CHAPTER 1 – MEMORIES

“My dad taught me some of life’s most important lessons with these gloves. He taught me, among other things, to stay calm in the heat of battle and to hit what you aim at.”

Bob Babbitt

A DANCE THROUGH TIME

(A Tribute to Mom and Dad’s 65th Anniversary)

It was only 6 p.m., but she was already in bed.

“I was so busy every day that by the time it started to get dark, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open,” remembers Jeanne.

Just as she was about to doze off, her sister Dorothy burst into the room to tell her that their Aunt Rosie and Uncle Sam were on their way over to take them to a dance at the Kramer Hotel. Jeanne quickly changed, jumped into the Buick and headed off to the dance. Not long after she arrived, a good-looking young man with jet-black hair, a ready laugh and twinkling blue eyes approached the pretty 17-year-old.

“He introduced himself as Jack Green and asked if he could dance with me,” remembers Jeanne with a smile.

She accepted, and their hands touched for the very first time. It was a meeting that would change their lives forever.

Among his friends, Jack was known as the D.D., the Designated Dancer. He had actually danced professionally for a time.

“My friends Teddy and Maury didn’t dance, but they liked to meet girls,” recalls Jack. “Teddy would say, ‘I’d like to meet that girl in the blue,’ so I’d go over, dance with her and then bring her over to meet my friend Teddy. Then Maury would say ‘I’d like to meet the girl in the pink,’ and I’d do the same thing with Maury.”

The three buddies liked to have a little bit of fun, so they preferred to travel incognito. That’s why they never gave their real last names when they were out on the town. Usually Jack went by Mr. Green, Teddy was Mr. White and Maury was Mr. Black.

“Sometimes we’d forget who was who,” laughs Jack. “It changed from night to night.”

But this night was different. Jack knew Jeanne was something special. He wasn’t about to introduce her to Maury or Ted or anyone else. She wasn’t out of Jack’s sight – or off his arm – all night long.

“While we were dancing, he asked me for a date,” remembers Jeanne. “During that date he asked me to marry him.”

Marry him? After one dance and halfway though one date?

“I had dated lots of girls,” insists Jack. “I knew right away that this was the girl for me. Period. That was it. No question about it.”

My dad Jack-you-can-call-me-Green Babbitt and my mom Jeanne waited a year after that chance encounter on a hotel dance floor in the winter of 1940 to seal the deal.

On February 16, 2006, they celebrated 65 years of marriage.

”Can I have this dance” became ”Can I spend the rest of my life with you?” And what a life it’s been – three kids (I’m the youngest), five grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and hundreds of friends. Plus, they passed on a zest for life that all of us share.

It’s still there. You can see it in their eyes after 65 years, 23,725 days and 569,400 hours together – that same look of knowing, of wonder; that same instantaneous bond that they shared for the first time on that snowy evening in Chicago. It started with a trip across the dance floor and became a trip through the second half of the 20th century and beyond.

They may have aged, but their devotion to each other has not changed a bit. No one has ever cut in.

When you love each other, time becomes immaterial.

It just seems to jitterbug on by.

BOXING LESSONS

The ceiling above my head was a mere four feet high. The pavement my knees scraped against was raw and abusive. As a child, the crawl space under my parents’ home was always one of my favorite places to be. It consisted of memories stored in rows and rows of boxes just waiting to be rediscovered.

My sister Judi, my brother Floyd and I all had dad-made wooden toy boxes with our names in script on the side. Floyd’s, although 10 years older than mine, was still immaculate and well organized, just like its owner. Mine is missing two wheels and a fair amount of paint. Inside, there’s a pile of cobweb-covered blue splinters with random pieces of long-forgotten games strewn among them.

I smiled and started rummaging through. Head pieces from the Rock ‘Em Sock Em’ Robots. My favorite game, electronic football (little magnetic guys and a cotton swab in the shape of a football), was still somewhat intact. Man, my friends and I could entertain ourselves for hours with that baby. Huddle up the players, tuck the cotton swab under one of their miniature arms, throw the switch and watch everyone scramble. Every time you switched the game on, every other electric appliance in the house switched off. Lucy, Desi, Fred and Ethel suddenly became an X-rated scramble. It was what you might call a maximum impact toy.

In a corner of my toy box, beneath some stuffed animals, was a pair of red boxing gloves I haven’t seen in over 35 years. Suddenly, I’m 10 years old, back in the basement, facing my dad.

He circles to the right and leads with the left. Out of nowhere, a padded glove thuds against the side of my head. I stagger back, seeing small farm animals circling my forehead. There’s the pig. Look at the size of that cow! In a fog, I try to remember my dad’s instructions: “Keep your gloves up and protect your head,” he told me over and over again. “Always protect your head.” It’s too much. My dental-floss-look-alike arms fight a losing battle, struggling to keep those mammoth red piles of padding aloft at head level, quivering from the effort.

Fathers and sons share a unique relationship. Most of our communication is of the barely spoken variety. When you’re about four or five, a glove and a ball are introduced for the first time. Not a lot of dialogue comes along for the ride. “Let’s throw” is what I remember. Further down the father-son timeline, dad introduces a full assortment of life’s props with the same type of exciting banter. From the guys I’ve talked to, “Let’s hit” accompanies a bat and usually occurs around the same time as “Let’s throw.” “Let’s drive” and “Let’s fill out these college applications” is still light years away.

I remember how the basement boxing started. I came home from school with a bloody nose after a scuffle of some sort. The next day, these red lace-up pillows entered my life. “Let’s box,” said my dad.

My dad worked late every night, so by the time he got home the rest of the family had already eaten. For the next year or so, every few weeks he appeared at my door after his dinner, gloves in hand. We would retire to the basement, silently tie them on, and then dance the pugilist tango. I was the original designated hittee, my dad the designated hitter. Left hands, right hands, combinations, uppercuts, body blows … to me the guy was a human octopus. The words were scarce, but they sunk in. “Block with the left … load up the right … protect the head.”

I’d be breathing heavy from exhaustion and panic after just a few minutes and could never remember my cues. “Block the left? Lead with the right?” I could feel my heart pounding in my head, accompanied as always by his omnipresent right jab. After 10 minutes or so, my dad would realize I had no more left to give. He would put his arm around me and tell me how good I was doing. Good? I hadn’t come close to hitting him. I was a sweaty mess and had red glove tattoos all over my anatomy.

Then one day it happened. We had been going at it for about five minutes or so. He circled left and threw a left hand. I blocked with my left and attacked with the loaded-up right. For the first time in my life, my glove actually made contact with something other than his gloves or air. I hit him in the left shoulder – a glancing blow to be sure, but a blow nonetheless. We both stopped and stood motionless. My body was heaving back and forth, the sweat dripping from my flattop into my eyes.

He smiled, blue eyes dancing, and started unlacing his gloves. Taking the hint, I unlaced mine. As always, he put his arm around me as we walked to the stairway and back upstairs. At the top of the steps, I turned right to my room and he headed back to his.

“Great shot,” was the last thing I heard before he disappeared. We never boxed again.

Back in the crawl space, I held the gloves up to the 60-watt light bulb above me. They seemed to be in pretty good shape. My dad taught me some of life’s most important lessons with these gloves. He taught me, among other things, to stay calm in the heat of battle and to hit...