HERE'S MY LETTER TO DR. ROVIT
HIS REPLY FOLLOWS!
Bilingual Long Version of This Page
After Buddy Rovit's death at 90 years of age,
His cousin contacted me because I had shared the
link to this letter. HERE IS THE CORRESPONDENCE.
Earl Rovit April 23, 2013
New York, NY
Dear Dr. Rovit,
I'm not sure if you would remember me at all since I only knew you when I was a child in Louisville, Kentucky in around 1956 or so. I am the son of Gerald A. Cole and Jean H. Cole and we lived in Kentucky where my father, a biology professor, worked at the University of Louisville. They were friends of yours. My parents' closest friends in Kentucky were Bill and Mary Furnish.
I'm writing simply because I'm curious to know if my memory of so long ago is correct or not. I hope you might respond to this letter and I hope that you might find it of interest in any case.
Here's what I remember. You had a convertible, a big (yellow or beige?) beast and my two brothers and two sisters and I more than once rode in the back in comfort and style through the city to your house. It was a thrill for us to be in such a grand kind of automobile and to feel the air rushing by. It was so different from riding in the woody station wagon in which we traveled to Alaska and back again in 1955.
HERE'S WHERE WE MET THE FURNISHES ON THE WAY. THE BADLANDS OF SOUTH DAKOTA.
You lived on the top of a hill and my memory has no vision of any other house atop it. Only yours.
We knew you as "Buddy Rovit." You told us kids a tale of a magic marble, a blue one, with which you could communicate and get advice for yourself and for us. We were very young and were totally credulous and thus fascinated. We wanted to see the blue magic marble, but you said that it had been lost in the brush on the side of the house. Naturally the five of us immediately set to searching for it.
We came up with a green marble that had to suffice. You said that you knew the green marble and that it, too, was indeed a magic one, and held it to your ear and told us what it was telling you. I cannot remember what you said the marble had to say.
We children believed you to be fabulously wealthy living up on the hill and driving a three-hole convertible Buick (or whatever it was), and I have a vivid memory of sitting with you and your wife Honey in your living room. We were children and shy and naïve, not knowing much in the way of propriety and one of us asked aloud, "Why are you so rich?"
"I know," said my sister. "Because Honey is an artist."
We were under the impression that artists made a lot of money. Perhaps it was because Jon Gnagy in those days was an artist on TV and people on television certainly had to be rich, but that's only a guess.
Here's a THREE-HOLE BUICK
There appears to also be a "Four-hole Buick."
I remember years later in Tempe, Arizona I mentioned Buddy Rovit, and my mother said that you had published a book on Hemingway. I don't remember if she had a copy, but she may have as she liked Hemingway.
In 1961, when I was ten I was riding in the car with my mom driving and she suddenly blurted out what she had just heard on the radio, "Ernest Hemingway died!"
At any rate, these memories come to me when I think of my childhood and when my brother and I play "Let's Have a Hemingway Conversation:"
"You're a worthless rummy, aren't you?"
"True enough perhaps but you needn't say so to my face."
"You're a miserable rotter."
"You say the most bloody awful things..."
As you can see, we aren't very good at it, but it's fun.
I should have consulted my brothers and sisters to check their memories before writing, but I can ask them later. My parents have passed on, so I can't ask them.
Anyway, I'm only writing out of personal curiosity about some fond memories of mine. I'm hoping that you might be kind enough to reply.
Yours truly,
Tom Cole
On May 10, 2013, at 7:42 AM, Earl Rovit emailed me:
In the letter which at this very moment is crawling to you across the USPS system, I forgot to note that Yes, we were filthy rich at Louisville. I not only had a salary of $4200 a year (four courses a semester, I think) but I had the option of teaching in the summer and in the Adult Education programs at night. Jerry probably did as well, but I don't know. Bud
I emailed him back May 10, 2013 10:49:42 AM MST To: Earl Rovit
When I got a lot older, I realized that you probably weren't rich.
Looking forward very much to the snail mail.
Yours,
Tom
Dear Tom:
What a pleasant and unexpected surprise to get your articulate, detailed, sometimes-right, sometimes-wrong memories of some sixty or so years ago. Of course I remember Jerry and Jean who were among my very favorite people in Louisville. (Bill Furnish, as well, although he was more distant, wittier, and sort of on the sidelines.) Your father—as I recall—remained in the Air Force reserve and would spend something like one Saturday a month flying three or four thousand miles in the new jet fighters to retain his active status and I was very envious of that. (I had been in the infantry.) I can’t remember how many children you were but I do recall Jerry announcing that the most recent addition would be named “Terminus.” And I also can’t remember if you folks left Louisville before I did. We did have a convertible—a powder blue Ford—which I traded away for a Rambler when our first child was born in 1958. Your recollections of the house on the hill are vaguely accurate. It was on a hill, but it had been the slave quarters of a larger house which was a little higher than ours. The marbles elude me, but it was the kind of story interaction with kids which I tended to engage in and enjoy. Not at that time having children of my own, I thought your family was sort of ideal. In fact, the few years I spent at Louisville (I was in my 20’s) were, on the whole, quite happy ones. I liked the town, I liked the University, I liked my colleagues, I liked the students and I was learning how to be a teacher. A great deal of water—in fact, floods and floods of it—some glistening silver, some flotsam—have passed under the bridge since, but my Louisville memories are almost entirely happy ones, And I thank you for refreshing them for me.
Again, thank you
New York, NY 10023
Here's his envelope:
And the letter itself:
