Another 86er heads to heaven too soon

I just received word from Tracy Loreng that my classmate at Pascack Hills, Liisa Nabstedt, passed away on Sunday at the age of 42.  The details of her passing have not been released.  She leaves behind her loving husband and two young children.

Liisa is now the 12th classmate to pass away, and as I wrote about last year when Doug Kessler finally succumbed to colon cancer, there is an unease about this that makes it hard to accept in someone still so very young.  Our class from 1986 has seen its share of tragedy in the years just prior to and since we graduated.

My memories of Liisa from two eras.  The first being from our days growing up, where she was always a good-hearted person who accepted people as they were and didn't judge them.  She played on the volleyball team in high school, and was involved in various extracurricular activities.  She played one of the lead roles in the musical Lil' Abner from our senior year.  She loved being in the musicals and singing in general.  She was a member of the Bergen County Choir and eventually was the captain of her collegiate volleyball team.

We weren't close friends, but we were friendly with each other.  The second era of memories came from when I was helping to plan our 20-year high school reunion in 2006.

Liisa was one of the first people that I 'found' on-line in trying to track down everyone.  And we began a great email correspondence in which she shared with me how wonderful her life was going.  She was very excited about coming to the reunion, and I know that she and her husband had a terrific time because she couldn't stop talking about for weeks on end afterwards.  Unfortunately, life got in the way and I lost touch with her over the last two years, so the news of her passing is a little bit hard to take.

All that I could find today on-line about her passing is an obituary that describes when funeral services will be held, which will be on Friday in Park Ridge.  And I really am heartbroken at the fact that I didn't get the chance to tell her how wonderful the reconnection between us in the ramp-up to and the cool-down after the reunion was for me, and that I can't be there in person to pay my respects to her family. 

My heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to her husband Joe (with whom I was fortunate to share a few wonderful laughs with at the reunion), and her two children Sabrina and Logan, whom she was so proud of, as well as her sister and the many friends that she had.  She will be missed.

Posted via email from jonmahalo's posterous

Thanks Bob

It was April 2006.  I was working for Starline Films, and we were hosting a charity celebrity basketball game at Basketball City in Manhattan, trying to get the word out about our film 4CHOSEN.  I was going to serve as the public address announcer for the game, but also provide some running commentary as well.  It was all coming together very nicely, and then the moment that ranks as one of the ten I'll never forget in my life happened.  Near the end of our pre-game ceremonies leading up to me introducing the lineups for both teams, a voice said the following over the loudspeakers in the entire building:

"...and now, to serve as your public address announcer for the rest of the evening, from Starline Films, here's Jonathan Moncrief..."

Yep, Bob Sheppard said my name.  As I type this I'm tearing up just thinking about it and how cool it was.

Sheppard died today at the age of 99.  For four generations of Yankees fans and Giants fans, he was the voice of Yankee Stadium.  He was the Yankees PA announcer from 1956 until 2007, when his health finally began to fade.  He also held a similar post for 50 years with the Giants, first at Yankee Stadium and later at Giants Stadium.

You didn't have to be a fan of those teams to appreciate the sound of his voice, the way he was particular about annunciation, and how in an age of screamers and hucksters he was about elegance and simplicity.  He was a professor at St. John's University in New York after having been a speech teacher at John Adams High School.  On April 17, 1951, both he and Mickey Mantle made their first ever appearances in Yankee games.  In the last interview Mantle ever gave before his death, he was introduced by Sheppard as he was for every at bat, and he said to the interviewer that it still gave him chills to hear his name.  Derek Jeter has asked that only Sheppard's pre-recording of Jeter's name be used when he comes to the plate for games.  Reggie Jackson called him "the voice of God."

I had the good fortune to hear him speak in a classroom setting.  I was in the summer between 8th and 9th grades in 1982, and I had been enrolled in a journalism class for people of my age at St. John's.  For the most part, the six weeks of classes were uninteresting and the classroom was hot with no air conditioning.  But there were two highlights: they showed the film 'The Jackie Robinson Story' and we then got the chance to talk with Rachel Robinson; and in the last class (which a few of the regulars from the first five skipped) Sheppard spoke with us for two hours.  It was amazing hearing him not only talk about the great Yankees and Giants players and games, but also his philosophy of broadcasting and doing his job.

When I was working on organizing the basketball game years later, a few of us were discussing how to jazz up the game and I suggested how cool it would be to have Sheppard do some of the announcements coming into the arena in a pre-recorded setting.  We contacted his son Paul, and apparently people had been paying to do voice over work for everything from weddings to Bar Mitzvahs to on-hold answering machine messages.  So I put together several scripts for him to read, understabnding his cadence when introducing players or reading promotional announcements at games.  And when we were sent the files following his recordings, we spent the rest of the day listening to them over and over and over and over and over and over again.  We were still finalizing the roster, so we had him record a few names and some announcements for the start and end of the event, as well as what to when you entered the building.  We even had him record a series of numbers, so that we could insert them into a starting lineup introduction.  And even just the sound of him reading off a series of numbers was amazing to listen to.  Check out this mini-clip of the event on YouTube that features his voice and mine too:

Like millions of others, one of the things I prided myself on was learning how to imitate his voice.  Earlier this baseball season in Santa Monica, I was asked to do so some PA announcing of games.  When the team in the little league called the Yankees played, I would announce their batters coming to the plate during their at bats in my Sheppard voice.

He will be missed, and in some ways I'm glad that PA announcers in pro sports are more about the screaming.  It only enhances Sheppard's legend.

 

Posted via email from jonmahalo's posterous