You don’t always appreciate a person the first time you meet them. This is especially true when selfish sixteen-year-olds meet their parent’s friends. That’s precisely how it was when I met Buggsy.
For as long as I knew him, Don Ansell was “Buggsy,” an old-school New Yorker, and exactly what you’re picturing. When I was younger, he rubbed me the wrong way through no fault of his own; it was all on me. I didn’t understand New Yorkers like I do today. New Yorkers are tough as rocks, loud, passionate…but all the ones I’ve known also have hearts of gold, and Buggsy was no exception. He was confident, vocal and presumptuous — not necessarily good traits, but in Buggsy they were strengths. He assumed people wanted to talk (which I didn’t) because he had that unique quality of caring about others. He called women he hardly knew “sweetheart,” as a term of adoration and respect, a cultural thing that could, and occasionally did, offend. But offensive is the last thing anyone would call the guy who spent hours perfecting balloon art and working as an after-school crossing guard.
Buggsy married my Mom years after I was on my own. I regret we didn’t get to spend more time with him because I’m sure he has a thousand stories he could have told. I’ve learned the value of gleaning lessons from old guys who’ve lived in rough places, especially ones who still have smiles a mile wide. I wish I could sit down with him and hear the craziest thing about growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties and sixties. I wish I could hear his heart regarding all of the kids he visited in hospitals, how he gave so much of his time to make them smile through their illnesses. I’d love to hear the funny things, the hard things, and the valuable things. I didn’t appreciate them then; I do now.
Buggsy awakened something in my Mom that was dormant for many years. She was always positive, but when Buggsy entered her life she bloomed. She began to have fun again. My Mom and Buggsy got married in a drive-thru wedding chapel in Las Vegas, at halftime of Super Bowl Sunday. They celebrated every anniversary at halftime of the Super Bowl, regardless of the date. Is your mom cool like that? He brought out the cool in others.
The past ten years have been hard on them both. The last time he visited us in Alaska, he was on oxygen almost from the day he landed. Eventually he lost any ability to travel farther than from one seat to the next, and had to visit hospitals when he’d rather been visiting his grandchildren. But he never stopped being Buggsy. Every birthday my kids were greeted with a phone call or voicemail singing to them. On my birthdays he would tell me with shortness of breath, “Take care of your sweetheart,” followed with, “I love you, Son.” But in the end it was Buggsy’s sweetheart — my Mom — who had to take care of him. She carried him through the struggles but made him laugh. She displayed passion and went out of her way to love on others. The girl from Kansas got New York street smart, which is to say, she learned how to face the troubles of this world: with confidence, and a smile.
Buggsy entered another world on Monday, one without sickness, hospitals or death; a world absent broken bodies or oxygen tanks, where new bodies house old souls and everyone knows the joy they were intended for, much like the old New Yorker. And I have no doubt Buggsy’s advice for us would echo something an even tougher guy said long ago: “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart; I have overcome the world.”
If Buggsy had said it though, he probably would have added “…Sweetheart.”