Remembering Sid Gillman, innovative football coach, Jan. 3, 2003

By Elli Wohlgelernter

Innovative football coach Sid Gillman, who died Jan. 3, 2003, was not only a leading authority on passing theories and tactics, thus revolutionizing the game with his downfield-passing schemes; but his original use of analyzing film footage to prepare for football games fundamentally altered the way all future coaches would get ready for their next opponent.

Remembering my father, Michael H. Abbey, 27 years later

By Alan D. Abbey

It was simply an unlucky twist of fate that my father and John Lennon died on the same day in 1980. There was no common thread in their lives; in fact, my father disliked most rock and roll music.

While he never kept me from buying or listening to the Beatles, his music remained that of his generation: Big Band jazz and pop/torch singers, from Sinatra to Streisand (who had once served my mother and father Chinese food in some Brooklyn restaurant where she was working), Shirley Bassey to Lena Horne. I have those records now, the actual black vinyl discs they used to place on the “changer” that stacked two or three discs at once.

My father’s death was so unlike Lennon’s, as well. Lennon’s came in a sharp and bright blast from a crazed fan’s handgun; my father’s came after more than 18 months of brain cancer, which ate away at his intelligence, emotions and motor skills.

Remembering Norman Mailer: ‘Who’s da broad?’, ‘No more BS’

Jerusalem-based journalist Elli Wohlgelernter, Sports and Pop Music Editor of the new Encyclopaedia Judaica (among many other things), who we expect will become a regular contributor to In My Heart, writes (courtesy of TabloidBaby):

“I only met Norman Mailer once, at the Ali-Norton fight at Yankee Stadium, September 28, 1976. It was a controversial fight then, and the result – an Ali win by decision – remains in question to this day. I thought Norton had won, as did he and many others. After the fight – I had jumped over the railing and was sitting in the eighth row ringside – Mailer stood and discussed with everyone who was milling around why he thought Ali won, showing his notes round by round, and why Ali’s use of his Rope-a-Dope trick had saved him, as it had against Foreman two years earlier (the subject of his book, The Fight).

“Standing nearby was his latest and last wife, the lovely model Norris Church. A bunch of fellas from the ‘hood, watching Mailer’s pontification over the fight, asked, ‘Who’s he?’

“Informed he was one of the preeminent writers of our time, they were uninterested. ‘Yeah? Who’s da broad?’”