MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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The New York Times

A touch of grace

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I have read Roger Cohen in The New York Times over the years but began reading him in earnest during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, some op-eds and most often his brilliant blog posts on the matches and the game of soccer. The pieces were elegant and learned, almost too much for the assignment.

The trouble, of course, is that he is published by The International Herald Tribune, not regularly by the Times.

It is a treasure to see him, if not in the pages of the Times, then at least on its website. Today’s piece by him is one of the most graceful I’ve read by him. I would quote him, except I would not know where to begin and Fair Use laws prevents me from plopping the whole piece here.

Let me offer one paragraph. You’ll have to go read the rest:

It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

March 20, 2008
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Buckley's splendid eulogies

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I come late to the William F. Buckley eulogy party, a full week as a matter of fact. I was going to skip it entirely but I finally read my Newsweek magazine, which devoted precious newshole to the passing of the conservative icon.There was the long retrospective on his career by Evan Thomas, accompanied by a couple of respectful appreciations by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, the country’s premier liberal magazine, and Michael Gerson, George W. Bush’s exceptional speechwriter who sups now at the trough of several publications, Newsweek and the Washington Post included.Before I go any further, I should get this out of the way: among his many admirable qualities, Mr. Buckley was a very charming man and he gave great parties.Douglas Martin began his obituary in The New York Times this way:

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died on Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.

No purpose will be served rehashing all the encomiums Buckley’s passing garnered. He was a great guy. A great writer. A great wit. Founded a magazine. He was the father of the conservative movement.Some of his eulogizers lamented what has become of the conservative movement he founded. Current crop of conservatives just don’t have the style, the civilized manner of Buckley. David Brooks, a protégé of Buckley who now occupies valuable real estate on The New York Times op-ed page, lamented the return of the haters and rabble rousers long after Buckley thought he had banished them from his movement.Brooks and others, as quoted by Newsweek, on Buckley:

For more than a half century, William F. Buckley Jr., who died last week at 82, largely inspired and held together the conservative movement that is collapsing today. The Wall Street Journal editorialized: “Several generations of conservatives grew up (in more than one sense) with Bill Buckley. Now they have—well, there is no one like him.” “He changed the personality of conservatism,” Brooks says. “It had been sort of negative, and he made it smart and sophisticated and pushed out all these oddballs and created a movement.” More recently, says Brooks, conservatism has “lost something.” In the conservatism spawned by talk radio and TV, the haters and know-nothings are back, ranting about immigrants and liberals. “It was a lot more philosophical under him,” he says. At those nightly salons, Buckley liked to talk and argue about ideas and literature and the nature of man; politics was rarely mentioned. “The new conservatives are not as intellectually creative as those dealing with communism and socialism,” says Brooks. Buckley tolerated some disreputable ideas, including segregation; but he had the capacity to change.

And vanden Heuvel had this to say early in her appreciation of Buckley:

And while he ceased to argue that Africans will be ready to run their own affairs “when they stop eating each other,” neither he nor his magazine ever fully repudiated the poisonous role it played in stoking white supremacists’ anger against the civil-rights movement.

The same Mr. Buckley called author Gore Vidal a “queer” and threatened to punch him out on his television show, The Firing Line. Charming indeed.

I’m sorry, Mr. Buckley might have had nicer manners but how is this any better than any of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter’s serial assault on common-sense and decency?

William F. Buckley was an unreconstructed racist who comforted segregationists everywhere, including the purveyors of the long discredited policy of apartheid in South Africa. Buckley and the pages of the National Review provided ballast to the Reagan administration as it resisted all entreaties to help topple that evil regime.

That this man was welcomed in respectable society when he was alive was bad enough. That he was, on his death, further celebrated in the pages of respectable mainstream publications is both tragic and shameful.

March 5, 2008
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McCain's media relations office

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How fortunate is John McCain, (R-AZ), to have Newsweek magazine in its corner?The magazine’s reporters and writers don’t even pretend to be objective anymore. They see their job as explaining the ‘Maverick’ to an unappreciative nation.

Case in point is their package of stories and columns under the headline Straight Talk Roadblock, which sought to dismiss the recent article by The New York Times about ethical lapses by McCain, including apparent cozy relationship between him and a lobbyist. Despite the fact that their own reporting (by powerhouse Evan Thomas and pit bull Michael Isikoff, among others) confirms the essential facts of the story by the Times, they still called it a non-story.In his ‘Editor’s Desk’ column, Jon Meacham said:

Let us be honest: without the allegations about sex, there was no Times story. (McCain’s FCC efforts and links to the communications company had been previously reported.) No suggestion of sex, no front page; no suggestion of sex, no right-wing rally to McCain’s side against the Times. It is, as Margaret Thatcher used to say, a funny old world.

It’s of a piece with recent Newsweek reporting about McCain, which has been adulatory, even more so than the usual media treatment of McCain. Howard Fineman put in his usual yeoman’s work sucking up to the good senator.As Newsweek says, there’s no scandal here. Everybody run along.

February 25, 2008
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If Only . . .

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This story is scary. On election night, Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY), was reported to have swept through New York. To put it mildly, the Empire state was said to be immune from the juggernaut Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), was becoming in the rest of the country.

Then comes this little story in the metro section of The New York Times today:

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.

In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.

The history of New York elections has been punctuated by episodes of confusion, incompetence and even occasional corruption. And election officials and lawyers for both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton agree that it is not uncommon for mistakes to be made by weary inspectors rushing on election night to transcribe columns of numbers that are delivered first to the police and then to the news media.

Timesman Sam Roberts assures us that there’s little chance this was fraud. Local election officials have very little incentives to engage in this kind of chicanery, someone told him. They would steal votes in elections that concern them not in this kind of race.

He should try telling that to people who voted for Mr. Obama.

At the sprawling Riverside Park Community apartments at Broadway and 135th Street, Alician D. Barksdale said she had voted for Mr. Obama and her daughter had, too, by absentee ballot.

“Everyone around here voted for him,” she said.

And:

At the Archive, a cafe and video store on the border of Bushwick and East Williamsburg, the manager, Brad Lee, agreed. “There were Obama posters in everyone’s windows,” he said. “There was even Obama graffiti.”

Let me ask this. . How would you feel if, let’s say you caught Obama-mania and rushed out and voted for him only to find out the next day that not a single person where you lived voted for him? And they wonder why people don’t vote anymore.

February 16, 2008
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'Learnin' the Blues'

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Photograph by Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recorded a version of this song that is at once beautiful, sad, funny, and heartbreaking all at the same time. Today’s New York Times story about Sen. Barack Obama’s struggle with the issue of race in his campaign to become the Democratic Party nominee for president makes me feel all of those things.

Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in muting the issue of race in this campaign. He has succeeded in making the campaign not about his race, even as he has benefited from race (the whole ‘a credit to his race’ thing). The Clintons, Bill especially, recognized what was happening and quickly ended their subtle attempts to remind people that Mr. Obama is black. They, instead, took up a megaphone and blared it to anyone who would listen.

Photographs by Ozier Mohammed/The New York Times.

They earlier made the false claim to the New Yorker Magazine that Latinos don’t vote for blacks. When Sen. Obama won in Iowa, they became more daring and explicit in New Hampshire before going overboard in South Carolina.

Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, (D-N.J.), was fond of saying (and I forget who he’s quoting here) that race is America’s original sin.

Nowhere is it more explicit than in this race. Mr. Obama’s campaign, as great as it has been, has had some significant failures. The deficits in his support now are testaments to those failures.

His seeming inability to craft a message that could appeal to lunch bucket, blue collar white voters is telling. It is my belief that Mr. Obama’s message benefits this constituency far more than the people who have been flocking to his campaign so far. He needs to find the language to talk to them.

As for Latinos, it is right that Sen. Obama has to work to earn their votes, just as he had to work (with no small amount of help from Bill and Hillary Clinton) to win over African-Americans. Latinos are diverse and not one single message will reach them. Again, reaching them is not an insurmountable challenge.

This just means Mr. Obama and his staff have to work harder to earn their votes. That is part of the promise of Mr. Obama’s movement. The solutions to our nation’s problems have to be deep and lasting. The blood, sweat and tears in this effort will only make sure both the achievements and the progressive coalition more enduring.

This is not to exclude Sen. Hillary Clinton. First, let me say that any other year I would be banging the drum hard supporting her. It is just a fluke that she is running at a time when her opponent is this remarkable man. She has taken some unfortunate steps in this campaign which she’ll ultimately have to atone for.

What must not happen is troglodyte John McCain winning the presidency.

That said, I will support Sen. Clinton if she wins the nomination. She will have the task of crafting the same progressive coalition, which I hope she is working on now, to carry her to the presidency.

February 12, 2008
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Stakes & Commitments

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Photo by Max Whittaker for The New York Times: Barack Obama, then known as Barry, in a 1978 senior yearbook photo at the Punahou School in Honolulu. At Punahou, a preparatory school that had few black students, he talked with friends about race, wealth and class.

Back at the time the New York Times explored in today’s paper, running for president of the United States had to have been the furthest thing in Sen. Barack Obama’s mind. He must have been around 20 years old and he was trying to figure out his way in this world.

What seems clear is that Mr. Obama’s time at Occidental
from 1979 to 1981 — where he describes himself arriving
as “alienated” — would ultimately set him on a course to
public service. He developed a sturdier sense of self and
came to life politically, particularly in his sophomore year,
growing increasingly aware of harsh inequities like
apartheid and poverty in the third world.

He also discovered that he wanted to be in a larger
arena; one professor described Occidental back then
as feeling small and provincial. Mr. Obama wrote in
his memoir that he needed “a community that cut
deeper than the common despair that black friends
and I shared when reading the latest crime statistics,
or the high fives I might exchange on a basketball court.
A place where I could put down stakes and test my
commitments.”

Sen. Obama, (D-IL), wrote in “Dreams From My Father” about youthful drug use prior to and during this period, drug use that stopped after he transferred to Columbia University in New York City.

Mitt Romney, who abandoned his candidacy for the Republican nomination this week, disgracefully tried to make some political hay out of this admission. He got nowhere. Later, Bill Shaheen, an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, also tried to make it into a campaign issue, suggesting that Mr. Obama’s history with drugs would make him vulnerable to Republican attacks if he became his party’s nominee.

“It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs
to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’” Shaheen told
reporters in New Hampshire. “There are so many openings
for Republican dirty tricks. It’s hard to overcome.”

Hillary disavowed the comment and forced Shaheen to resign as one of the co-chairs of her campaign.
People in the past questioned whether Mr. Obama took some literary license in “Dreams of My Father” to make the book more dramatic. In this article, the Times tracked down people who knew Mr. Obama back then and almost to a one none remembers him as a drug user.

“He was not even close to being a party animal,” one friend from the day told the Times.

Serge F. Kovaleski, the Timesman, wondered and speculated about this:

Mr. Obama’s account of his younger self and drugs, though,
significantly differs from the recollections of others who do
not recall his drug use. That could suggest he was so private
about his usage that few people were aware of it, that the
memories of those who knew him decades ago are fuzzy or
rosier out of a desire to protect him, or that he added some
writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he
overcame seem more dramatic.

In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and
mentors from his high school and Occidental recalled
Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised,
someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug
problems and seemed to dabble only with marijuana.

In short, it was a portrait of a remarkable young man poised to do great things, not unlike someone any father would wish their sons and daughters to grow up to be like. He displayed the allure he now poses for voters even back then.

Mr. Obama displayed a deft but unobtrusive manner
of debating.“When he talked, it was an E. F. Hutton
moment: people listened,” said John Boyer, who lived
across the hall from Mr. Obama. “He would point out
the negatives of a policy and its consequences and
illuminate the complexities of an issue the way others
could not.” He added, “He has a great sense of humor
and could defuse an argument.”

Voters in caucuses and primaries this weekend, next week, and the next several months will have opportunities to take the measure of this man and decide whether to make him the Democratic Party nominee for president. They could choose to vote, as he is fond of saying, for him, rather than against somebody.

February 9, 2008
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A Rip in the Fabric

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I found this New York Times story very fascinating. The Sanchez sisters’ story was affecting but the story that affect me the most was the one involving Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste.

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste, a married couple who met while serving in the Clinton administration, have actually started debating each other. Not just at their kitchen table, but in front of audiences across California and on television.

“It’s not easy,” Ms. Echaveste, who is a paid consultant to Mrs. Clinton, said in a joint telephone interview with her husband, who advises Mr. Obama. “You’re having a discussion and your husband is basically saying that your candidate doesn’t have a moral compass.”

With that, Mr. Edley broke in. “Or your wife is saying that your candidate isn’t smart enough to figure out where the bathrooms are,” he said.

“I never said that,” she replied.

The couple has relived some of the campaign’s most rancorous moments, such as when Ms. Echaveste, echoing Bill Clinton, told her husband that Mr. Obama was “naïve.” The word conjured up racial stereotypes for Mr. Edley, who is black, and has known Mr. Obama since he taught him in law school. “There’s the childlike Negro,” he explained. “There is the superficial but glib minstrel.”

Ms. Echaveste, who is Hispanic, now understands why her husband exploded in response. “Regardless of being dean of a law school” — at the University of California, Berkeley, where both teach — “he’s still in a box called being a black man,” she said. Still, she said, “I ought to be able to make that point and not trigger these reactions.”

And with that, Mr. Edley responded, his wife countered, and they started to debate once more.

This couple’s conflict played out for me this way:

I was open-minded about Hillary Clinton’s campaign for nomination and could have seen myself voting for her. Then, in a Jan. 13 appearance on ‘Meet the Press,’ she refused to answer Tim Russert’s question about whether Obama was qualified to be president. Obama has more years in elected office than she does and he’s the exact same age Bill Clinton was in 1992. So what is the problem? And this was going on at a time when Hillary and Bill were channeling Lee Atwater in South Carolina by turning Obama into “the black candidate.”

Call me sensitive, thin-skinned, but it became hard for me to support her after that. I started wishing John Edwards had been a stronger candidate, that his message had resonated with the voters more. I did not want Obama to benefit from my disappointment with Hillary Clinton.

So, this is where we’re at.

February 5, 2008
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“A.B.M.”

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The Clintons and the national media covering the Democratic Party race for the presidential nomination have broken out a new story line regarding Barack Obama: That he’s “angry” and “frustrated.” Hillary Clinton practically taunts him with this. It does not help that the media has not only totally bought into this, they’re mischaracterizing their news coverage to turn normal or innocuous exchange with the candidate into “tense” encounters. ABC News breathlessly reported on its website that it had filmed a “testy” exchange between Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times and Obama. Their tape, however, does not match their description of the encounter.

A measured Obama was trying to both sign autographs for voters and talk to the reporters as he campaigned in South Carolina. His voice was not raised. A bemused smile played on his face, as if he recognized the trap he was in. The reporters were trying to manufacture a story where there was none and he was not about to give them one. He even tried to go off the record at one point.

It’s a singular achievement of the Clintons that and the media in this campaign that they’ve managed to turn Barack Obama into the “Angry Black Man” without any evidence of him being one.

January 23, 2008
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Billary

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I have said previously (as have others) that I believe Barack Obama is Bill Clinton’s truest heir.

The New York Times has a curious story today that I am still thinking about. I am not sure what I think about the strategy.

I know that I am happy that the Clintons are not ceding the ‘black’ vote’ to Obama. The most gratifying aspect of this campaign to me has been Obama’ run as a candidate who happens to be black, rather than as the ‘black candidate.’ For that reason, he has had to work hard to earn black support, which he still doesn’t have, not totally. Black women, for instance, may still end up supporting Hillary (because I may not return to this subject, consider this in the meantime).

Hillary, at first, did not think she would have to contest for the ‘black vote,’ such was the reservoir goodwill built by Bill Clinton over the course of his political career. Bill Clinton was no less exploitative of African-Americans in his political career than other Democrats. And the party during his reign still took African-Americans for granted. But, even if short of tangible gains for blacks, Bill Clinton was at least empathetic.

That was a change from the open hostility that Ronald Reagan in particular and Republicans in general have exhibited, something that continues today in some of the coded and overt gestures that the current crop of Republican candidates are making on the campaign trail.

Which is why Obama should have to explain better his apparent Nevada apostasy regarding Reagan and the gibe about the Republican Party being the ‘party of ideas.’

Reagan and those ‘ideas’ that the Republican Party continue to traffick in demonized African-Americans and devastated cities, preyed on communities of color , and the imperiled the poor during the past generation. It is not enough to say “I want me some’ Obama Republicans.’ ”

I remember some of the reasons the so-called “Reagan Democrats” deserted the party to vote with Republicans. I am not going to discuss them here but the consequences of that decision are still being felt today.

In any case, Hillary knows she’s in a race now and she’s truly fighting. I hope to take the cudgel to Obama some more on this subject but the person I want to talk about is Bill Clinton and his struggle for a tone against Obama.

Clinton has been too emotional, too hot, and some of his language too freighted for me not to wonder why he seems so bothered by Obama. This is a contest and Bill, of all people, should enjoy the arena and this battle. But he does not seem to.

Ok. I have to run now. I want to think more about this.

January 22, 2008
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FLEETING INFAMY Many are called, but few are frozen in spotlight By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and RICHARD T. PIENCIAK, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, May 4, 1997

Most people who grab fleeting notoriety — Sukhreet Gabel, the kid who stole the A train, Lady Bing and Yankee switcher Fritz Peterson — disappear quickly and quietly.

Then there are those like Burton Pugach, resurrected at regular intervals, and Donald Trump, who never seems to leave the stage.

Pugach has defied the odds by stretching his fame to 45 minutes with front-page appearances in 1959, 1974 and 1997.

The 70-year-old ex-attorney first surfaced when he paid three goons $2,000 to throw lye into the face of a girlfriend who had discovered he was married. After serving 14 years in prison, Pugach hit the front pages again in 1974, when he married the woman who had been blinded in the attack.

His third major foray into the public arena concluded last week with his acquittal in Queens on charges that he had threatened to kill his most recent ex-mistress.

In Trump’s case, his soap opera — separation from Marla — is just beginning.

Here’s a reprise of what happened to some others who just faded away:

Howie Spira

Howie Spira, George Steinbrenner’s one-time archrival, would love to return to center stage. These days, Spira has an entertainment lawyer and a literary agent; he’s hawking a book and movie about his life and says he is dating a beautiful 25-year-old airline employee from California.

Howie’s big moment in 1990 produced dire consequences for a variety of people: The Boss got suspended from baseball; Fay Vincent ultimately was booted from the baseball commissioner’s office; and Spira ended up in federal prison.

Spira claimed Steinbrenner had paid him $40,000 to dig up dirt on slugger Dave Winfield. The FBI charged him with extortion.

Several weeks before his parole in October 1993, Spira made the acquaintance of another inmate, former New York Judge Sol Wachtler.

“He was very upset,” Spira, now 38, recalled. “I introduced him to people. We became friends.

“It’s been very, very difficult. The same people who to this day chase me for autographs or want to talk baseball will not give me a job because of the stigma. . . . I’m frightened about my future.”

Francine Gottfried

Front-page allegations of sexual harassment lodged last week by several female employees of a Long Island brokerage house suggested that the more things change in Wall Street circles, the more they stay the same. Take the case of the Wall Street Sweater Girl of 1968.

At the time, Francine Gottfried was 21 years old, stood 5-foot-3 and earned $92.50 a week as a data processing operator for Chemical Bank. A completely different set of numbers brought intense public attention to the Brooklyn native: her 43-25-37 figure.

The frenzy over Gottfried began spontaneously; several brokerage house employees noticed she exited the BMT subway station near the New York Stock Exchange each workday shortly before 1:30 p.m. The workers told their friends and colleagues, who told more people.

During a two-week period that September, the crowds grew from several hundred to more than 15,000 — all in search of a glimpse of Francine in her extremely tight yellow sweater.

“A Bust Panics Wall Street as the Tape Says 43,” blared one Daily News headline. Added The New York Times: “10,000 Wait in Vain for Reappearance of Wall Street’s Sweater Girl.”

Meanwhile, Francine began considering whether to charge for interviews and photos. “I’ve got a million dollars of publicity already, but no money,” she said. “This is the biggest thing to hit Wall Street since the Crash of ’29, and I should be compensated.”

But Francine eventually dropped from the radar screen by taking a different route to work.

Keron Thomas

On May 8, 1993, at the age of 16, Keron Thomas took Duke Ellington’s musical advice one step too far: He didn’t simply take the A train, he stole it.

A train buff since his childhood in Trinidad, Thomas rode the subway at all hours.

Thomas became such fast friends with trainman Regoberto Sabio that one day he found himself behind the controls of the shuttle between Franklin Ave. and Prospect Park.

Psyched by the experience, Thomas called the 207th St. subway yard in Inwood, identifying himself as Sabio and requesting an overtime shift.

The dispatcher failed to ask Thomas for photo I.D. or his employee badge, which enabled the older-looking teen to take control of a 10-car train.

An estimated 2,000 passengers were aboard during the ensuing three-hour ride.

Thomas might have gotten away with the caper had he not exceeded a 20 mph speed limit, tripping an emergency signal.

The sheer brazenness of Thomas’ act captivated New Yorkers. Friends at Brooklyn Automotive High School took to calling him “A Train.”

The charges were reduced to misdemeanors, and Thomas was sentenced to three years probation.

But 18 months after the A train incident, Thomas was arrested for stabbing a teen.

Charged with attempted murder, Thomas spent 177 days on Rikers Island and pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault. He was credited with time served and was released in July 1995 on five years probation.

Last week, Probation Department spokesman Jack Ryan said Thomas’ file was sealed. Despite being 18 at the time of the stabbing, Thomas ultimately was treated as a youthful offender.

Sukhreet Gable

For nine riveting days in 1988, Sukhreet Gabel testified against her ailing 75-year-old mother — a respected judge — former Miss America Bess Myerson, and Bess’ lover, contractor Carl (Andy) Capasso.

The prosecution alleged that Sukhreet had been given a city job in return for her mother’s fixing of Capasso’s divorce settlement. The bribery trial ended, however, in acquittals for all.

“I think I was naive,” says Gabel, now 47. “I might do it differently if I had to do it all again. But my mother’s words always come back to me. What she said was to always tell the truth, and I think those are good words to live by. My mother was a wise woman.”

Sukhreet remembers her moment in the spotlight as having been quite awful.

“So often I would be misunderstood and labeled crazy, when I don’t think I am,” she said. “I’m certainly a character, but I’m not crazy.”

These days, Gabel is busy importing and exporting traditional and high-end contemporary textiles, a job that takes her all over the world.

Lady Bing

At age 22, Carroll Lee Douglass married 65-year-old moviemaker Jack Glenn. Following a divorce, she married William Rickenbacker, son of World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. In 1987, at 47, she married retired Metropolitan Opera impresario Sir Rudolf Bing, 85 at the time.

The wedding ceremony had taken place only two days after Bing’s relatives succeeded in getting a judge in Manhattan to schedule a competency hearing for him.

Bing and his wife, who took to calling herself Lady Bing, appeared at the hearing on Jan. 12, 1987, but vanished once the judge declared that the groom was incompetent to handle his financial affairs.

Within a month, the Daily News traced the newlyweds to the idyllic Caribbean island of Anguilla.

Eventually, the pair returned to New York, where a judge annulled the marriage; Sir Rudolf entered the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale.

Last Thursday, a worker at the home confirmed that Bing still is a resident. “He’s doing fine,” she said.

Does Lady Bing ever come to visit?

“No,” the employee said. “She hasn’t been here in well over a year.”

Harvey Sladkus, Lady Bing’s attorney, said she appeared unannounced at his law offices on Park Ave. several weeks ago. “She looked very sad. She had lost considerable weight.”

Lady Bing wondered whether Sladkus would hire her as the office receptionist.

“I told her, ‘We already have someone in that position,’ ” the attorney recalled.

Alice Crimmins

Alice Crimmins may well have achieved her aim of blending anonymously into the community. But more than three decades ago, her crime held the city spellbound.

Her daughter, Alice Marie Crimmins, 4, and the child’s brother, Edmund, 5, disappeared from their Kew Gardens Hills apartment July 14, 1965. The girl’s body was found a half-mile away and the boy’s a mile away.

It took two trials over a six-year period before Alice Crimmins was convicted of her son’s murder and of manslaughter in her daughter’s death. The investigation focused on Crimmins’ many boyfriends.

The murder conviction eventually was overturned for lack of evidence, but she was sentenced to 5 to 20 years for the manslaughter conviction.

On Friday, Thomas Grant, assistant to the chairman of the state Parole Board, said Crimmins no longer is under parole supervision. He said records indicate she was released from a state correctional facility on Sept. 9, 1977, after serving nine years. He said her official file also showed a closure date of Jan. 17, 1993.

Crimmins, who married a Long Island construction contractor while on a weekend furlough, no longer talks to the media. Her last known address was a high-rise in Bayside, Queens.

She consistently has denied killing her children.

Yankee Wife Swappers

Even if former Yankee left-handed pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson had produced Hall of Fame numbers, their off-the-field exploits would have overshadowed what they did on the mound.

At the beginning of the 1973 baseball season, the two close friends and free spirits told the world they had swapped wives, children, dogs and houses.

Peterson moved in with Susanne Kekich and her two daughters, Kristen, 4, and Reagan, 2. They married soon after she divorced her husband.

For Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson, the exchange had an unhappy ending. They broke up two months after he moved in with her and her sons, Gregg, 5, and Eric, 2.

Fritz and Susanne remain married. Peterson works as a craps dealer at Grand Victoria Casino Boat in Elgin, Ill.

Original Story Date: 050497

May 4, 1997
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