Walter Lord Eulogy

On Sunday, 19th May, 2002, the acclaimed author, historian and Titanic enthusiast Walter Lord passed-away. He'd contracted Parkinson's Disease, and although his death didn't really come as a shock to many, the wave of affection that swept around the world in the hours and days soon after he died showed just how revered Walter Lord was.

Through his acclaimed works, A Night To Remember and 'The Night Lives On', Lord turned people on to Titanic , it's that simple.

This touching eulogy was sent to me by Harry Belt Turner , who, as you will find out by reading the article from beginning to end, was a close and trusted friend of Walter Lord. He thought that Titanic Titanic! would be a suitable place to place it, and we are more than happy to show his eulogy in its entirety.

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Wherever Walter is, I'm sure he's reviewed his obituaries and agreed with everything written about him. And, he undoubtedly put on the green visor he'd wear when he worked at night - that made him look more like an accountant doing books than a writer doing books, cut each obituary out of its respective newspaper, spent a few minutes locating a red felt-tip pen that still had its cap on it, then relabelled an old manila file folder: "OBITS"; and carefully filed his obituaries away, never to know that he'd also just filed away the cap to yet one more soon-useless red felt-tip pen.

The only thing in Walter's obituaries that didn't feel right to me was that common last line: "No Known Survivors."  First: it made it sound as if he went down with the ship. Second: rather than being just factual, "No Known Survivors" always evokes pity, and pity was the last thing Walter would have wanted readers to feel for him.  And third: the irony is that Walter is survived by innumerable younger friends, many of whom had better and closer relationships with him than many sons and daughters ever have with their parents.

At my wedding, Walter made a toast that began: "I remember when Harry was three (3), climbing onto my lap and asking me to autograph a copy of A Night to Remember."  This memorable event in my childhood never occurred.  I knew it; Walter knew it; but no one else at the reception knew it.  As much as Walter was a master at retelling history, he was a past master at inventing it.  But, in one short sentence, Walter accomplished three (3) objectives: he'd graciously flattered the bridegroom in front of his new in-laws; his warm imagery, no matter how imaginary, made the bridegroom feel special to him; and he'd cleverly advertised to the unenlightened in the room that he was the best-selling author of A Night to Remember.

The ease with which he could do so much with so few words fascinated me then and always would. I never found a term for this oratorical device he'd often employ, so I've always called it "magnanimous self-promotion à la Walter Lord."  God knows how many other boys and girls heard the same toast at their weddings.  I heard it again, verbatim, at my second wedding.

So much of Walter was a great big wonderful kid, a kid who accumulated an extraordinary number of playmates during his life. The jury's still out on the question of whether Walter possessed a special gift that enabled him to bring out the kids in his contemporaries; whether instead he just chose for his friends the simple and credulous among his contemporaries; or whether men who spend their lifetimes parading 'round Princeton in silly costumes just make good playmates.

The jury's unanimous on one point, however: Walter had a great love and need for real children.  He loved taking kids with him on his flights of fancy.  He loved that audience that would believe all the stories he'd make up - whose young imaginations were not yet hindered by any disbelief, the willing suspension of which would have taken time and could have thwarted the current adventure of the great moment.

A hot afternoon: two (2) kids and Walter Lord: walking slowly, back and forth, behind Morgan & Millard's, eyes peeled to the ground, searching for something. This was the scene of the most important archæological expedition of the last century - the hunt for evidence of that prehistoric creature, the Number 11 Streetcar. A small piece of track is discovered protruding slightly from a worn, hot patch of asphalt:  Eureka! Walter rushes over, confirms the find, raises his ever-present camera and directs that there must be a picture for the history books.  We're expertly posed: "Look really excited - like it's the first time you've ever seen trolley track; point to it but look at me and don't move!" Then hard-earned rewards: ice cream cones at Delvale's and the walk home listening to Walter's account of the most important thing in Baltimore's history - the Lakeside Streetcar Line!

In 1962, Dad and I drove my older brother, Chooch, to Hyde Bay Camp by way of Manhattan to pick up Walter. It was during that drive between Manhattan and Cooperstown that I really fell "head over ears" for Walter.  A Time to Stand had just been published and, to an eleven (11) year-old boy who'd only recently and most reluctantly ceded his coonskin cap, Walter's dramatic, front seat retelling of the Battle of the Alamo, replete with sound effects and a curious impression of Santa Anna, was enthralling. That day I knew I'd found a hero who would replace Davy Crockett.

When the Turner boys visited Walter in 1964, I made it my mission to turn Walter Lord around to Barry Goldwater. Walter and I had quite the political row in his tiny 38th Street apartment.  Neither of us gave an inch, but I readily agreed to a cease-fire when Walter asked me to weigh the importance of the presidency against getting on with our trip to Coney Island. Walter also then uttered a statement I thought "really cool" - that kindled some new thinking in my twelve (12) year-old mind: "I may not agree with what you say, Harry, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it!"  It wasn't until someone at college said, "Ah, Voltaire!" that I stopped attributing that quote to Walter.

Close to Election Day 1964, I received in the mail from Walter an envelope containing a rather worn campaign button that exclaimed: "I Want Roosevelt Again!"  Thus, Walter initiated the first activity that would keep us connected and in contact for the rest of his life: the quadrennial hunt for and exchange of presidential campaign buttons.

My third summer at Hyde Bay Camp began miserably.  For no apparent reason, I went through an inconsolable two-week period of uncontrollable tears - writing daily letters home pleading to be picked up.  I didn't even notice that the weeping had stopped in week three (3) of camp - only that I was countermanding my prior pleas with letters begging to stay for the second half of camp.  This sudden change in mood had nothing to do with Walter, but my happiness was certainly heightened by my receipt of a package containing fifty (50) miniature Tootsie Rolls and Walter's note: "These always helped me!"

This was an extraordinary gift - it instantly got me into Hyde Bay's "Fortune 500."  You see, nobody ever ate Tootsie Rolls at Hyde Bay Camp. Three (3) decades before Walter had established the miniature Tootsie Roll as the official currency of the camp. Everything that might be bought and sold between campers was done so with Tootsie Rolls.  Everything had its price, and everything was worth its weight in Tootsie Rolls.

In 1966, I convinced my parents to let me leave Gilman School at the end of Second Form year and go off to boarding school.  I felt totally "out of it" - a class clown whose history of uncontrollable antics I felt would never allow me to fit into Gilman as anything but.  (Archie Montgomery, my classmate who left Gilman at the same time and who later joined me again at Penn, took me aside a couple of years ago - acting as if he were some sort of a headmaster or something - and informed me in a quiet but seemingly serious voice: "Harry. . .Harry, do you realize that if you and I were back in Gilman Lower School today, we'd both be on Ritalin?")

First semester of boarding school, for no apparent reason, I was miserable.  Continuous crying. . . breaking into tears in English class. . . sobbing my way through Cicero. . . on the phone with a parent at least once or twice a day.  Walter was there for me again: hilarious postcards, laconic letters, and a telegram on my birthday reading: "I'm behind you all the way - I even intend to vote for you twice!  Happy Birthday!  Your loyal constituent, Walter."

By the time I became miserable in my sophomore year at college, again for no apparent reason, I was a regular at Walter's digs at 116 East 68th Street in Manhattan. The place seemed an oasis where I could somehow manage to keep the severity of depression at bay.  Walter was no psychologist; rather, he invented plenty of projects that kept me busy.

Walter remained incredibly supportive of me in early 1980s: first, when I broke up with a wife and second, when, on the spur of the moment, I left an excellent law firm and became a vagabond actor for a couple of years.

Our friendship truly deepened during a weekend in 1986 when I made a pilgrimage to New York to talk to the only friend with whom I felt comfortable discussing a diagnosis of manic-depressive illness.

The expert historian pulled out all the stops, interviewed me, questioned, probed, and helped me to start identifying and reordering the pieces of a disjointed past.  Slowly, things in the past that I could never figure out would begin to make some sense - Hyde Bay tears, boarding school tears, Penn tears, good student one semester - class clown the next, quitting law because I was suddenly God's gift to the theater.

Walter was fascinated by the whole "mental thing." His sincere interest and matter-of-fact way of discussing it helped me not to feel sorry for myself - to deal with the illness as if I were working on a tough jigsaw puzzle. And we developed our own mantra in light of his Parkinson's and my newly-diagnosed illness. When he and I had our respective drink and beer, we always toasted each other with: "Take your medicine and. . . Damn the Torpedoes!"

Walter took great interest in all high school and college kids, not just the sons and daughters of his friends and not just 'cause he liked kids, but also because of his desires to keep learning, keep up, stay current, remain relevant. "But how does Harry feel about 'the Draft?'" Or: ". . .about Viet Nam?" And it never ceased to amaze me how Walter could disagree so much with opinions held by my father and at the same time hold my father so dear and so valued a friend.  At times, it seemed to me that Walter was doing much more than required by Voltaire.

The confidence into which I'd taken Walter had an unexpected consequence: he reciprocated. Among other things, we started talking about his Parkinson's Disease and how he dealt or didn't deal with it; about women, about his mother and sister; things about my father I never knew, such as Walter's double-date with Dad to the 1939 World's Fair and the awkward moment for everyone else when my father insisted that his date pay her own way.

In the '90s, as Walter became increasingly fragile, I'd receive calls from him asking if I could be his UL for this or that weekend or event. "UL" was the Hyde Bay acronym for "Unskilled Laborer" or "Useless Loafer" - that uncompensated minion in the no-man's-land between camper and counselor who did all the camp's grunt work . . . like pouring fresh lime down the seats of the outhouses. I'd be Walter's roommate on such weekends: pushing him around in his wheelchair, ensuring his tumbler always had enough Old Grand Dad in it, helping him to bed - Laurel and Hardy couldn't've created a more ridiculous scene than that of a tipsy Harry Turner attempting to help a tipsy Walter Lord to bed. There'd be cries from Walter. . .like: "Oops! "Man overboard!"; and from me: "Women and children. . .after Walter!"

From 1999 'til last summer, I tried to spend a day each month with Walter: I'd push him up Lexington Avenue to a French bakery for some of his beloved madelienes, over to Central Park to watch the sail boats and have a hot dog for lunch, or sit on his bed and continue the never-ending project of deciphering the writing of Major Hoffman, an ancestor of his who, during Grant's Virginia campaigns, kept in a pocket notebook the names, amounts, and terms of loans he'd made to soldiers.

In the late afternoons, comfortably sitting in a chair with his bourbon in hand, Walter's mind would start wandering back to his boyhood Baltimore, and I'd willingly wander with him.  We'd be at Gilman or his home on Roland Avenue. Once he took me to his first grade classroom at Roland Park Country School.  He'd sing the school song - something about picnic baskets and wine.

These sun-setting trips back to the Roland Park of his childhood were fascinating for their detail and for the warmth Walter obviously felt.  On my last late afternoon with him, I felt. . . I realized that Walter had started his journey back home.

In 1984, Walter was awarded the Andrew White Medal at Loyola College (Andrew White was Maryland's first published author) and spoke there as part of Loyola's celebration of 350 years of religious toleration in Maryland.

There's a lot of essential Walter in the speech he gave. His love of irony: although Loyola may have been celebrating 350 years of religious toleration in Maryland, Walter was quick to point out that Maryland's 1776 Declaration of Rights granted equal protection to only all persons professing the Christian religion, which created [quote] "the odd paradox that a Jew in Maryland could hold a federal job but not a job with the 'Free State[.]'"

Then there was a bit of his "magnanimous self-promotion."  He lamented Maryland's failure to recognize its heroes properly; such as Baltimore's savior from the British in 1814, Sam Smith (subtext - read Walter Lord's Dawn's Early Light); Wade McCluskey, whose discovery of the Japanese Fleet at Midway enabled the United States to turn the tide of the Pacific War (subtext - you might want to go out and buy Walter Lord's Incredible Victory).

Walter then, of course, sang the praises of a hitherto unsung hero he'd rescued from the dustbin of Maryland history: Thomas Kennedy, a Roman Catholic state legislator from Washington County who, at every opportunity from 1818 to 1826, introduced, fought for, and finally succeeded in passing a state constitutional amendment granting equal rights to Maryland Jews.

And finally one heard from Walter himself, the large, gangly, and physically awkward man who so respected of the individual in everybody, whether sixty (60) or six (6) years-old, an unassuming modern Voltaire who could preach with such understated simplicity: True toleration cannot come from the statute books, but from the heart and spirit of people themselves. . . . Toleration can never be serenely contemplated as a job well done.  It is not one of those things that are learned and never forgotten, like swimming or riding a bicycle.  It is more like playing the piano: it requires constant practice to do it well.

Harry Belt Turner

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The 8-Inch Regatta

Tied to Walter's loves of invention and adventure was his love of anything that made him "official." He loved having titles and holding offices - and he'd often give himself some important-sounding title or other that necessitated his creation of some high office that he'd assume with all the pomp, circumstance, and trappings he deemed appropriate.

At Hyde Bay Camp one summer, Walter appeared in an outfit more akin to an air pilot's flight suit than any nautical pilot's uniform, but none of the young campers knew any difference. Walter proclaimed himself "The Commodore" of the venerable Hyde Bay Yacht Club . . . a Club that none had ever heard about until that moment. The Commodore further invited one and all to enter their yachts in the annual regatta which that year just happened to be scheduled for that very afternoon.  Bewildered but sensing great fun, the camp listened attentively to the Commodore's recitation of the regatta's rules: 1) each ship had to have been built by the entrant himself; 2) each ship must be of wood and have no artificial means of propulsion; 3) each ship must measure no more than 8 inches from bow to stern; 4) each ship must measure no more than 8 inches from keel to the top of the mast, if she had one; and 5) each ship must measure no more than 8 inches in width.  Suddenly, An "old" tradition was born.  The 8 Inch Regatta became the camp's central and most anticipated event every summer thereafter. Some boys would spend countless hours crafting their boats; others would saw a piece of wood in a matter of minutes and enter a ship that appeared a mere a piece of wood no longer than 8 inches in any direction.

The regatta itself was an amazing sight: the Commodore's flagship was a make-shift structure with a throne, which rested on two latched-together canoes. The flagship was manned by 4 oarsmen in moth-eaten World War I sailor's uniforms borrowed from the Hyde Bay Theater.

Every real boat in camp would be overflowing with campers and counselors, many dressed in their own ingenious ideas of appropriate regatta wear. (Hyde Bay Camp had little concept of danger. Rather, it relied a lot on the common sense of the boys and their counselors.)  The Commodore, in full uniform, would rise and address the assembled yachtsmen and always end his address with the same line: "May the best man win, and may the best man be your Commodore!" Then the synchronized oarsmen would take The Commodore out to the middle of Hyde Bay, followed by a large and disorganized flotilla of overfilled rowboats, canoes, kayaks, motor boats, rafts. (It must have always looked to the guests at neighboring Rathbun's as if some summer camp at Dunkirk were being evacuated.)

Once in place, the Commodore would signal the start of the race and scores of 8-inch boats would start moving in all directions: some out towards the middle of Otsego Lake itself, others towards Clark's Point on the opposite side of the bay, some in the direction of Shadow Brook, and a few towards the camp itself. Where the boats went and whether they capsized were of no consequence: the rules were quite specific and literally followed - the first ship to reach shore - any shore - won.

Additional drama was always supplied by those who would "do in" The Commodore, those nasty native inhabitants of James Fennimore Cooper's Glimmerglass.  Canoeing swiftly out of Shadow Brook every regatta appeared a marauding party of . . . PIRATES! The flagship was always attacked and Walter always gave an order like: "Women and Children: After Me!" and then abandoned ship.

The festivities would conclude with a parade and awarding the winner with "The Commodore's Cup" - a large tin cooking pot with handles on which were inscribed the years and names of all previous winners. Eddie Brown has the distinction as the only person to have won the 8 inch Regatta three times.

Related Reading: Walter Lord Obituary | Walter Lord Books