It was in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I met Kenneth L. Williams. I moved there in May of 1966 and stayed just under a year and a half. I don’t recall exactly where or how I met Ken. But we did meet and became good friends.
Ken was a few years younger than I (and he probably still is). We enjoyed going up into the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff. We would drive up there as far as we could in my Datsun roadster. A little, white, 2-seat convertible with very little ground clearance. Then we would hike further toward the peak of whichever mountain we were on. Later I purchased a 1942 Willys Jeep. This was, as you might have assumed from the aforementioned information, a former military vehicle. No top. Painted red, mostly to cover the rust, I suspect. The original engine had been replaced with a Chevy V-8 engine.
Ken and I exchanged knowledge relating to some of our interests. I introduced Ken to the writings of Ayn Rand. Ken introduced me to the satire of Tom Lehrer.
I understand that Tom was typically ivy league (he acquired his educational degrees at Harvard and taught math at Harvard, MIT and Wellesley – couldn’t hold a job, I guess). That education no doubt accounted for his misguided socialistic political views. However, that did not keep him from writing some very funny songs. Some of them were a bit far out but that may have made them even funnier. Tom’s style was to play the piano and sing his songs. Mark Russell later did the same style of political satire, but Tom did it first! So far as I know.
A new album for Tom Lehrer came out a few months before Ken and I met. It was titled That Was the Year That Was. This was the vehicle Ken used to introduce me to Tom. The album is dated in what were current events at the time of its release. If you know enough history you will still find it hilarious. Even if you don’t you will still find some of it funny. If not, well, we need to work on your sense of humor.
One of the songs was titled “Whatever Became Of Hubert?” For those of you too young to remember, or too old to remember, Hubert Humphrey was vice-president of the United States of America at that time. The following quote is part of the introduction to the song:
“I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey, he used to be a senator. . . . every now and then you read something in one of those ‘where are they now’ columns: ‘Whatever became of Deanna Durbin and Hubert Humphrey and so on.’”
Well, I knew who Hubert Humphrey was but I had no idea who Deanna Durbin was. I wondered about her but did not make any attempt to find out anything.
Back to Ken Williams. Several months after I left Flagstaff to return to the mid-west (seeking better wages than available for me in Arizona), Ken was conscripted into the Army. His family moved to Clifton, Colorado, sometime between the time I left Flagstaff and December of 1968, the time Ken was shipped out. We exchanged a few letters and he was sent to Viet Nam. Due to my failure to answer the first letter he sent from Viet Nam, we lost track of each other. To this day I so very much regret my procrastination. Ken, if somehow you manage to read this, please contact me. If anyone else knows the Kenneth L. Williams I am speaking of, please contact him or me so we might find each other again.
Fast forward about 22 or so years. I was now approaching the “Golden Years.” Well, I was nearing the 50th anniversary of my birth (I’m still looking for the gold). I got the invitation and temporary membership card from (you guessed it) American Association of Retired Persons. At that time AARP was simply the acronym but today it is the full name. Maybe they dropped their full name because they figured most of their clientele, being as old as they are, would not be able to remember it. Being young (less than 50) and foolish, I believed that this was an organization that helped retired persons in all sorts of ways. I have since concluded that I was wrong, but that is another issue.
At the time I did join AARP and received a couple of periodicals from them as part of my membership. In one of them, one day, I saw an ad for a CD called Deanna Durbin – America’s Sweetheart of Song! Remembering the Tom Lehrer album, this caught my attention. The picture on the album was of a very pretty girl. Of course, since I had fairly recently acquired a new bride (or did she acquire me?), that did not interest me (wink, wink).
There were 24 songs on the CD and a number of them had a direct appeal to me. There was a mix of Irish, Scottish, opera, and more, including numbers from the likes of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. In short, it had a collection of songs I could not resist – even though I had no idea if this lady could actually sing. I ordered. She could! Wow! What a voice! I can honestly say that her renditions of several of the songs are the very best I have ever heard.
Although I have been web browsing for information on Deanna, and I have found quite a bit, I cannot find something I read some time ago. According to what I read (as I remember it), she chose to quit her movie and singing career to raise a family. She did act in several movies and quite a few albums came out with her singing. It appears that many of the songs were duplicated from one album to another. I suspect that owning any one of them would be a treat for true music lovers.
So that is how I came to find a beautiful (physical and vocally) vocalist by way of a great political satirist by way of a good friend. And that brings me to a repeat of my earlier request: If you are the Kenneth L. Williams spoken of here, or if you know of him and his whereabouts, please help us get back into contact with each other. If you do, I will thank you. Can’t speak for Ken.
