I sit here five months after the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. I ponder the thought that none of my living relatives were alive back in 1918, when they last won. My granddad was born 15 years after that. He went to Fenway Park with his friends back in the '40s, bringing sandwiches and pickles to eat. A lifelong fan, he waited 71 years until, just five months ago, the Red Sox first won the Series in his lifetime. Think about it. When he went to the ballpark as a boy, computers were a distant dream. TVs were not around. Jet planes had not been invented and the Great Depression was a recent memory. I am going to take a journey into what his life was like, starting in 1933.
Part l: Early Life
Donald Max Georgette was born September 29, 1933, at Dorchester Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, to Ruth Georgette and Daniel Georgetti. His maternal grandmother, Jennie Saxe, lived in Boston also, and he knew her well. She had emigrated from Russia and changed her name upon arrival in the U.S. His paternal grandparents were both born in Italy.
Don lived most of his young life in Boston, in a row house at 74 Glenville Avenue. He went to school there, but his family did not always stay put. He lived in both Miami and Dallas during his youth. He went to Brighton High School in Boston, a nice medieval-looking building, but he says it was a dump inside. The teachers were not above corporal punishment and would regularly take a paddle to disobedient children. He tells of one teacher who would "beat your hands to death" and leave you crying if you so much as made a peep out of place. It was not a top-of-the-line school. He tells of two boys who were horsing around on the streetcar rails and were both run over and killed.
Don had a best friend in school named Don Mahan. Because they had the same name, Don Georgette was nicknamed "Geo," after the first three letters of his last name. It stuck, and he is still called Geo today.
When Geo was in high school, World War II was in full swing, so there were no men around. All his teachers were women. His father fought in the war (and survived), fighting first in the Royal Air Force, then transferring to the U.S. Air Force upon American entry into the war.
Geo was a "terrible student" in school, behavior and grade-wise, saying that there were times when he would walk in and fall asleep at the desk. He did read a lot and was a good athlete, however, and played high school football. His classes were all required; there were no choices or electives.
Life outside of school was regulated also. You needed stamps to buy nearly everything, including gas, shoes and butter, because of the war. There were no cars around on his street in those days, and he and his friends used to play ball all day in the alley behind his house. There was no organized ball or leagues when he was in his teens because there were no men around to coach and do the tasks necessary to run a league. Consequently, he ran a little wild during those years. He says that he did things I don't want to know about.
However, he knew a batboy for the Boston Braves, a professional baseball team (they are now the Atlanta Braves). His name was Connie Cronopolous, and sometimes he would bring Geo to Braves Field with him, where Geo would shag balls during batting practice for the pro teams. Connie went on to play minor league ball but was never able to make it to the majors. Geo said he could hit a baseball a long way, but he couldn't hit a curveball.
After graduating high school, Geo went to Miami where he worked as a waiter at an exclusive five-star hotel. They were the "good times." He was making a lot of money and told of a time when he went to a race track and told the cab driver to wait for him, paying for the time the driver waited, which was a big deal for him back then. He also went to Havana to gamble at casinos, as it was only a one-hour boat ride from Miami. This was before Castro, when access to Cuba was not extremely limited.
He left Miami when winter was over (it was a seasonal job) and went to New Jersey. He and a friend worked there as waiters. Geo did not particularly like the place, so he and his friend formulated a plan to get out of there. When someone dropped a tray of food he went and got the dirtiest, grimiest mop he could find to go clean up the mess right in front of all the customers. He was fired on the spot.
After that he went up to Nantucket and continued as a waiter. For two years he spent summers as a waiter in Nantucket and the winters as a waiter in Hollywood Beach, Florida.
He then joined the Marines in Massachusetts and was sent to boot camp in Yamasee. He had to do all the usual things you imagine doing in boot camp -- running, obstacle courses, shooting, etc. He was assigned to Camp Pendleton in California once he got out of boot camp. He first met Barbara Fleenor, his future wife, there. During his three years in the Marines he went all over, from Venezuela to Bermuda to Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo, it was called) to Alaska to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
He recalls certain moments during his time with the Marines. Once he was on a destroyer to Venezuela. On the way, the ship went through a hurricane. The props were out of the water, and you could hear the screws turning if you went to the right area of the ship. Everyone was throwing up and it was an absolute mess.
Another time he was at Parris Island, South Carolina, for Thanksgiving. He was on mess duty, which was the worst thing you could imagine. He had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to cook breakfast. He then had to clean up and be back to cook lunch and dinner and clean up again. They were one-week shifts, and he said that mess duty was a better threat of punishment than the brig. When Geo was a sergeant, all he had to tell an unruly soldier was that he would be on mess duty if he didn't shape up, and he would shape up quickly.
Anyway, he was on mess duty at Parris Island on Thanksgiving. During meal time, an officer came up to him and his buddies and asked if they wanted to do something instead of mess duty and could leave as soon as they were done with the job. Thinking that they were getting off easy, he and his friends gladly accepted. It turned out that they had to peel potatoes. Lots of potatoes. There were so many there was no way they could peel them all. There was a potato peeler, which they used, but the peeler didn't take out the eyes, so they spent hours digging the eyes out of every single potato. Fed up with the work, they eventually began to destroy the potatoes, stomping the bags of them until they were "gravy," and then pouring the mess down drains and hiding bags of potatoes in the swamp.
He also has a story of when he was on a submarine ride up to Alaska (it is unclear where exactly he went), but he was on a recon practice mission. They would paddle their "rubber boats," around in the dark, practicing sneaking on enemies. The bunks in submarines are tiny. They are too small to roll over in and the bottom bunk was just 6 inches off the floor. Geo had the lowest bunk, and when an officer came in to hand out jobs, he would scrunch way back toward the wall. The officers would never bend down and look in the bottom bunk, so he got off easy on work.
PART II: MID-LIFE
When Geo got out of the Marines, he moved to Los Angeles. He worked there as a surveyor, building long transmission lines over the mountains into L.A., sometimes moving just 500 feet a day over rough mountain passes. In 1955, he married Barbara Fleenor. He had two sons and a daughter over the next four years. During this time he was promoted to someone who protected the transmission lines' "right-of-way;" he would make sure no one was building too close to the lines.
When his kids were young, Geo was working on a college degree at California State Los Angeles. As he went to night school, he would come home after work and do his college work. It took him nearly 10 years to get a Bachelor's Degree in Economics. He used his GI bill to pay for it. He took no more credits than he needed to graduate, never visited a counselor and finished just as the GI bill ran out.
In the 1960s, as his kids were going through grade school, he changed jobs and began to buy sites for gas stations. His daughter remembers that he used to take the kids around the city to interesting places he had found during his work. He would take them to watch a building get knocked down, watch the race horses work out or go to special beaches or the railroad yards. He still likes to do this for us when we visit. He moved on to buying tire store lots, and in the 1970s, he changed jobs again and bought sites for restaurants. He traveled a lot during this time and was often gone from home for long periods. He had stock options in the restaurant business, and he told me that if everything had worked out he would have "millions" right now. Of course, everything did not work out, and he is not wealthy in the least.
Sometime in the late '70s, he and Barbara divorced, and Geo moved across town to Santa Monica. They stayed on good terms, however, and Geo visited his kids often. He became a building superintendent after the divorce, building apartment houses, and he says he was fast and successful at it.
During his kids' school years, he would often bring them to a park while he played tennis and buy them ice cream or sodas afterwards. He encouraged his sons to play sports like baseball and football. He was a Red Sox fan and was still suffering through the glory years of the "curse," which finally ended last year. He brought his kids to Dodger Stadium once in a while. His daughter remembers going about "a dozen" times during her childhood. Her memories are of sitting in the farthest bleachers, where the players were just dots.
Geo was also a big card player, and he would play cards with his family on Sunday nights. They played Butch, which is multiple person solitaire, and his daughter remembers having to get your cards played quickly if you wanted to keep up. There was no dawdling, and if you were slow you got beat. It was a competitive family. They also played poker, which he plays with us today.
When his kids graduated high school in the late '70s, Geo moved to Palm Desert, California, a two-hour drive east of L.A. He worked as a tennis pro there, giving lessons and playing. He met Frank Sinatra and played on Sinatra's personal court. He also played with other stars such as Robert Redford. In the summers, he went up to the mountains to teach tennis.
He also worked at a golf course in the desert, selling bottled water (and other merchandise) at a snack bar (he called this the "best job of all"). Sometimes the water delivery guy didn't show up, so Geo would take bottles and go fill them up at the drinking fountain. During the day, a golfer went over to the fountain where Geo had filled the water bottles and drank some. His golfer buddy said he should get some of the "good stuff," meaning bottled water. The golfer who had drunk out of the fountain then went to Geo's snack bar, bought a bottle of water (that had been filled at the fountain he had just drunk from), and upon taking a sip declared, "This is so much better!" Geo got a laugh out of that (not then, of course).
He worked at the golf course for a few years, but then he began to have medical problems with his feet, and the course was bought out and closed down.
PART III: LATE LIFE
Geo stopped working after the golf course job. He continued to live in his apartment in Palm Desert, which does not have air conditioning (as his relatives complain about when they visit). His years of smoking had begun to catch up with him, and his feet began to hurt. The arteries that brought blood to the feet were full of plaque, and consequently his feet felt as if they were asleep all the time and were swollen and painful. He had to cut his shoes to get his feet to fit. He now needs regular trips to the hospital to get worked on. He has had surgeries to attempt to fix the problem and takes pills which he cynically says don't do anything.
The last time he could really move around well was when he went on a trip to Hawaii with us in February 2000. We rented a condominium on the beach in Maui. Geo played tennis with me and my brother at the court. I remember that he was always getting on me (jokingly) because I would tilt my racket, therefore sending every other ball over the brick wall at the court. (I got better near the end of our trip.) I remember him always having dinner really late, at about 9, long after we had ours. We didn't know it then, but that was the last time he would really be able to move well.
Geo lives in Palm Desert today, going to horse races, playing golf, betting on football games and doing other things retired sports fans do. He lives close to the life many retired people do, but he also comes to visit us in Kotzebue. He remembers that one of the years he came up it snowed on July 3. He hates the cold, and where he lives it regularly rises above 100 degrees. He likes the desert and the beach, and splits his time between them, living in Palm Desert but often going into L.A. to see us when we come down and to visit his friends and relatives there.
He loves Yosemite National Park in Northern California, a place known for its hiking, forests and waterfalls. Because of his medical problems, he can no longer do any hikes, but he still visits and sends us pictures. He went to Yosemite recently and stayed at the high-class hotel in the park for a night. He has a friend who had spent her honeymoon at the same place 50 years earlier. The tax on Geo's room was more than the room itself had cost when she had visited.
He likes to play card games, both in casinos and with friends and family (for money, as he is a gambler). Card games are a consistent thing in our visits with him. He has multiple stories of playing cards. He cynically tells of people who play at the casinos who are just stupid. First of all, they don't buy enough chips to be able to play very long. He says that he was playing one time and a lady put "all in," (put all the money she had into the pot), and she didn't even have a pair. (Not having a pair in poker is just about as bad a hand you can get.) Geo says this is the result of watching too much poker on TV.
He also has a story of when he was at a casino in Palm Springs just six months ago. He sat down to play a few hands of poker. The hand was played, and when the cards were put down, one man had four aces (a good hand) and the second man high had a full house (another pretty good hand). Everyone started getting excited. It turns out that the casino had a special rule that if you lose to four aces, you get extra money. The man who had the full house ended up with about $4,000, while the guy who actually won the hand ended up with about $120. While Geo is protesting that the winner had four aces, so why is the loser getting all the money, someone shouts, "Check the time!" It turns out to be two minutes after 4, and the pot doubles after 4. Suddenly Geo is being told that he won some money. It turns out that he won $307 "without putting in a nickel." He emphasizes this by saying, "I never even put an ante in!"
About three years ago, Geo was headed to the recycling center with a car full of beer cans and alcoholic beverage bottles that his neighbors had contributed. He was driving his sister's old car, which had faulty brakes. Geo was sitting at a stop sign when the car suddenly began to move forward. Another car coming down the cross street couldn't stop in time and ran into him. Geo was not seriously injured, although he was in the hospital for a while. The funny part he told us later. When the accident occurred, the beer cans he was carrying were scattered all over the street, so when the police showed up, the street was covered in beer cans and bottles. The police questioned Geo on this, and he insisted that he was just bringing them to the recycling center, which he was. (He didn't get in any trouble for it.)
Despite his problems with his feet, Geo is still able to move well enough to take trips with us. Last December he went with us to Mexico for two weeks. We had multiple experiences there that we won't soon forget, all heightened by the fact that Geo does not speak a word of Spanish.
For Christmas dinner, we went to a restaurant in the town we were staying in. Service was extremely slow, and after we had waited over an hour with no sign of food, Geo took his knife in one fist and his fork in the other, and began to pound on the table, proclaiming, "We want food! We want food!" until my mom was able to quiet him down. After we had finished eating, the waitress asked us how the meal was. Most of us said the usual "great," "good," etc. However, as she was walking away, Geo muttered, "Yeah, we read 'War and Peace' and started the Bible." I didn't hear him myself, but all the other grown-ups began to crack up.
Another funny thing about the trip was Geo's search to find a proper martini. He doesn't speak a word of Spanish, so it is kind of hard for him to communicate what he wants to the waiters. He had tried to order one at the place where we ate on Christmas, and he did get one, but he didn't like it much. It came to a peak at Chichen Itza, where he tried again to get a proper martini. It was a kind of fancy restaurant, and we were having dinner. Geo likes his martinis "very dry." My uncle Mark was with us, and he can speak Spanish pretty well, so he had to communicate for Geo. Anyway, the first time Geo ordered, he got a beer instead. So he sent it back, and this time the drink came in the proper kind of glass, but Geo insisted it was wine, not gin. He sent it back again and, at my mom's urging, just ordered a beer. However, after dinner was over, he went out to the hotel's bar, muttering something about showing them how to make a proper martini. (He never did get what he wanted on our entire trip in Mexico.)
There were two other incidents on that trip. One was when we were in a city called Valladolid. He wanted to take my brother and me over to a bakery to buy some bread rolls. However, my brother's shoes were in my mom's room, and she was taking a nap. Geo insisted we not wake her, and instead marched us three city blocks to the bakery, my brother in his socks. (They were never the same color again.) When we got there, it was an open-air bakery, and there were a couple of flies buzzing around. We were choosing which ones to get, and Geo saw a fly land on one. He said, rather loudly, "Get me the one with the flies on it!" I was trying to keep from cracking up, because the shopkeeper was in hearing range. However, I did break out laughing when we got back to the hotel room and told the rest of the family.
The other incident was when we were returning from Cancun. We were on the tarmac at LAX. They have a system there where when you get off the plane, you get onto a bus that takes you into the main terminal. Our flight had been quite late out of Cancun, and we were already late for our red-eye connection to Anchorage. We ended up on the last bus out, and it wasn't moving. We were getting anxious, because it would be a mess if we missed our connection. Finally, two pilots came strolling out of the gate building. Geo was pretty annoyed by then and said something along the lines of: "If this bus starts moving when those two bozos get on, I'm going to start shouting." Only urging from my grandma and my mom kept him quiet. (The bus did start moving when they got on.)
Just this last August we returned to Granddad's birthplace -- Boston. We originally went to watch some Red Sox games, but along the way we wanted him to show us where he had grown up. He gave us the tour, showing us where he lived, where he went to school and where the old ballparks were. It was quite a feeling, a sense of, wow, all this has happened here? It seemed amazing, too, how Granddad remembered everything and how it was still there after all this time. He pointed out the exact corner he sold newspapers on 60 years ago. On that foggy day we drove around, you could almost imagine what it must have been like back then, with the coal plants belching smoke and the men in their coats and the ladies in their dresses, hurrying to where they needed to go. The whole thing gave me an idea of how much has just happened, how each and every person to ever live has a story behind them much longer than this, which only scratches the surface of Granddad's life. Someday I will have a story like this too.
Some information for this biography was obtained during our tour of Boston. (My dad took some notes on what Granddad said.) The latter part came from my own experiences with Granddad. Most of the information in part two was obtained by questioning my mom (Granddad's daughter). The bulk of the information, however, came directly from the source, via phone conversations. I reported the information as accurately as I could. Most of the quotes are representing Geo's exact words to me. The things he said in the past were written as accurately as we could remember them.
As for the future, although his health is not the best, we hope Geo still has some years ahead of him. He is planning to be in Kotzebue over the Fourth of July, and I hope that he will be helping me follow another championship Red Sox team. They won it all once before he died. Why not twice?
