One degree of separation
Saturday March 10th 2007, 2:25 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

I was talking to my folks yesterday; Dad had found my old high school graduation program and they’d been reminiscing over it. Dad went from there to saying, “You remember the Colberts across the street?”

Like I could forget? The family with all those kids, including boys my brothers’ ages and one my age? The ones with the big trampoline? And the house fire? Stevie was my little brother’s best friend. They moved away I think before Stevie made it to kindergarten, and then, word came back to their old neighborhood when I was in 10th grade–I have vivid memories of sitting in Mr. Battori’s English class at Churchill High School, wondering about the use of studying this stupid Silas Marner book when Peter and Paul and their dad had just died in a plane crash.

What Dad said next made me go google to check it out, and there’s a Wikipedia entry that says it all: the Wash. DC birth, the plane crash, the big Catholic family, the change in the pronunciation of the last name.

I guess Stephen Colbert isn’t little Stevie anymore. Good for him for what he has become (and wow!) I’m just hoping, by writing this out, that his family might perhaps come to know that their old neighbors always cared about how life played out for them after all that.


7 Comments so far
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Sooo, John T. and little Stevie, huh? Wow. You are connected!

Pam in Ohio

Comment by Anonymous 03.12.07 @ 12:06 pm

I’m pulling a complete blank: John T.?

Comment by AlisonH 03.12.07 @ 12:31 pm

Too funny – what a small world it is. I read the interview he and Jon did with Rolling Stone, he seemed very wistful and nostalgic about that time. I’m sure you were as good a friend then as now. 🙂

Comment by terri 03.13.07 @ 7:33 am

Steve was the baby brother that I thought was so adorable; I remember him toddling down their hilly front yard. I’m afraid that re his show, like I say, we don’t even own a TV–actually, the new computer can be one, but we’re just not in the habit. But I’ve seen the video of him roasting Bush (thank goodness he did–SOMEbody had to tell the man to his face… Oh, wait. I’m not making this a political blog…)

Comment by AlisonH 03.13.07 @ 11:04 am

John Travolta, Alison had emailed me some time ago, when she found our I am rather fond of John T., telling me she used to babysit for some kids whose mom went to school with him. Wow.

Pam in Ohio

Comment by Anonymous 03.14.07 @ 9:24 am

Ah, context–now I getcha, Pam! And thank you, Terri, I went and found and read that interview too.

Now, if I could tell Steve about how Peter and Paul, along with Danny immediately across the street from them, and a whole bunch of other neighborhood kids including from our family, would play a pickup game of kickball at the T-intersection most summer evenings. Right behind the spot where that photo was shot from.

Comment by AlisonH 03.14.07 @ 12:58 pm

(The photo in the next entry up.)

Comment by AlisonH 03.14.07 @ 1:00 pm



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