Oct

8

Starboard at Midnight By Helen Behr Sanford.

If only heroes like Frank Merriweather, the legendary hero of Ainsle Young's novels about a superman from Yale who routinely ran onto the football field of the Harvard game and scored the winning touchdown with 5 seconds left before saving the most beautiful girl in the East from mayhem at the expense of bandits and then devoting his life to providing Ivy education for orphans, existed today. Indeed, the heroic idea is so incongruous these days that no review of this most popular book of the 20th century even exists. However, a real life Frank Merriweather in the form of Karl Behr actually existed, and Helen Behr Sanford has written what for me was one of the most fascinating books I have ever read.

Briefly, Karl was about the best tennis player in the world during the early 20th century. He has wins over Wilding, Larned, Williams, Barrret, Gore, Brookes and Clothier. He was ranked in the top 3 in the US and was good enough to give Comet McLouglin many a 5 set match. He was superb at all track and field events, routinely jumped 6 feet standing high jumps, and was a superb hockey player. His best sport was baseball, but he wasn't good enough to make the Yale team. His brother Max was the second best golfer in the country and Frank and Max played almost even. While at the obligatory Swiss finishing school La Chatalaine, before the obligatory stay at St. Lawrence, he performed risky mountain climbs and won all the tennis tournaments. He seems to have been a genius who not only aced all his classes at Yale, but was able to knock off Columbia Law school in one year. His mechanical abilities were unrivaled and he was able to work every machine in his father's abrasive plant. He was a highly successful business man, and lawyer, innovative enough to prospect all the silver and gold mines in Mexico, versatile enough to get full payment for all his clients in contract disputes, and of course able to solve all the problems of the father's abrasive business so that it yielded steady dividends for the family. He's the type of hero who if an airplane were to crash, he would save the crew and baby. And if he was on the Titanic during it's maiden voyage with a surprise ring for his fiancee Helen Newson, he would be on the Starboard side, and be one of the only men saved on the life boat. When picked up by the Carpathia, he would organize activities to save the survivors.

All of the above happened. He proposed to Helen Newson on Titanic, and interrupted his squash game on Titanic to make sure that Helen, who he had just proposed to with his Grandmother's ring, was not discommoded. He climbed one deck above to see Captain Smith and Ismay demanding that the first class passenger Helen Newson get into Lifeboat number 7. Mrs. Newson asked routinely if she could take her whole party in with her and First Officer Pittman routinely answered "Yes". At that time, no one felt that Titanic would go down. Regrettably he suffered from Post Traumatic Shock Treatment after he was saved. And he suffered a breakdown 2 years later. His tennis career was interrupted and he gave up his position at the law firm and father's company to become a middle level broker at Dillon Read. He was the kind of hero who could never accept that he was saved by change when so many others heroically died with the musicians as they played on while the boat sank.

The book was particularly entertaining to me because I had a reasonable familiarity with all the events. I have read all the old tennis books describing the English great like the Renshaws, Dohertys, and the Larneds, that overlapped with the greats of today through their play against Tilden and McLouglin. I played in many of the same tournaments as Behr and my career in racket ball was similar to his. I visited numerous abrasives factories in my day as a broker and walk past his ancestral home in Brooklyn Heights often when visiting my daughters, many of whom live within a block or two of their 82 Pierpont Street street address. The Behr family summered at Squam Lake in New Hampshire, and I visited Jack Barnaby there where he was tennis coach and must have passed the Behr's many times.

And yes, I suffer on occasion from having escaped from disaster relatively intact when many others did not escape at all. The Palindrome always said to me "you have to prove you can do it again. That's suicidal.". I didn't believe him then and refuse to do so now, but the anxiety and thoughts of guilt still emerge. But most of all, I knew a man like Karl Behr and Frank Merriweather who could do anything superbly, was present at each of the thousands of lessons his 3 kids took, and never spent an evening away from his loving wife Elaine. And was the perfect man that everyone loved. It's my father Arthur Niederhoffer. I would recommend Starboard at Midnight to anyone wishing to read about life as it should be. Helen Behr Sanford, the granddaughter, who found the 168 page manuscript that Karl had written when he knew he was a goner from heart disease and cancer on which the book is based has done a great job in bringing back the life of a real hero.


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