Remembering Ed Anzur, one year later

This picture may look a bit like Don Draper and the little girl who plays his daughter on "Mad Men," but it's actually me and my dad, Ed Anzur, who passed away a year ago this month. Ed was my first and biggest fan, as you can tell by the way he is paying rapt attention to whatever it is I am announcing in the picture. As I have written before, he was a big factor in my life as a journalist. He never met a stranger and always managed to find out where you were from or where you went to high school.

The real Ed didn't have much in common with Don Draper, except that he did enjoy a Manhattan or a beer when he came home from working at DuPont. He was a real people person with strong Catholic values, definitely not the philandering type, although he liked nothing better than a joke that was "naughty but nice."
Ironically, I moved back to California from Florida to help support my mom after Ed became bedridden. When he died peacefully in his bed last year, I was hundreds of miles away, out of town with my husband and son, getting ready for a day of skiing in Mammoth. It wasn't much of a ski trip, unless you count weeping and worrying about how my mom was doing back in LA with a dead body, four dogs and sheriff's deputies in her house. I was so distracted that I hit a twig on a steep, icy slope and nearly pulled a Natasha Richardson. But one morning the three of us gathered on the top of Mammoth Mountain and realized that Ed was in a better place.

So we're heading up to the mountain again one year later for a little family time, and we're going to think about Ed. He was a sporty guy, but never got around to taking up skiing. He enjoyed tennis right up until his stroke in 1990, and even managed to shuffle around the golf course for a few years after that. I think Ed is looking out for us from up above, because the massive snow dump of last week is over, the snow should be awesome and the driving conditions look pretty good. I can't help but think how proud he would be that I am training to go back on the air soon at KFI radio. He'd be getting the word out to all his friends via handwritten notes. He never got friendly with computers, but he was the original social networker.

I really miss him, but in a way he's still here.

You Never Know Who You'll Meet in High School

Yes, this is how I looked in my high school days, although I was usually wearing a song girl uniform or a gynmastics leotard when I wasn't stirring up trouble on the school newspaper. I'm going to begin 2010 with a flashback to my classmates at Homestead High School in Cupertino, CA. It's courtesy of a former classmate, Dave Marshall, who is now director of secondary education for a large school district in Kentucky. He put together a power point to inspire both students and teachers, making the point that you never know where the people you meet in high school will end up. Among those at Homestead with me in the 1970s...Just in case you don't recognize them, they are:

Joe Kane, the first man to navigate the entire length of the Amazon river and write a book about it.
US Olympic soccer coach Steve Sampson, younger brother of my classmate Mike.

And Steve Jobs, who started a little company called Apple.

Dave's motivational presentation also includes author Amy Tan, who went to a neighboring high school. He might have included some other pretty amazing classmates such as Debra Jarvis, who went from head cheerleader to ordained minister and has published several books, including a personal account of her courageous battle with breast cancer, called "It's Not About the Hair."
Anyway, I'm honored to be included as well.