We heard that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie intend to sell their baby’s pictures for $4.1 million with money going to a children’s institution.
We heard the news that Elton John will give concert proceeds to AIDS.
Tomorrow, certainly will bring more bono gift-giving and praise.
Everyday in the newspaper and on the television, celebrities are praised for “giving back.” “I just want to give back,” they announce. And, everybody is just awestruck.
I think this is about as phony as a celebrity can get.
Well, perhaps the Gates and Buffett are not quite in that category.
Some 65 years ago as a young boy growing up in a small Oklahoma town, I never knew anyone who announced their generosity. The generous gave anonymously. But, maybe, that was just because I grew up in Enid. Of course, you know the place. Two or three times a year, your crossword puzzle requests that you name “a four letter town in northern Oklahoma.”
As I remember the 1930s and 1940s, my family’s big “white house,” our home, always seemed to be filled with friends or relatives – from off the farm, rooming as they went to business school; aunts and uncles rooming until times got better; and grandmother who lived with us until she died at 92. Yet, my family survived hard times. Our home was always filled with love and many, many people.
On the corner in front of my house was the bus stop and bench – for waiting. A sidewalk separated the grassy and tree-covered parking from our front yard. But my house, a great white two-story, five-bedroom cube built in 1907, dominated the corner. The peaked roof formed a green pyramid over all and the green roofed porch stretched completely across the front, a touch of the ante-bellum South.
My years in the “white house” were termed by historians as years of the “Depression,” but I remem es. Nevertheless, we could hardly claim riches.
My uncle Harold, however, was the vice-president of Hackney Iron and Steel. In the 30’s, Hackney fabricated propane tanks for almost all the farmers in the northern half of Oklahoma. Because Hackney jumped into the great farm modernization of the era, their sales flourished.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, my uncle’s company not only expanded, but its wealth quietly became enviable.
My uncle Harold died in 1976 at 82. Years later in the 1990s and knowing the president of the local bank, I inquired about my uncle’s legacy. Of course, the matter was private, but since the bank was the administrator, my friend, the president, let me know the dispensation of my uncle’s millions. He gave his fortune to the Salvation Army, the local college, and Shriner’s St. Louis Children’s Hospital. I guess he thought we, his very few relatives like me, could make our fortunes ourselves.
But, we never knew he was a millionaire. We never knew about his gifts.
Not so today. I blame Hollywood for this ingenuous, pompous utterance, “I want to give back.” How phony! It is so typically Hollywood. The phony expounds to everyone what a great philanthropist he is; so that all his phony friends think he is so wonderful. How bogus!!
Real philanthropists give anonymously.
Incidentally, you didn’t hear about the millions Denzel Washington gave to the Fischer House in Texas, which provided accommodations for the families of wounded soldiers while visiting their loved ones in the VA hospital. In my view, he has my utmost respect.
Burton Anderson, a U.S. Marine veteran of the Korean War, has lived in California for about 50 years. He has a background in aerospace industry. He can be reached at
ba****@ao*.com
.
