Art Linkletter died today at the age of 97.
I don't know of any other way I can say that except to observe, as the living often do, that no one lives forever. Somehow, though, I must have figured that Art Linkletter would be the one who would defy the odds.
Well, I felt that way about George Burns, too.
One of my earliest memories of visiting my grandmother's house just after my grandfather died was being allowed to watch daytime TV while my mother and my grandmother went over the final details of the funeral service.
That sticks out in my memory, I suppose, because Mom never let me watch daytime TV at home, even when I was sick and stayed home from school. She would make cinnamon toast, which was my favorite treat whenever I was sick, and she might let me watch the Little Rock PBS station, which didn't have much on in those days. If its programming was deemed suitable for my age group, Mom might permit me to watch it. But she wouldn't let me watch anything that was on a major network.
In the non–PBS world, daytime TV in those days meant soap operas in the afternoons, maybe some game shows like Password or Jeopardy! in the mornings, but it also meant Art Linkletter's House Party. Perhaps the shows I saw were syndicated reruns. I don't know. I was just a kid, and I liked to watch the Linkletter show because one of the best segments on his show was his interviews with kids.
He called it "Kids Say the Darndest Things," and he knew a good thing when he saw one. Linkletter compiled a collection of quotes from his interviews that sold millions of copies.
Well, I always think of my grandmother when I think of Art Linkletter — and not simply because of my memories of the time my grandfather died.
My grandmother really liked Art Linkletter. Once, as I recall, she gave me a copy of his book, and, on other occasions, she told me, with obvious admiration in her voice, the story of the tragedy of his life — when his 20–year–old daughter leaped to her death from her sixth–floor kitchen window.
Linkletter claimed his daughter was having either an LSD experience or an LSD flashback (even though toxicologists doubted that the drug played any role in her death). That tragic loss transformed him into an anti–drug zealot, not unlike the way Carroll O'Connor's son's suicide led him to become active in the movement to permit people who had been injured in some way by the actions of drug dealers to hold them civilly liable.
Anyway, my grandmother, like millions of others, believed Linkletter's version of events. And I loved my grandmother so I did not question the story. But I always wondered how Linkletter could have known. Was he there? Probably not, I reasoned. And if he wasn't in his daughter's apartment when she jumped, how could he know what happened?
You can speculate, I suppose, about what may have happened that day. Linkletter and his wife (who had been married nearly 75 years when Linkletter died today) may have received a call from their daughter — or he (or they) may have called her. The conversation may have been vague or it may have been specific. If it only involved Linkletter and his daughter, no one now living knows the truth.
Considering how beloved Linkletter was, thanks to a career that dated back to radio days, it was probably no surprise that there were many in the public who, like my grandmother, were all too willing to accept the "flashback" story — even though evidence to support it was noticeably lacking.
Whatever the truth was, there is no doubt that Linkletter and his wife, Lois, survived many tragedies together. They had four other children, two of whom are now deceased. One was killed in a car accident, the other (their oldest) died of lymphoma a few years ago.
There was much to admire about Linkletter. He was abandoned by his birth parents when he was only a few weeks old, then he rose to become the radio/TV personality, author and businessman that he was. He amassed quite a bit of wealth, then became a philanthropist.
Hopefully, his widow and their two surviving daughters will carry on his good works.
