My Dinner With David

When I attended college (mostly spent in a pot-induced haze), I was a student member of the university's Speakers Bureau. Each student was asked to host a speaker during the course of the year. As luck would have it, I was assigned David Halbertstam, author of "The Best and the Brightest," a Pullitzer-prize winning book about the JFK/LBJ team that got us entangled in the Vietnam war.

So what did I do? I cooked the only thing I could afford and had experience with...a spaghetti dinner, and invited him to the ramshackle house I shared with three other students and a drunken sot named Scott (That's a story for another day.) This thrilling dinner date took place around 1976, after Mr. Halbertstam was already well-known, probably more regularly dining with major politicians and other hoi poloi. And here he was, stuck eating a cheaply made spaghetti dinner, surrounded by a bunch of semi-conscious students. As I think about it now, I don't recall having a lucid conversation with the man; didn't ask any questions, simply fed him and the friends I had coerced into joining us, and delivered him to the speech on time. Can't imagine what he must have thought, or how many dozens of these dinners he had to sit through. But I recall Mr. Halberstam as being friendly and relatively easy to be with as he sat in our messy house in his business suit.

It makes me sad to read that David Halberstam died in a car accident today. Since our dinner together I have often enjoyed his commentaries on some of the more erudite talks shows, like Charlie Rose or NPR. (A favorite quote from David was when he was going through a long story explaining how he had a 'small epiphany' about something and it's been a favorite phrase at our house for years. How the hell does one have a small epiphany?)

Recently, I discovered he was a huge baseball fan, and if I had only known that in 1975, we would have had more to say to each other. RIP, Mr. Halberstam, and sorry for being such a crappy hostess. Wish we could have a do-over.

BTW: THE RED SOX SWEPT THE WEEKEND SERIES WITH THE MFY's!!! Last night, they hit 4 freakin' home runs in a row. Way happy today. GO SOX!