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Tenley Albright
Olympic Gold Medal Figure Skater
When I got out of the hospital, the doctors told my parents, "Parents aren't going to want any of their children to play with her because they will be afraid they will catch polio," even though they wouldn't, but still, not enough was known about it. They said, "The best thing for her is to let her do whatever she has done before that she liked to do. Skating would be a good thing, since that's something she did." I remember very clearly going to the rink that first time -- it seemed huge after being in the hospital so long -- and hanging on to the barrier, sort of creeping along it, and staying down at one end. But when I found that my muscles could do some things, it made me appreciate them more. I've often wondered if maybe the reason it appealed to me so much was that I had a chance to appreciate my muscles, knowing what it was like when I couldn't use them.
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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
Moira and I found it very hard to listen to Nixon. That morning's headlines had been "a new record tonnage of bombs" had been dropped on Cambodia, and the stories in the papers were about free fire zones and napalm, and, and we just couldn't take it. So we started to heckle, and as the national press reported, "From the faculty section, obscenities were hurled at the President." And it was true, because the heckling that we did was "Free fire zones! Napalm! B-52s!" And halfway through I was --Moira was really louder than I was on this, I've got to say, with whatever feeling about it. I said, "We gotta get out of here. I can't take this." And we go. And we were front row center. We got up and walked out on the President. Well the reaction in Kansas! I had just arrived, I had this prestigious title, and I'd insulted the President. And they wanted to fire me. And I was -- yeah, I was 35, I guess. Thirty-three, and had five kids. When I married Moira, she had three kids. You know, I didn't have any money. I mean, I had a nice salary -- the biggest salary I'd ever had -- when I got that chair, but I didn't have any savings or anything like that. And I was looking at getting fired in September. We had just committed to a house, had a huge mortgage on the house, and so on. That was a difficult time.
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Julie Andrews
Legend of Stage and Screen
Julie Andrews: I was 18. I was 19 the day after we opened on Broadway. And, it's the first time I had ever really been away from my family for that potential length of time, and suddenly I got so panicked about it, and I called my dad, my real dad. And, I said, "Oh god, daddy, they're asking me to go for two years. What should I do? I don't think I can be away from the family for that long." And he said, "Well chick, it could run two weeks or two months. It might not be two years, and it would open up your head to such an extent, I think you should do it." I asked him later in life whether that was a hard thing to do and he said it was one of the hardest things, to say, "Go," to just throw me into the bigger pond, so to speak, and hope that I would swim. And of course, because dad said it, oh, he said a wonderful thing. When I said, "But how will I know what to do?" he said, "Your own good brain will tell you what to do when the time comes," which was hugely flattering and kind of implied that he thought I could cope. So, I took my courage in both hands and said, "I would like to accept this contract but I will not go for longer than one year." And lo and behold, Messrs, Feuer and Martin said, "Fine." And, I was the only one of the company that had a one-year contract, so off I went to Broadway for a year of incredible learning and education.
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