lichtenstein.

Dad had all kinds of stories like that. A good part of it was due to the fact that he owned apartment buildings and he had gotten in with the local broadcast crowd. Everyone knew they could get a good cheap 1 bedroom from Ralph. As a result, he ended up with folks like Rod Serling, Gene Shepard, and Kenny Price as tenants. A lot of these guys I met as well when I was a little kid. I distinctly remember bumping into Rod Serling in a pale yellow golf sweater, smoking a cigarette in front of 5928 Belmont. Looking back on it, he was probably back in town, looking up a friend from WLWT.

"Hi Ralph."

"Hi Rod."

One night, Dad was in his 70's, I was over at the house watching TV with him. The PBS affiliate had Cab Calloway special on.

"I used to drink with him." Dad said. Mom rolled her eyes.

"I gotta call BS on that Dad." I replied.

"It's true!" he said. "He was playing at the Lookout House, and I was at the bar when he came off a set. He walked up and asked for a drink and the bartender said he didn't serve spooks."
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"'Whatcha drinking?' I asked Cab. Cab said scotch and soda. I turned to the bartender and asked, 'You'll serve me, right? Two scotch and sodas'. After that Cab would call me up whenever he was in town and we'd go out drinking together."

Knowing Dad, he was probably right.

He even ran into the Beatles once. He'd gone down to Miami to help his mom open up her place on North Bay Island for the winter. He stopped into the Fountain Bleu for a drink and saw 4 mopheads sitting in the back looking strung out. He asked the bartender who the bums were. The bartender told him it was the Beatles.

Dad had all kinds of stories like that.

" So Jack Lescoulie and I went over to Toots Shore's. Jackie Gleason isn't there, but he's left word for us to come by the apartment. We go over and bump into Kitty Carlisle. Jackie's there with a bunch of guys on a 3 day bender playing poker. I woke up on the boat on the way to Germany with no idea how I got there."

Alan Hale's son Chris, lives down here in Ashland, and sells real estate. His wife is Australian and was a customer of mine for a company I worked with when I first relocated here to Oregon... Chris was a real down to earth guy. He and I being in the same age range, I got to ask him the question that any kid growing up in the 60s and watching Gilligan's Island would ask.... do you like Ginger or Mary Anne better... so I asked Chris once.. as he was frequently on the set while they were filming....and in between takes Both Tina Louise and Mary Anne would dote over him like a pair of Aunts...

So his answer was immediately Ginger.... so I asked him why....he was a good looking blonde haired kid, but after Mary Anne would kiss him on the cheek or something of that sort.....the taller Tina Louise, wearing one of her fancy dresses from the scene, showing a lot of cleavage, would pull his face to her cleavage and rub his face in it.. and then asked him could Mary Anne ever do that for him?

I'd tend to agree.....besides loving Red heads.. I'd have loved that face rub also.. like most other young teenagers would have.

I met Bernie Sanders once at a diner in Burlington Vt. I got up and left.

Jacques Cousteau in Mystic, Connecticut.

Billy Joel on Block Island.

I'm impressed that you'd admit that in public....

That takes a very honest man to admit that on the internet..

Nothing to admit. He sat down I got up. This was years ago when he was mayor of BTV. He looked and smelled like a dirty gym bag.

I had lunch with Elvis at Graceland back in 1964

Bill Clinton asked my for directions on how to get to a nearby town. Years later had to listen to Bill's mother whine about what a bad choice he'd made for a wife.

Oh! Wait a minute! I remember now.

I rode the Delta Redeye to Atlanta one time with Jonathan Edwards (Sunshine). He'd just finished a gig in Dayton Ohio. This was about 1979. He was still bitter he lost out to Don Maclean for a Grammy. For years I had his business card which was imprinted on a pack of rolling papers.

In 1987 I was in VT-10 flying the T-2 Buckeye trainer. I had a formation hop the next day so went over the other students house the night before to grill some burgers and figure out how we were going to run the flight and go over it with a couple of model on sticks. He was married and lived on base. Walked in and there was Vanna White. His wife and Vanna were good friends. Had dinner and did the stuff we needed to do. Vanna was gorgeous in Jeans and a t-shirt and a really nice person

Had my 15 minutes with Bill Gates a bit ago to explain some work we were doing.

Every other "celebrity" I can think of were just that to me. I doubt many would know them.

He's a good guy. Met him at a mutual friend's funeral.

Funny, but we talked the Quigley rifle, too.

In DC, I spotted Phil Donahue running to catch a cab. I shouted, "Hey, Phil Donahue!" He turned, looked me, smiled and waved, before getting in the cab.

In an airport waiting to board, Newt Gingrich was on his cell phone giving a radio interview with some host. I said, "Hey, Newt Gingrich." He looked at me, smiled, and waved.

Met Susan Saint James while setting up a hall for the Southern New England Telephone Company stock holders meeting. She was very pleasant and down to earth. While attending a firefighters convention met Anthony Bourdain. We were in a restaurant across the street from a theater where he did a one man show. Didn’t want to bother him eating but when he found out we were firefighters got up and shook our hands and posed for pictures. Very classy guy. My dad had a business cleaning chimneys and used to clean Betty Davis’s fireplace. She had an Oscar on the mantle and no matter the time always offered him a “highball”. Pop said she was usually pretty bombed by 9:00 am but was nice to him.

Heading from Atlanta to Memphis there is a gas station right before you head over to Mississippi. We stopped to get some gas. I went in to get water bottles and hit the head. On the way out, I looked back and held the door open for the person behind me. It was George Clinton from the Parliament Funkadelic. He had the dreads, sunglasses and the cleanest whitest athletic shoes on. He had his hands full with a big box of fried chicken (damn it smelled good) and said, "thanks, my brotha," then walked over and hopped in a new GMC Yukon (or similar).

Couple years ago my wife and I were waiting for our flight at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. I looked across the isle and asked my wife "isn't that that idiot Kaepernick?". It was, and for some reason, my wife felt the need to take a picture of him. One of his minions saw what my wife was doing and moved to stand between Kaepernick and my wife, blocking the attempted picture. I asked her to put her phone away, the puke wasn't worth taking a picture of. The minion came over and started to scold her for trying to "sneek" a picture. I told him to shut his pie hole and that the idiot wasn't worth beans and that I wasn't impressed with him in any way. I said all this rather loudly and the other people around us started to laugh. The minion walked away. This was at the time the Bears were looking for a quarterback and I hoped that wasn't the reason the idiot was in Chicago!

Another time I was up in Saskatoon Saskatchewan headed out for another Canadian adventure. An older man walked up to me and asked if I was a hunter. When I replied yes, he told me he's Jim Shokey's father, I replied "good for you". He then walked away.

I grew up with Bart Conner, the Olympic Gold Medalist in gymnastics back in the 80's. Bart went on to marry Nadia Comaneci.

All this and it was still $2 for a cup of coffee this morning!

I sat elbow to elbow with Huey Lewis at a bar in Youngstown, Ohio. His group was playing the bar, and this was right before his album Sports made him a known commodity. They were on a break and he was arguing with the bartender over who was paying for the drinks, him saying that was part of the deal they got for doing the show. We talked for a while. 'Seemed like an okay guy.

Not a huge celebrity, but I was well acquainted with the professional wrestler, Vern Gagne. He was good friends with an ophthalmologist I worked for. He'd come in the clinic frequently, and attended lots of our company functions. Just a good guy, and man, did he have some great stories from back in the glory days of pro wrestling.

Kirk Herbstreit, at a WVU-UMD game. I was waiting in my second row seat for the crowd to disperse after the game and saw him standing in front of me on the field looking at the line to get out with an "oh schitt" look on his face. I said, "Can't you go out the same way as the players?" His little light came on and he headed for the tunnels.

Met Sam Huff at a local meeting about expanding the gambling at Charles Town races, back when there were only 400 slots. Chatted a bit. When I got back after saying my piece, he smiled and called me a rascal for speaking against the expansion. Seemed like a good guy. I still occasionally see his car on the road.

Ran into Sissey Spacek in a grocery store. She was all incognito in a big hat and dark glasses. I looked at her, she looked at me looking at her, then we both went on.

Met Ollie North in a local business. He shook my hand, asked me my name, and we talked a bit. My son once sold him a .410 at Gander Mountain when he still worked for Fox. A real gentleman, that one.

I sat next to Selleck at a 1988 World Series game in Los Angeles between the Dodgers and A's. Seemed like a nice guy.

After the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I flew into Denver International one weekend later. On the shuttle back to the terminal I stood next to Gary Kubiak who was their coach at the time. He recognized the Texas A&M cap I was wearing (we're both alums, were there the same time) and we chatted duing the ride. Then I went to baggage claim and he stood there too waiting for his luggage. No one in the terminal either recognized him, or decided to bother him. That surprised me a bit as it was, like I said, exactly one week after the Broncos had won the Super Bowl.

Met and had a conversation with Pat Buchanan at a fundraiser for his presidential run.