Famous Encounters

I worked for a furniture store in Tigard, OR, as an inventory clerk and was responsible for keeping track of inventory as it came in or went out. One Saturday morning, my manager assigned me the task of assisting a customer who would be arriving. (This had to be around 1986-1987.) The front desk would call me, she said, when this particular customer arrived.

The inventory department was in a small, square office in the back of the store just before you reached the warehouse. We had a split door (a half door?) on which the lower half had a counter top so we could complete paperwork while standing at the door when necessary. About an hour after I'd been told to expect a call to help this customer, the front desk notified me by phone that the customer was on his way to our office. I stood at the counter of the half door and watched for him. I could not have missed him for anything in the world.

Within seconds, a very tall man in jeans and a stylish dress shirt sauntered casually up to the counter. I had no idea who he was but as I am a hair under 5 feet 2 inches tall and Kevin Duckworth was 7 feet tall on the dot, it was a little intimidating that I barely came up to his belt buckle. I helped him with his order and he was pleasant, kind of quiet, very polite. We talked about his order for maybe all of five minutes. At that point I knew his name, but still not why this should mean anything. Shortly after he left, I ran to the front office and a co-worker filled me in.

I hadn't watched much basketball until then. I'd been busy being a teenager and had maybe just turned twenty at the time. But within a couple of years, the Trailblazers rocketed to stardom and there was hardly a resident of Portland who wasn't a fan.

Photo used under Creative Commons from jjandames.

"I believe the Trailblazer roster that included Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey, and Kevin Duckworth in the 1989-1990 seasons was the best, most exciting, most cohesive, skill-packed basketball team to ever play the game."

Me

Kevin Duckworth passed away in 2008 and that gave me pause. Besides the sadness and empathy one feels for the family left behind and for a talent lost too soon, I flashed back to watching Duckworth play in the series leading up to the NBA finals in 1989. He was big and lumbering. I don't remember him as quick but maybe that was because others on his team were fast and relatively speaking Duckworth was not - but he was solid. He was always where he needed to be and you knew anyone coming at him was going to have trouble. Oh, and could he jump. When he jumped he seemed weightless. I watched every Trailblazer game for two years. As a rule, I don't wear t-shirts with logos or pictures on them, I like them plain, but I did have two Trailblazer shirts - one team shirt and one Clyde Drexler shirt. I had a thing for Clyde (Shhhh!)

Like father, like daughter, it was eventually my turn to run into someone famous on an airplane. I traveled a great deal for work and that was back when having a frequent flier card actually got you upgraded, so it was not surprising that during a trip with my boss, we were both seated in the 3rd row of first class.

Just as the final passengers were boarding, one more scooted on and it was impossible not to recognize him. He had to have seen us, my boss and I both looking at him, the look of recognition slowly coloring our faces, and then seeing us quickly averting our eyes so as not to appear to be staring. But how could you not? Mr. Baseball was sitting directly in front of us. I'm not much for sports overall, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be baseball. Let's not forget the fact that Bob Ueker was a riot on the television series, Mr. Belvedere. Throughout the entire flight, he studied a script - flipping page after page. He was quiet and studious until we started to land. (Have you ever noticed that on a flight? Everyone chats when the plane is boarding and taking off, then there's a lull in the middle and then, when you feel that subtle descent of the plane everyone comes to life. Suddenly, we're all best friends.) Bob Uecker chatted with my boss and I for a few minutes as we waited for the plane to taxi to the gate and even signed the sports page of my newspaper. When the door opened, he disappeared...

I have a friend who has a friend...no, really. My friend's friend was in the marketing department of the Chicago Cubs. How's that for a job? As a result, my friend arranged with his friend for my husband to throw out the opening pitch at a Cubs game. We made a big gathering of the event and had arranged for my friend and his family, my family, and two other families from other parts of the country to all meet in Chicago and go to the game.

We all had lunch before the game and then traveled in a pack to a parking area. We melded into the crowd streaming towards the stadium. I love Chicago for so many reasons but I'm in love with Wrigley Field. The looming greenery at the back wall, the fans watching from the surrounding rooftops, the whole place seems more like they built a great baseball field and then decided to put some seats around it versus today's stadiums which seem designed all around the fans.

When it was time to get ready for the opening pitch, all of us were allowed to approach the front row of seats at home plate. The biggest die-hard fans live here, by the way, in this row and some have had these seats for generations. Three, in particular, have watched this opening pitch preparation countless times and make chit chat with those waiting to throw. In front of them is a little gate that leads onto the field at Wrigley.

Once my husband was taken onto the field, the rest of us had to move back a few rows. We stood in the row behind the die hard fans who'd made us so comfortable and continued to talk to them. There was some sort of activity suddenly taking place on the field and we saw news crews and cameras approaching the area just in front of where we were standing. The fans filled us in. Gale Sayers, the retired Chicago Bears Running Back who still holds the record for highest career kickoff return percentage, was about to present an award to the Cubs coach, Dusty Baker. A girlfriend with whom I was standing had a better view of the award ceremony so I handed her my camera and she took some shots. It was short, all of a few minutes, but it seemed surreal that not 50 feet in front of us stood both Gale Sayers and Dusty Baker. My friend and I were star struck and heavily in the middle of gushing to each other about how lucky we were when my friend turned to her side at the touch of a hand on her arm.

"Excuse me," said the elegant woman at her side, "I'm hoping you can help me."

"Did you get pictures of Dusty Baker receiving his award?" My friend explained we had. The woman looked a little sheepish but there was something about her that was so genuine, so charming. "Gale Sayers is my husband," she said, "and I didn't have the camera. He's a huge Dusty Baker fan. If I gave you my email address would you be so kind as to forward copies of those photos?"

If we'd be so kind? Not in a million years could we have turned her down. She jotted her email address on a slip of paper and chatted with us for several more minutes. She was absolutely one of the sweetest women I'd ever met. The day I returned home, I forwarded on the pictures and received a wonderful thank you note in reply.

The work conferences I attend often have guest speakers from various industries and one of those years the guest speaker was Dick Butkus. While we weren't sure of the connection to our industry, we were thrilled at the opportunity to hear from this retired Chicago Bear. And we were blown away...

Dick Butkus is an amazing speaker. The challenges he faced in the NFL in the era in which he played parlay nicely into management and business. Standing up to do the right thing, never backing down, persistence in the face of incredible challenges and adversity. He is able to convert the situations through which he persevered into lessons for others no matter what work they do or track they pursue.

On top of that, he's downright funny. The feedback about having Dick Butkus at the conference was so positive that at the next conference, which straddled Super Bowl weekend, the same organization arranged for Dick Butkus to join us for a cocktail event and party in Vegas in which we were also going to be able to watch the Super Bowl on several large screen TVs. The Super Bowl. With Dick Butkus.

There were only about 20 people in the room when the Super Bowl started (it was Vegas after all) and my husband and I easily got to spend 30 minutes sitting on a sofa chatting with Dick Butkus. Watching the Super Bowl. Phenomenal.

"I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it."

Johnny Depp

A coworker was meeting me in Boston to assist with a meeting and he had a friend (yes, this is the same friend from the Gale Sayers story - this friend of mine, he has some amazing connections) who happened to have something to do with a movie being filmed at a shipyard in Boston. He'd arranged for he and I to go watch them shoot a scene that evening. All he knew was that Matt Damon was in the movie but he wasn't sure who was going to be in the scenes being filmed that night.

We got to the shipyard around 6pm.

If you've ever watched a movie scene being filmed, it's not really all that exciting. You can't get very close and, at least in this movie, the action was all taking place between a bunch of cars and some large work vehicles. They shot the same scene over and over...and over...and the whole time, I couldn't see a thing. I heard gun shots, I heard "Action!", I heard "Cut!" and that was about all.

After an hour, one of the crew came to let us know that he'd arranged for us to meet Matt Damon. My ears perked up. "Meet" Matt Damon? As in shake-his-hand meet Matt Damon? Yes. But it might take awhile - we might have to wait until they were finished with this scene. They'd already spent an hour on that scene, how much longer could it be? I agreed to wait.

Wild weather hits.

The filming was taking place under a covered structure at the shipyard but the structure was open on both ends to the outside. While it was the middle or end of June, 2005, and had been warm earlier in the day, the evening grew increasingly colder; then it rained; and then the rain turned into sleet. It was 40 degrees and I was wearing a tank top, cropped pants and flip flops and because I live in Arizona, 40 degrees feels like 40 below to me. I was absolutely freezing in no time. Someone brought me a sweatshirt and a jacket and I kept a cup of hot chocolate with me at all times. To keep my nearly bare feet semi-warm, I took turns putting one bare foot on top of the other.

The hours drag on.

One hour began to drag into another and a cold wind joined the rain. The only bathroom available to us was in the form of a port-a-potty across the parking lot through the wild weather. I'm not particularly vain but even I knew I was starting to look like a gnarled tree with branches for hair and makeup running down my face. My clothes were damp, my nose was frozen and my feet had long since gone numb. Did I cave, though, and leave to seek warmer shelter and a nice soft bed? Oh, no, not I. I hung on. Pathetic idiot that I am. I was not alone, there were five of us but three of the others were teenagers. Staying up all night for them was probably nothing.

Eleven hours later...

At 5am the next morning, after waiting for nearly 12 hours, a crew member came over to inform us that they were done with the scene and that Matt Damon was coming over in a few minutes. Our adrenaline started to flow again and we were suddenly as wide awake as ever. True to their word, we watched as Matt Damon sidled our way. He had a grin on his face, which I immediately found charming considering that he'd been actually working the whole time we'd been waiting. There's something to be said for an actor who works that long and that hard and then makes time for fans with a smile on his face.

He approached us and held a warm and friendly conversation with each of the girls, asking them about school, where they go, how they're doing. He took a picture with each one of them and to this day I'm amazed at how extremely pleasant and welcoming he was. He turned to me and asked me if I was also from Boston. No, Phoenix, I explained. He mentioned that his girlfriend (now his wife) was from Florida and how much the warmer climate was starting to grow on him. He offered to have his picture taken with me and a friend took the photo. Matt Damon, still in makeup from filming, put his arm on my jacket and smiled into the camera.

The picture stays in my nightstand only because my husband isn't really keen on having it out. I think it has to do with the wildly, stupid grin on my face. As a mother, though, all I could think to myself after was that his parents must be awfully proud of him. He's an amazing and talented person with a very, large heart.

The movie that was being filmed, by the way? The Departed.