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.

I remember one Labor Day Telethon his son Gary came and performed. He’d returned from Vietnam. He’d been touched. Gary’s mother and Jerry’s wife Patti was nearby, seated front row; she was flat-eared and tight-lipped, looking spears thru her husband. She’d about had enough.

And then, after she’d had enough Lewis and his new wife SanDee, a former showgirl, plus Davis, Jr. and his wife Altovise did the Telethon as a foursome, performing all manner of singing, dancing, and, acting. It was fabulous! They worked their buns off for that, bless-their-souls, as only SanDee remains.

And then sometimes, well, most times for me “it” would get mixed up with the different time zones across our great land, or, I had to do something for mom and dad:

“Now, Cully, now!”

And I’d miss “the song” at the end of it. There was no VCR then---I was just SOL (not ours).

“Did I miss it?”

“Yeah, you missed it, and it was a good one. Jerry cried.” My older brother.

“The song took on a much deeper and more tragic meaning after the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 when a human crush at the stadium in Sheffield injured hundreds and 96 fans lost their lives.”

“When you walk through a storm

Hold your head up high

And don’t be afraid of the dark”

Afterward, after Lewis, his voice breaking had finished and laid his microphone upon the wooden stool and strode off stage in that special gait he had---then bedtime and in the dark, I’d envision that first day in that new grade, or, that new school ... for hours, till daylight threatened to break. And my dad, on his way to time-and-a-half an hour at Midland Ross steel mill in those dark, drab olive-colored work pants would come into my bedroom and straighten my blankets from the foot of my bed as I, racked with worry would portend to sleep, so, that he wouldn’t worry.