15 Minutes of Fame

Stunt person, actually. I think.

I've never met him. I saw a picture of him and his brothers when they were kids, and my Uncle Bob told me he'd become an actor.

Now, Uncle Bob was a funny, funny man. Always made me laugh, always had a story to tell, always twinkled around the eyes. Once in awhile he'd show a serious side, but most of the time he was simply my adorable, funny uncle.

Once, when he and Aunt Eva had driven across the country from California, on their annual visit to us in Maryland, they brought slides of some family events over a number of years.

I'd never met their children ~ or was it child... a daughter is all I know of. Here's the thing: my mom was the youngest of 15 (holy cow!) and Uncle Bob was among, or maybe the, oldest. So Mom was born after some of her nieces and nephews. There were simply so many of them, and as adults they all lived in different states. Big family, but each nuclear family lived separately. Strange, but true.

So there was Uncle Bob, showing us slides of the family over several years. There was an early picture of his grandsons, and one of them, Michael, Uncle Bob said had gone into acting. Movies, he said. Even though I was a kid, I thought it was impressive. Someone in my family was in the movies!

A few years ago I remembered that little piece of personal trivia, and I looked Michael up on the Internet. Ah, the Internet, giving us access to so much information! And there he was: Michael A. Munoz, stunt double for Danny Devito, working with Steve Martin, etc.

I'm sure that's him. I'm sure he's my cousin. I know his middle name (unless Uncle Bob was joking again, Michael and all three brothers share the same middle name). If I squint just a little, maybe he looks a bit like his grandfather, my Uncle Bob.

In the late 1980s ('88 or '89), Alex Haley was the speaker at the McPherson College Mohler Lecture series. During his speech, Mr. Haley talked about growing up, being in the navy, and writing letters back home for his friends who had no talent with words like he had. He talked about meeting Malcolm X and others, and about writing Roots.

It was completely fascinating. I'd gone to the lecture with a friend, and the auditorium was packed! We ended up in the balcony, where the seats were the old wooden kind, not down on the floor with the cushy seats. But there we were, listening to Alex Haley speak.....

.... suddenly a cough. A squirm. Movement in a squeaky wooden seat. As if the spell were broken, I looked at my watch and more than an hour had gone by. He had been speaking for over an hour before anyone moved ~ we were totally engrossed, all of us! He was amazing.

After the lecture, Mr. Haley stood and shook hands with people as they filed out of the auditorium. By the time my friend and I got to him, surely he'd been standing there making small talk with many, many others for many, many minutes. Not to mention the more than 60 minutes standing and talking to us before that. Surely, by the time I got there, he was tired and wanted to sit down.

Even so, I stood in front of him with nothing to say... my mind went blank except for some inane nothing as we shook hands.

"I enjoyed your speech."

He was kind. "Thank you."

Then I ~ surely like many before me ~ asked him to autograph my lecture program, and he did. My autographed claim to fame.

(Photo is of Alex Haley in the US Coast Guard)

You, too, can share your claim to fame and get an icon to put on your Squidoo profile. Be "officially famous" ~ just click the "Wall of Fame" picture and see for yourself. We've got LOTS of claims to fame here at Squidoo. Join us!

Okay, how many people can say THAT!?? Not many, I'd bet.

Here's the story:

I think it was 1981. Maybe 1980. I was a full-time volunteer in Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS), and my project was at the Dundalk Youth Services Center (DYSC) in Dundalk, a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. My roommate, also a BVS volunteer, worked at the sister site, the Family Crisis Center.

At the time, the Family Crisis Center was just starting out, not open quite yet, and the Board of Directors held numerous fund-raisers. One was a basketball game. The teams? The crisis center staff against local politicians and celebrities. Oprah Winfrey was a news anchor at a local TV station in Baltimore, therefore one of the local celebrities.

So there we were, on opposing sides in a benefit game to raise money for a women's shelter. A few years later I had moved to Kansas. I saw her in The Color Purple and was amazed that I knew this woman. "That's Oprah Winfrey!" I'd say. At the time she was not world famous, so people would respond something like, "... and?"

But I played basketball with her. One team was The Dunducks; I don't remember what the other team was called. I don't remember who won. I might not even remember having done it.... except that Oprah became famous, and so I can claim the event as a bump with fame. I just hope I didn't knock her down...