35-Did you ever know that you're my Hero?

Who is your hero? Do you even have a hero? Sometimes a hero can be a parent, a relative, a teacher, a boss, a co worker, or just a friend. For me, my hero is someone who had a major impact on the trajectory of my life that made me who I am today. I'm jimpauling, this is my view from the middle. Singer bet Middler popularized the song wind Beneath My Wings, as she's sang, did you ever know that You're my hero? I've never really given in to hero worship. I still don't, but like most people, I generally point to one particular person who had a very positive influence on my life. Without this influence, I would be a completely different person today. According to Webster, a hero is someone admired for achievements and noble qualities. I suppose that's true, But to me, a hero is someone who taught me life skills that enabled me to do what I needed to do to achieve my goals. I know a lot of people who I can admire for their achievements and noble qualities, but I wouldn't raise them to the level of being my quote hero. For instance, I was always a fan of Walter Mathow movies, when I need a mood left, I still put on a Mathol movie, but I wouldn't call him my hero. When I was a kid, I was a Batman fan, not Superman like some folks, but rather the Caped Crusader, but still not my hero. I can't say that Mathow or Batman did anything to significantly affect the trajectory of my life. Yeah they were entertaining, but that's about all. Also, a true hero needs to stand a test of time. There have been some people who I felt could have been a hero of mine, but then I learned something about them, or they do something that changed my mind about them. If that's all it takes to knock them out of a hero category, then they probably weren't really my hero to begin with. Since I was about seven years old, I wanted to be a disc jockey on radio. If you've listened to this podcast series, you're probably sick of me talking about that, but it's true. I built a makeshift DJ setup in our Garden City, Michigan basement out of an old console stereo set we bought from goodwill. My microphone was a little disc mic from a cannibalized intercom system also bought at Goodwill, stuffed into the end of a calking compound tube and mounted on a gooseneck lampstand. Now put speakers upstairs in the living room, and I would do DJ shows from my parents. Hey, I was seven years old. I was allowed to do goofy things like that. They were very tolerant of it and encouraged me in every way possible. I wound up going into radio broadcasting, but there were a few significant steps along the way. Among them was high school drama. I got to thinking about all this when my wife and I went to see our fourteen year old grandson perform in his middle school production of Footloose. He had a major role and made us all proud. I was impressed with the attention to proper stage blocking and pacing that you usually don't see in a middle school or sometimes even high school production these days. For me, getting involved in the drama department at Garden City East High School in nineteen seventy two was the best decision of my life. They taught me how to speak in front of people, allowed me to overcome shyness and give me confidence. He even taught me a little about managing people. I was actually elected student president of the drama department. I hadn't been president of anything before, or as a matter of fact, I hadn't been in charge of anything. He allowed me to make mistakes and learn from them, giving me some of the management skills I would need later in life. So who was the hero. Well, he was the drama teacher at Garden City East High School, Howard Palmer. Mister Palmer was a short, unassuming man, dark black hair, black beard horn rim glasses, who carried himself with a quiet authority. When he was in the room, he was in charge. When you were working on a theatrical production, it was his way in the highway. This puts some students off. I remember one incident where a student wasn't taking things seriously. He was goofing around and disrupting the rehearsal. Mister Palmer pointed out this flaw and the kid got mad and stormed out. Turned out, it was good riddance. Mister Palmer preached professional attitude. Anyone who thought they were just in a high school play would get the professional attitude lecture. When you were in one of mister Palmer's productions, you were a professional stage actor and you will conduct yourself Accordingly, you learned how to present yourself on stage. You learned how to walk, how to talk. It's not did you but did you? It's not jeet jet, it's did you eat yet? I had a part once where I had to say the line she was washing and washing. Except in my Detroit, Michigan upbringing, I said she was washing and washing during rehearsal. I babbled out that line and out of the darkness way in the back of the rehearsal, hall, I hear it's washing. Yep, Howard Palmer. This certainly helped me years later when I was on the radio and I would report things going on in Washington, d C. In mister Palmer's plays, you learn to pick up your cues. You learned stage craft and stage direction. You knew where stage right and stage left were, and you knew where downstage and upstage were and why they were called that. To begin with, you learned that you needed to have your lines memorized, your que lines memorized. No, you're blocking in stage directions, and not just by the time of the first performance. We would have off book rehearsals weeks before the performances. You learned how to get yourself in character. If I had a part in a play, when I entered the rehearsal hall, I was no longer Jim. I was addressed as that character. Sounds strict. It was at times, but come performance time, you thanked God you had Howard Palmer as your director, because you had confidence and you were ready to face the audience. Mister Palmer cared, I can't say that about all the teachers I've had over the years. Some seemed to be only here for the beer, as they say. I had a chemistry teacher who basically refused to teach anything. You were here to read the textbook, and if you didn't understand it, too bad. I had teachers who made fun of my last name. I had others who joined in with the students as they teased and mocked me for things. But mister Palmer was different. I remember a musical we were doing. We had a horrible first dress rehearsal. Lines were being dropped, q's missed. It was a disaster. The cast got an earfull from Palmer when it mercifully came to an end. He said, we didn't seem to care whether the play came off or not. You could see the disappointment on his face as he left the theater. That night, the entire cast and crew decided we needed to energize ourselves and get our heads straight, so, believe it or not, we all went to the movies. It was a night at a drive in movie theater. Yeah, we had those back Then, during a break in the entertainment, the entire cast decided to sing songs from the musical, so we all charged around the drive in movie lot, singing at the top of our lung songs from the musical. I'm sure we annoyed the heck out of the other moviegoers and the staff. About our second or third lap around the lot, who do we run into but mister Palmer. We had no idea he'd be there, and he had no idea we would be there. But there he stood a look of disbelief on his face as he realized what we had done. I could have sworn I saw tears well up as he realized that perhaps we really did care about the production. The next nights, for our final dress rehearsal and performances, we hit it out of the park. A little outing to the drive in movie injected new life and purpose into the play, and we packed in the audiences and had rave reviews. Before I was a part of the Garden City East High School drama department called Panther Players Theater at the time to reflect the school's sports mascot. I was a shy, introverted, pimply faced kid who really couldn't speak, couldn't act, and didn't know the first thing about being on stage. A knywhy. I wanted to go into radio, and I figured the best place to start might be in drama. So I tried out for the Panther Players Theater production of Jack and the Beanstalk. Strangely enough, I got a minor part. I was so excited I could barely contain myself. My character was Nicholas, and I was one of the townspeople. My job was to look up the beanstalk as gold coins came floating down. I was to blurt out gold money, huawe sawie whatever. I was just supposed to react to the gold coins that came out of nowhere. Well, this was all well and good, except for one thing. When we got to dress rehearsal, where we used actual props and sets and things, someone had the bright idea of using lockshers to represent the gold coins. So I go to the base of the beanstalk, look up and got beamed no pun intended by a handful of lockwashers that a stage hand threw in my face. My eyes were watering. I was in a monicum of pain, but Ali I was gonna impress mister Palmer if it killed me. So I stayed in character and, although a bit wobbly, recited my lines and pretended that I didn't just get blasted in the schnas with a bunch of metal hardware. Of course, mister Palmer knew right away that lockwashers were not the way to go, so they changed them out with something lightweight. But my tenacity and ability to stay in character despite getting a mouthful of lockwashers paid off. After Beanstalk, I was cast in more and more roles, big parts. I was the lead and Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water had major roles and once upon a mattress how to succeed in business without really trying, and believe it or not, I even played Winnie the Pooh in the children's production of that play. All in all I did up artil twenty five full length or one act plays during my high school years and became president of Panther Players Theater. At my high school commencement ceremony, mister Palmer surprised me and everyone when he got up and spoke about quote, this kid who came to him in his fresh Schmer he couldn't talk, he couldn't act, didn't know how to present himself on stage, but wound up being one of the top actors in the drama company and student leader of the group. Yeah, he was talking about me, But I never would have done any of that had it not been for mister Palmer's vision, training, caring, and attention to detail. He was under mister Palmer's tutorage that I learned the basics of public speaking, that shepherded me through forty years of radio broadcasting and management, and oh, by the way, allowed me to do this podcast. So there I was in the middle, a skinny, no talent kid raised up by a caring teacher and the prospect of a career in a field that I had dreamed about since I was a small child. My experience in that high school drama department, under the guidance of Howard Palmer, gave me the confidence and courage to pursue that dream. I recently went back to Garden City High School from my fiftieth class reunion. I saw several of my old drama buddies, but no one seemed to know what happened to mister Palmer. The school principal, who was gracious enough to give us a tour of the school, said she had heard that he had retired some years back, but didn't know anything else. When I got home, I did a little searching and found Howard Palmer's obituary. He died in twenty fifteen at age seventy five. As Bet Middler's song goes, did you ever know that You're my hero and everything I would like to be? I can fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings. I never got to tell mister Palmer the effect he had on my life. I really would have liked to. He was the unlikely character in my life who had patience and a vision for me. He started that wind blowing in my direction, told me how to spread my wings and let me catch the currents. His hero status has stood the test of time, and looking back, I can honestly say that Howard Palmer is the closest thing to a hero that I think I will. I forget Jim Poland. And that's my view from the middle.