Spies, Paris, Football and an unconscious nod to P.T. Barnham.
(Lake Tahoe Real Estate Blog / September 8, 2011 / Richard Bolen)
(Here's a post we did back in 2007. The start of the football season is a nice place to bring it back. Hope you enjoy.)
Here’s another story about our background. We hope you find it interesting. Before we talk about football and what that might have to do with our real estate practice, here’s how we got to France and what we were doing there.
Our family lived in Paris from 1957 to 1960. Our father, a career army infantry officer, was then stationed at Orly Air Base, part of Orly Airport (Aeroport de Paris), where he was responsible for securing and transporting classified material coming out of the Pentagon and Washington, D.C. across Paris to S.H.A.P.E (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), which is where the allied command center had been since shortly after the end of WWII.
This was before Charles De Gaulle got into a squabble with SHAPE and NATO and subsequently set a deadline that all allied forces in France would become under French command, which effectively caused all allied military presence to leave France. SHAPE relocated outside of Brussels in 1967, and all other American forces that had been stationed in France went elsewhere as well. Incidentally, this meant that Orly Air Force base was vacated too, the instance of which was a step in it’s transition to become Charles De Gaulle International Airport.
As an aside, and two years later than our story, our father’s “office” was a bunker-like, concrete block of a building that was located adjacent to the Air Base’s main terminal. It was so close to the tarmac that parked aircraft were literally no more than a stone’s throw away.
Back then the top passenger transport airplane was the Lockheed C-121 Constellation. On May 15, 1960 three identical Constellations appeared next to dad’s office, one of which was very special. It was the Columbine III, the name Mamie Eisenhower had given to Air Force One. It was there for two days, and with our father’s security clearance, Gary and were able to get on it.
President Eisenhower was there for the opening of an East-West Summit Conference with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which is better known for it’s collapse and failure than anything else. This was the summit conference that was doomed by the U2 Spy Plane incident with pilot Gary Powers, which occurred fifteen days earlier. On May 16, the day the Summit started, Khrushchev left the conference abruptly and demonstrably, signaling its demise, in large part because Eisenhower would not adhere to Khrushchev's demand that he make apologies over the spy plane incident.
I remember watching President Eisenhower walking out of the terminal toward Air Force One that afternoon. The mastermind of D-Day and the allied victory in WWIl was smiling, presidential. He stopped to receive flowers from one of my 7th grade classmates. If I remember correctly, Gary also shook his hand – my brother was then only eight.
Khrushchev’s airplane was parked in the civilian sector of Orly Airport, a good distance away and out of eyesight from where we all were. An Air Force officer, and family friend, watched Khrushchev’s departure incognito to make sure that the Soviet Premier left the “conference” first. I guess this was a protocol, face-saving kind of thing, that somehow who-left-first was responsible for the summit’s failure, but this was a major, cold war embarrassment for our country. It was really a big deal then, though one of seemingly much less consequence now. Nevertheless, when Khrushchev’s lift-off was confirmed, Air Force One and President Eisenhower took off shortly thereafter.
Are You Ready for Some Football?
I remember listening to THE game clearly. It was December 29, 1958, my parent’s 13th wedding anniversary. I was 11 years old, and a major football fan – I loved playing that game then as much as anything I knew. It was on AFRN (Armed Forces Radio Network); there was no american television in Paris at that time. What I was listening to was one very special football game indeed.
What we’re talking about, of course, is the 1958 NFL Championship Game. It was played at Yankee Stadium in New York City and was the first ever National Football League game to go into sudden death overtime. The final score was Baltimore Colts 23, New York Giants 17. The game has since become widely known as The Greatest Game Ever Played. It marked the beginning of the NFL's popularity surge, and eventual rise to the top of the United States sports market. 
The quarterbacks for the two championship teams were Johnny Unitas for the Colts and Charley Conerly for the Giants. Alan Ameche scored the game winning, overtime touchdown. Twelve players and 3 coaches from this game are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
To us, the game was both great and disappointing; we were Giants fans. My room was covered with photos of the players. We play acted the games final moments time and time again, especially in neighborhood games with our friends, and as often as we could get away with it with them, we switched the outcome into a Giants win.
Almost as clearly as I remember listening to the game, I remember coming home from school one afternoon in the following Spring. I know it was springtime because it was light outside. Though most people don’t think about it, Rome is further North on the planet than New York City. This means that Paris is about as far North as upper Canada. Most of the time when we lived in Paris it was dark when we went to and got home from school, except in the early fall and late spring. In any event, it was light outside when we got home from school that day. I know it was a school day because dad was home, which was rare enough for me to remember him being home from work that early. “What’s Dad doing home,” Gary remarked as we got off the school bus.
Mom and Dad were in the living room when we walked in the house. Another couple was with them that we had not met before. As I remember Dad was also out of uniform, another signal that something special was up. 'Son I want you to meet someone,” is what he said through a cheshire cat of a grin. “Is that Charley Conerly?” is what I asked hopefully, and all four of them burst out laughing. Charley’s lovely wife Perian was the other person in the room.
Here we had come home from school like every other day, but this one to find Charley Conerly, the quarterback of the New York Football Giants, one of the guarterbacks of the greatest game ever played in our living room. Gary and I were absolutely beside ourselves with excitement and joy. That championship game was here before us. It was a dream come true.
My father and Charley Conerly were life long friends from the same home town, the same place where Gary and I were born. They went to grade school, high school and to the same college. After my father was commissioned for active duty in 1943, they didn’t see as much of each other, but always remained good friends. So it wasn’t a stretch that Charley and Perian visited us when they came to Paris to vacation in 1959, but Gary and I had never met them. The flow of Dad’s and Charley’s careers had never put us in our home town at the same time. 
Before we tell you what happened next, I’d like to mention a little more about Perian Conerly. She’s a remarkable person and a family friend to this day. My mom regularly plays bridge with Perian, and both are excellent masters of the game. The last time I was home I played with both of them at the Country Club, where they can be found in the afternoons more often than not. An avid golfer, Perian often plays in the mornings before bridge. With my dad being a stalwart computerphobe, mom will most likely go over to Perian’s to read this post.
Perian is also the author of “Backseat Quarterback,” an acclaimed book told from the perspective of NFL football wives. The Washington Post touted her for "having written the best book on pro football in a long time." The New York Times, for which Mrs. Conerly wrote occasional sports columns, said that Backseat Quarterback "is exactly the kind of book that one would expect Perian Conerly to write. Its pages shine with her charm, gaiety, wit, intelligence, and sparkle." Newsweek praised its "comic insight." At one point, Perian’s sports columns appeared frequently in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and the Sporting News.
What happened next is we asked Charley if he would throw some passes with us. The yard behind our house was a large open expanse encircled by other military housing. This was where we often played football with our friends, many of whom lived in the other surrounding houses nearby. I do remember asking the question, I do remember the look in Charley’s eye when he said yes, and I remember catching some of those passes. It was like playing catch with Babe Ruth.
What I don’t remember, and I guess it’s the point of the story as it relates to representing someone in real estate, is that I promoted it. Apparently I had enough time to go around the neighborhood and tell everyone that Charley Conerly would be throwing passes in the field behind our houses. I also may have had him sign some autographs that I sold to kids in the neighborhood, I think for a quarter, which I later thought should have been for a dollar.
It’s funny, but I don’t remember any of that. I do remember though putting on fairs, games, contests and just about anything I could think of in that back yard. We’d charge an entry fee and give away candy for prizes that we bought at the post exchange or in the nearby French village of Grigny. And I don’t know where any of it came from, or where I got it, but I’ve always been interested in promoting things since I can remember. P.T. Barnham has always been of interest to me. Since then, we’ve promoted a lot of things, from art and things we’ve created to business… we’ve even created and promoted businesses from scratch, one that made in all the way to NASDAQ with a decade long run – I was a co-founder and the SR VP Marketing. Now we’ve created our real estate practice, and this blog is one truthful, high-road way of promoting that. Right now we’re promoting 11 listings, and every time we sell something for you and that makes you happy, it feels just as good to us as, well… catching a pass from Charley Conerly.
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