Reaching for long ago and probably not always accurately chronological memories in my mind, it was in the 8th or 9th year of M*A*S*H, the wildly successful comedy/dramedy about a medical unit during the Korean War, that I first met Thad. It was, for sure, the late 1970s. I was in law school, in New York, but made my second trip in 1978 to Los Angeles, having fallen in love with it the year before during the first visit. I had formed the idea of being an attorney very early, when I was about 14, for reasons that, frankly, still elude me now that I am retired from practice. But a sojourn at my college radio station, WFUV, Fordham University, had me hankering for one of two different roads. Either I wanted to be an on air talent, or courtesy of a half-hour radio sitcom a fellow student, Len Klatt, produced, wrote and directed, (surprise of surprises as I had never harbored the desire before junior year of college) a television writer. So, before law school I worked at a local New York radio station behind the scenes, and almost got a job as a rip and read newscaster at another local station in Lakewood, New Jersey, until my father's impassioned logic (yes, there is such a thing!) convinced me that I ought to seek a more linear career. That didn't mean I couldn't pursue the writing thing, and by the end of my college experience in 1976, Len and I had become writing partners.
The enterprising Len had discovered that Thad was a former student at Fordham University, our Alma Mater, and also the Alma Mater of Alan Alda, the star of M*A*S*H. The former was only three years or so ahead of us. At some point, Thad actually read one of our speculation scripts and sent an enormously encouraging letter. And I suppose it is at that moment, I mark the beginning of a 40 year friendship.
Len had already met Thad in 1977 during a trip to Los Angeles. During a joint vacation trip with Len to Los Angeles in 1978, I had my chance. My memory is vague where I was introduced exactly--I think it was before or during my first visit to a television studio, Twentieth Century Fox to let Len and I see the set, and introduce us to a few of the cast members. I have three impressions of the introduction, rather than memory.
The first was that Thad had an amazing handshake. It was strong, and sustained. I always liked good handshakes. There's nothing like someone seeming glad to meet you that inspires confidence, someone who has an energy. The second was his casual/not casual dress, a polo shirt under a well tailored hounds tooth jacket. Like many of his friends, I would later learn that Brooks Brothers was his primary, if not sole, haberdasher. I am certain that a few years ago, when we had dinner, he was wearing the very same jacket, or one of its later iterations. The third was that I found him incredibly attractive. It was many years later that I admitted that to very few friends. And it always remained the case though I never revealed it to Thad. There was something dangerous about Thad. And the one thing I never have done in my life, particularly as to relationships, is dangerous. But that didn't mean I wasn't attracted to it. And couldn't be a friend.
Oh, I suppose there was a fourth thing as I recall riding in the back seat of Thad's BMW on the way, perhaps, to the studio where we got that great tour, met Loretta Swit, and Harry Morgan, and Alan Alda, and watched a scene being filmed. I was feeling a little embarrassed. I was still in law school and living at home, driving my Dad's Pontiac Volare, on rare occasion when I drove at all. Here was this guy just a few years older than me and he had already been a writer for more than a few television shows. I mean he had done an episode of ROOTS, an historic mini-series. And there had been the Electric Company. And then, pun intended, there was Maude. I had maybe 4,000 dollars in the bank, and I was still in school, and a neophyte writer, if the fates allowed. This guy took risks. I didn't know if ever I would take such a risk to forego a regular job for a creative life. No, I knew. Unless the winds of chance blew a major, and blatant, opportunity, my way, I was going to take the safer route.
Well, I shouldn't have been so hard on myself I suppose, for I did take a risk of sorts, in 1981, and moved to Los Angeles hoping to get a job in the law (once I got my law license there as well as in New York) while continuing to write with Len, who still lived in New York. Both of us had remained in touch with Thad, but in different ways, and in different intensities. To say that Thad was a sports fan would be to understate his passion. He had not only been a bat boy for the Yankees, the genesis of which I used to, and I am sure many others who cared for him felt was a key part of an autobiography he should have written (an a biography someone I hope will consider), but hockey was life's blood to him as well, the Kings his team. That wasn't an area in which I excelled in conversation, but Len did. Hockey was a sport that he not only liked, but himself played, well into this decade. When he stayed with me, for about a week, during a transition in his living quarters, his hockey bag and skates and sticks dominated my small apartment. His knees were in pain, but his soul soared when he played, even if he spent the evening with an ice pack to reduce swelling.
In 1982, when Len was visiting Los Angeles, and MASH was wrapping up its run, Thad invited us to his gorgeous little house in Burbank to watch "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". That is at least what I remember. His girlfriend at the time, and for my money, the love of his life, Roz Doyle, who would be a producer for WINGS (and the inspiration for the character name on Frasier) until her too early death in 1991, padded around while Thad offered his thoughts on the last episode.
Swatches of time passed. Months. Years. He moved around. Martha's Vineyard. Washington, where he grew up. Places of which I have no idea. Back to Los Angeles as he did other series. The man was a prolific creative force. Len would hear from him; they'd see each other when Thad was in New York.
In the meantime, writing as a focus became impossible with my various jobs, first as a secretary while I passed the California Bar, then as an attorney with a single practitioner, then as a prosecutor for the State Bar. Safe had beckoned and I had gone to her. And something about having become friends with Thad meant never asking him to pull any strings for us.
Over the years, I learned a lot about his life, and despite his persistence in getting into the business how unsure he was of his palpable, manifest talent, and seemingly unaware of just how BIG his successes had been. I think he would be surprised just how significant he is considered to have been in the entertainment industry, now that he is gone. The obituaries correctly view him as a pioneer. My critique of the industry that gives him homage after his passing is that they weren't quite as solicitous about jobs for a more mature member of the writing community, which he had become. Though I am an outsider to the industry, I have observed that the "old time" writers have difficulty competing with the young firebrands who know very little but think they know everything.
He seemed not to have faith in his own intelligence though the proof of it was in print and on the networks and beyond. But he persisted. He had many stories left to write. Lots of them were about baseball and some of the old timers he had known. I remember meeting him for some lunch or dinner in one of his apartments while he regaled me with an escalating enthusiasm punctuated by his explosive laughter with another tale I had not heard. I would glance at his writing desk, perfectly organized, with equally sharpened pencils (Thad was not a fan of on screen writing--he was contemptuous of anything technological-- though ultimately he had to make some concessions), and index cards with incredibly neatly printed short ideas. I kept telling him to write his autobiography, this son of a teacher and a dentist, who had become a Yankee Bat Boy, written jokes for Johnny Carson and Joan Rivers, was on staff with the Electric Company, a PBS fun but educational children's show, all while he was in his 20s, who fell in love with the famous and not so famous, who was on staff or producing a bevy of the golden shows of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
He was complex, mercurial--the kind of person to whom I am often drawn-but that didn't always make it easy to be his friend. He could push you away. Then he'd draw you back. When he was on his game, he could be charming, and conversation with him could lead to an engaging several hours. He charmed even my curmudgeonly father, with whom he shared a Thanksgiving dinner one year. Among his favorite haunts for those type of evenings was Peppone's in Brentwood. He liked the old style restaurants, the ones with the enveloping circular booths and candles and waiters a century old.
Our last conversation as of old was not at Peppone's but at the Smoke House in Burbank in March or April. Was it possible that I had known him so long? It seemed like yesterday. Everything seems like yesterday at this stage. In the last few years, so many who have been threads in the tapestry of my life have died.
The last brief call was just before he went home to see his sick, elderly father in Washington. I think that was early August. He was just letting me know he was going. We'd talk when he got back. His father died on August 16.
I got a text from Len on September 15. He happened to see on the net that Thad had died, apparently on September 6, only a few weeks after his father.
Thad would not be coming back.
Things sort of just suspended. Another thread, a big one, from the tapestry. I thought, "He didn't get to write his autobiography." And then I cried for a while.
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