I want to\u00a0acknowledge\u00a0the passing of two important friends. \u00a0The first was the wonderful Richard Dawson. \u00a0As many of you know, my father directed a number of Hogan’s Heroes episodes. \u00a0Simply put, Howard loved Richard, and Richard adored Howard. \u00a0One great childhood memory I have was from the early 1970s. \u00a0It was\u00a0Christmas\u00a0eve. \u00a0I was five, maybe six. \u00a0\u00a0At about 10 p.m., our doorbell rang. \u00a0My mother and father were suspicious of who it could’ve been being that it was late, but Howard opened the door regardless. \u00a0In danced Santa Claus and two of his helpers. \u00a0I remember Santa having a big bag of gifts over his shoulder. \u00a0He ran down a small flight of stairs to our living room, opened the bag and placed a bunch of gifts under our tree. There were gifts for my folks and my sister\u00a0and me.\u00a0\u00a0Santa let out a number of big jolly laughs. \u00a0He then said he had to make more deliveries, and ran out! \u00a0Obviously, Santa was Richard. \u00a0My folks knew him as “Dickie” until he started up on Family Feud. \u00a0Santa’s little helpers were Richard’s two young boys, Gary and Mark. My folks were taken completely by surprise. We had no idea Richard was going to do this. \u00a0We’ll never forget.<\/p>\n
The second person is Ray Bradbury. \u00a0I met Ray a couple of times over the years, although I did not know him well. \u00a0He and Howard became close on a film that Ray wrote called “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.” \u00a0Howard had a few bits in the film with Sid Caesar. \u00a0I remember Ray being very kind. \u00a0He had a lot of admiration for Howard, and\u00a0vice versa. \u00a0I appreciated the brief but special moments that I had with Ray. \u00a0I remember my father had given him a copy of a short film my father and I made in the early 1990s called “The Other Side of Hope.” \u00a0Howard starred in it with the amazing Robert Guillaume. \u00a0The film was not a comedy. \u00a0It touched on some serious end of life issues. \u00a0Even though Ray knew my father from comedy, he went out of his way to tell me he had seen the film, and how much he enjoyed it. \u00a0Howard already knew\u00a0Ray’s\u00a0reaction, but I had no idea that my father had sent Ray a copy. \u00a0This was a very special moment, totally unexpected. \u00a0Thank you, Ray.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As always, feel free to post your thoughts.<\/p>\n
-David<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I want to\u00a0acknowledge\u00a0the passing of two important friends. \u00a0The first was the wonderful Richard Dawson. \u00a0As many of you know, my father directed a number of Hogan’s Heroes episodes. \u00a0Simply put, Howard loved Richard, and Richard adored Howard. \u00a0One great childhood memory I have was from the early 1970s. \u00a0It was\u00a0Christmas\u00a0eve. \u00a0I was five, maybe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-howard-morris"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2s4Ro-1Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ernestt.com\/bass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}