Something I wrote in 2011...as 2016 nears ending maybe good for us to think about "fame" and how fleeting it can be....nothing last forever.. LA =========================================== Just some thoughts: "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, the only earthly certainly is oblivion.” (Mark Twain) Recently I was in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Two friends, Larry Motz, Gary Kersey and I had dinner one evening at Brett Faure's Restaurant. |
In 1926 a lady did something no other woman and only five men had done previously. She did it in fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes breaking the previous record by more than two hours. Instantly she became world renown; and for a period of time she was America's most famous woman athlete. Over two million people lined the streets of New York City to see and welcome her home. They called her "America's Best Girl." She had numerous offers of over a million dollars to endorse products, appear in movies and on Broadway. Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel in a time and style never seen before.
In 1975, forty-nine years later at the age of seventy-two, she was living alone in a modest apartment building in Queens, New York. She was unknown to her neighbors. Anyone who might be courting fame would do well to listen to what this lady had to say regarding fame.
When she was asked, "Why don't people know who you are when they once lined the city streets to honor and see you?" She replied;
"The band doesn't stand forever on the same street corner playing your song."
Truly, fame is fleeting!
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October 7, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson