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Over the Holidays I went with my parents to the Italian Cemetery in Colma to visit my grandparents and other relatives. It is kind of weird seeing your name on a tomb stone. My grandfather’s name was Thomas Tognoli (1900 – 1968).
While there we stopped by to check out where “Joltin” Joe DiMaggio was buried…the Yankee Clipper.
DiMaggio is the only athlete in North American pro sports history to be on four World Championship teams in his first 4 full seasons. In total, he led the Yankees to 9 titles in 13 years. In 1941, as America readied itself for war, DiMaggio began the greatest feat in American sports. His 56 game hitting streak captivated the country, and the nations eyes turned to him. It is a record that still stands today…60 years later.
DiMaggio played 13 seasons with the Yankees before retiring in 1951. Joe DiMaggio was celebrated in song and story after he stopped playing as he projected a romance and mystique that aroused the souls and lifted the spirits of millions. DiMaggio was immortalized in the Simon and Garfunkel song, “Mrs. Robinson” (from the movie The Graduate), “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” a song about his 1941 hitting streak by Les Brown and the Ernest Hemingway’s prize winning novel, “The Old Man and the Sea.” Hemingway wrote reverently of “the Great DiMaggio,” and felt a special bond with him because DiMaggio’s father was also a fisherman.
The tragic conclusion of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe not only enhanced his status with the public, but his refusal to “cash in” earned him a reputation as being a man of unusual decency and integrity. Shy and serious, Joe always preferred his privacy; he played and had lived with what in his time was known as class. As his brother Dominic so elegantly had written on Joe’s final resting place “Dignity, Grace and Elegance personified.”
Joe always had a soft spot for children and took the most pleasure in establishing a children’s wing in 1992, called the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. He once said “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time, I owe him my best.” The motto is, “Whether rich or poor, no child is turned away.” Joe and his legacy have raised millions of dollars for the hospital.
Joe’s fame also flowed from the aura of quiet dignity that DiMaggio carefully preserved throughout his career and retirement. There was majesty in his swing, and a self-assured confidence in style and conduct that was uniquely Joe DiMaggio’s. In the eye of his public, he was more than a sports hero. He is among the most cherished icons of popular culture. “When Joe walked into the clubhouse, the lights flickered,” Pete Sheehy, the Yankees’ clubhouse manager in those years, often said. “Joe was a star.” He still is. He is the symbol of another era, of another breed of athlete and star.
Obviously Joe was an amazing baseball player, but he was an even more amazing human being. I would say how Joltin Joe lived and loved, and how he spent the “dash” between November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999 was pretty amazing and a great example for all of us.
So, the question is: when your eulogy’s being read with your life’s accomplishments to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your “dash?” What will they write about you on your tomb stone? Remember, it matters not how much we own, the cars, the house or the cash. What matters is how we live and love, and how we spend our dash.
Grace, Dignity and Elegance Personified
Make it a great week
