In the prime there, there in the ‘60s, Jerry Lewis was beautiful; trim, hair all blacked, bathed with the Pomade and flawlessly slicked back, the tuxedo a yearly constant. He was a sight on those weekends as we waited for school starting on the following Tuesday. The final respite from the nerves of having to change from grade school to junior high and then to high school. The summer vacation was over. Life would once again, without mercy, insist.

One was able to get lost in the Tiffany roll as the amount on the tote board grew as it always did. Lewis conducting the Telethon with reckless amounts of both high jocularity and needless cruelty. It was just his way. You’d laugh at the jocularity and were aghast at the cruelty. But, you stayed till the end and the end was always the same.

On 5 September 1976 at the insistence of and arrangement by Sinatra the two men: Martin and Lewis finally buried the hatchet ending their twenty years-long feuds during the nationally broadest Telethon. The reconciliation was awkward, even stilted. But, necessary, not so much for them, but us.