Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn

Video posted to YouTube by videomix22.

Photograph courtesy of Wikipedia under GNU Free Documentation License.

It requires more strength to be gentle, so it’s the everyday encounter of  life that I think we’ve prepared children for and prepared them to be good to other people and to consider other people.” Bob Keeshan aka “Captain Kangaroo” and “Clarabell“

I believe Bob Keeshan, a New York boy who attended Fordham University, kept Captain Kangaroo (a children’s show) alive on TV for forty years.  His gentle manner and respect for children lives on in the hearts of boomers.  I think we all watched him weekday mornings before leaving for school. I would sip my Red Rose tea (with two spoons of sugar) and savor my two slices of white-bread toast with butter and cinnamon sugar along with the Captain, Mr. Greenjeans, moose and the others. For this Brooklyn girl, Captain Kangaroo was fine stand-in for a mostly absent dad.  

Among the many lessons Mr. Keeshan taught in his Captain persona was that it’s okay to be silly, to laugh, and to have fun . . . as long as it’s not at anyone else’s expense. He was a gentleman of the old school, wise and gracious, like Perry Como and Fred Astaire . . . different talents, of course, but the same kind of sensibility. Once upon a time in Brooklyn, I had uncles and cousins who were the same way, gentle and gentlemen. One can’t help but appreciate the caliber of such men when so often confronted with the callous and the coarse.

This post is dedicated with appreciation to Bob Keeshan and to all the gentle, gracious men I have known, including and especially, my son.

~ by brooklynmemoriesmostgreen on October 22, 2009.