A story about the convergence of events… and my father. During my last year at Art Center College of Design, I was bolted awake from a morning sleep-in by my ringing telephone. As soon as I heard my father’s voice, I knew something was wrong. I just had to hear your voice to know that […]
Category Archives: Douglas Laurence
My husband, David, performed his usual magic, with a little help from Final Cut Pro and one of my father’s favorite songs—The More I See You—to bring about this pictorial tribute to my father, Douglas Laurence. It was shown for the first time on his birthday, December 16, 2012, to a small gathering of friends […]
This remembrance is contributed by my half-brother, Dave: I was five years old, living with my mother, aunt, and cousins Maggie and Valerie, in New York City. I kept seeing a man by the name of Doug Jenkinson dating my mother. We instantly liked each other. A stand out memory was my future stepfather having […]
I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I fell early and hard for Mad Men. The backdrop of this series evokes my own childhood in the 1960s. It would be hard to resist for that reason alone. I recall vividly the furnishings, the fashion, the music, my parents’ friends smoking endless cigarettes, and the […]
A few years after I crossed that invisible line to become both the child of my parents and a parent myself, I gave my parents a simple yet inspired gift. Inside the carefully wrapped box and tissue paper were a half-dozen 8-1/2 x 11 sheets of card stock. Typeset, each one had a title such […]
When people learn of my father’s movie career, the first question they invariably ask is, “Did you get to meet Elvis?” Yes. In fact, I did. If I hadn’t already been swept away in the tsunami of “Beatlemania”, this might have been a more-earthshaking event in my young life. Still, to my 12 year-old eyes […]
Dad’s obituaries, which focused on his entertainment career, only touched upon his military service during World War II. Dad didn’t like to talk about his wartime experiences while I was young. At some point, I came across his cache of service medals in our home and he had some ’splainin to do. As Dad got […]
September 11th now marks an anniversary that is uniquely personal for me, overshadowed though it may be by our nation’s shared tragedy. Just after midnight on Tue, 9/11/12, my father, Douglas Laurence, fell and broke his hip. He died three weeks and eight hours later on Oct 2nd. Those were harrowing weeks filled with complications and […]
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