Published: September 26, 2009 10:15 pm         

Much ado about a really special day

Just so you’ll know, this is my day.

You are welcome to enjoy it in any way you see fit, to be sure, but be aware it ultimately belongs to me.

It has been mine for the past 57 years.

That is how long it has been since, on a Saturday morning in Philadelphia, Pa., I was born.

Ever since, Sept. 27 has belonged to me.

Not that I am alone in having this as a birthday, mind you. Bob Curiano, bassist for the rock group Mink DeVille, was born the same day. I’ve never heard of him, either.

I have heard of singer Avril Lavigne, who was born on this day in 1984, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, born on this day in 1972, and actor/singer Shaun Cassidy, born this day in 1958.

Other famous people born on Sept. 27 are former NBA player Steve Kerr (1965), ex-Philadelphia Phillies’ star Mike Schmidt (1949) and rockers Meat Loaf (1947) and Randy Bachman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Guess Who (1943).

Going a little farther back, those sharing my day include actor Wilford Brimley (1934), actress Jayne Meadows (1926), actor William Conrad, the radio voice of the Lone Ranger and TV’s “Cannon” (1920), actor George Raft (1895), political cartoonist Thomas Nast, he gave us the modern interpretation of Santa Claus (1840) and American revolutionary figure Samuel Adams (1722).

On Sept. 27, 1952, President Harry Truman gave a radio speech from the Oval Office urging Americans to give to their local Community Chest campaigns. The Community Chest lives on as a feature of the game “Monopoly,” but the name has been supplanted in this country by the moniker United Way.

Interestingly, Truman invoked the name of Jesus as part of his appeal, a move that would undoubtedly draw all kinds of flak today.

“Over 1,900 years ago, Jesus Christ was asked the question: Who is my neighbor? He replied with the immortal story of the Good Samaritan — how he helped a stranger he found by the roadside, a man who had been robbed and beaten and left for dead. Our duty to our neighbors is the same today as it was in the time of Jesus,” said Truman.

The Sept. 27, 1952 version of Eleanor Roosevelt’s newspaper column “My Day,” detailed the former first lady having her trip to Massachusetts delayed by weather. She went on to write of her first meeting with a young Massachusetts Congressman, name of John F. Kennedy. She said the young JFK had “certain very good qualities.”

Baseball’s Boston Braves won their last game ever on Sept. 27, 1952, before moving to Milwaukee the next year.

The No. 1 song in the country Sept. 27, 1952, was “You Belong To Me,” by Jo Stafford.

The Sept. 27, 1952 edition of the Buffalo (N.Y.) Courier-Express detailed a confrontation between a jet plane and six colorful unidentified flying objects in the skies over upstate New York. Incidentally, an Associated Press report from July 30, 1952, mentioned a salesman from Enid, Sid Eubanks, who told police his car had almost been swept from the road by a 400-foot, yellow-brown flying saucer.

The Sept. 27, 1952, edition of the British Medical Journal contained an article titled “Case of Idiopathic Porphyria.” Who are they calling idiopathic, anyway?

The New York Times ran a review of a movie called “Night Without Sleep,” on Sept. 27, 1952, calling the film, which starred Linda Darnell and Gary Merrill, a “bleak exercise in morbid mooning.”

I’ve been called worse. Anyway, enjoy your day, or, rather, my day.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle. E-mail him at jmullin@enidnews.com.