Thanks and God Bless, Chuck

My mother is the oldest of three, with a brother in the middle and her sister Maureen bringing up the rear. They're all in their mid 60's to early 70's now, and the memories of going to their old apartment on the Lower East Side are receding deeper into my vault. My uncle once came home and discovered myself, my older brother and two older sisters piled on his bed watching his postage-stamp black-and-white TV and stormed back out. We were watching Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (as spoilerish a title as you'll ever find, second only to a purported foreign title for Psycho in a land where that word wasn't in the language, The Boy Who Was His Own Mother). My family lived on Long Island then, and going into the city was a big deal, so we didn't do it often. New York was so close, but a world away from our little town.

My aunt Maureen would come out to see us every so often, I loved when she'd sneak into my room just after I'd gone to bed to wish me a good night in French. A story from her own youth that my mother loved to recount with her on these visits was about how Maureen at the age of seven or eight would talk about her friend Chuck that she'd see out on the street as she sat by herself on the front step of their building. Chuck would come and talk to her, ask her how old she was now, tell her how pretty she was. As this went on for some time and as it became clear Chuck was an adult, a stranger adult, my grandparents began to grow concerned. Who the hell was this guy?

Eventually a stakeout was improvised and several days passed with no sighting of Chuck, and then one day my grandmother* saw a man she thought she knew walking up the street. As he drew closer, she realized the man wasn't someone she knew, but someone she'd seen, an actor. His name came to her as he approached the front step of the building with a smile: Charlton Heston.

Maureen said, "Hi Chuck!"

Mr. Heston passed away Saturday in Beverly Hills, his wife of 64 years at his side. I recorded Planet of the Apes the other night and just got around to watching it tonight, not knowing he had died. Now I wish I had Major Dundee or The Omega Man or the Richard Lester Musketeer films ready to roll to pay tribute.

edit - I re-checked my source, my mother, and she cleared up my error, it was she that was there with Maureen that day.