S1 Ep9 The Promise

Martin Sheen:

Hello and welcome to the Martin Sheen Podcast with yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course, and I’m delighted to be your host for this podcast pilgrimage where the destination is the journey itself. Along the way, I plan to share stories and personal memories of some of the many people, places and events that have helped to shape my life. Happy and continuing struggle as an artist and a man to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh. I also hope to explore poetry as a powerful form of expression and communication by proxy, as it were, and how poetry is such a vital and necessary component of our spirituality and our public discourse. And from time to time, I’ll invite friends, fellow actors, poets, scholars and family members to join our pilgrimage and discuss what inspires their artistic journey. And so, friends, let us begin.

“Say Yes, Ramon”

Of all the good days of the year 1961 I chose December 23rd for our wedding day at Saint Stephen’s Catholic Church on East 28th St. between Lexington and 3rd Ave. with the rectory entrance on East 29th St.

I was registered at that parish since I arrived in New York in January 1959 when I lived at a rooming house just two blocks away on East 30th near 3rd Ave.

Now however, Janet and I were living on the lower East Side on Clinton St. And I was currently performing at The Living Theatre Repertoire Company off Broadway at 6th Ave. and 14th St. when we decided to get married in the Catholic Church. Naturally, I chose St. Stephens and one day in late December I went to see the pastor, Father Patrick Faye, to make the arrangements.

He was very kind and helpful and agreed to perform our wedding however, he explained, we would have to wait until after the Christmas season because the Catholic Church did not permit nuptials during Advent (of course this was prior to the sweeping reforms of Vatican II begun in 1962). When I explained the urgency of our circumstance ie. Janet was expecting, Father Patrick offered a compromise suggesting that we attend the regular 8:00 AM Mass the following Saturday and immediately afterwards he would perform a very quiet private ceremony in the sanctuary with our witnesses. I thanked him and agreed to his plan though I only had a few days to get everything together.

That night I asked my old and dear friend, John Crane, from high school in Ohio now working at the UN in New York, to be my best man and he gladly agreed, while Janet received a loving commitment from Erica Clark, wife of another dear friend and fellow actor Matt Clark, to be her bridesmaid and the four of us gathered at Saint Stephens on an unusually warm and sunny Saturday morning December 23rd for our 8:00 AM wedding Mass. We invited a few other friends from The Living Theater as well but they had yet to arrive as the Mass began.

It was a simple low Mass in Latin and ended in about 1/2 an hour with still no sign of our friends. But a dozen or so in the congregation remained and began to recite the rosary, a very common devotion after Mass in those days and I joined in when suddenly Father Patrick appeared in the door of the sanctuary urgently signaling to me to join him. I rushed up and listened as he quickly explained in a hushed tone that since we had made the arrangements a parishioner had died and the funeral was about to begin so we had to make our vows as quickly as possible. With that he hurried off to prepare and I hurried back to explain the situation to Janet, John and Erica and no sooner had we regrouped in the sanctuary Father Patrick joined us and began the ceremony in great haste as the rosary continued on behind us.

“Ramon, do you take Janet to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, from this day forward till death do you part?” Then he quickly added, “Say yes, Ramon, just say yes.” And I said “yes” as fast as I could.

Next, he asked Janet the same ritual question with equal speed adding, “Say Yes, Janet, just say yes.” And she too replied “yes” as quickly as possible.

Then he blessed our rings and led us through the rest of the ceremony from his Mesial ending with a nuptial blessing and told us to follow him through the sanctuary into the connecting rectory where his secretary was waiting with the necessary documents for us to sign. We did so and afterward he took a few quick photos with a small brownie camera, then added a final blessing and congratulations as he escorted us out the door onto East 29th St.

It was all very disarming and very funny to say the least until we remembered our friends from The Living Theatre, so we dashed down the block to 3rd Ave. and around the corner on 28th street where we spotted them standing on the sidewalk nonplussed as they watched a casket being carried up the steps into the church. They thought we had planned the whole thing as a joke on them but when we explained what happened they were delighted and produced 2 bottles of champagne. Then we all set off to a nearby Jewish delicatessen I used to frequent in the neighborhood where the owner remembered me, greeted us with a joyful “Mazel tov” and served up a hearty wedding breakfast for everyone on the house. He even locked the door and let us pop the champagne.

It was a wonderful, improvised celebration we would not soon forget. But as we headed home afterwards I noticed a sharp difference in the weather; it was now grey overcast and much colder with light snow flurries blowing about.

We took the southbound IRT local to Delancey St. And ascended from the subway into a delightful snowfall. We both loved walking in the snow in New York and we welcomed this as another special wedding gift.

Later that afternoon I decided to do some Christmas shopping since the next day was Sunday and most of the stores would be closed. When I reached the street I was surprised to see how much snow had accumulated and it was still falling steadily. I walked down to John’s Bargain, a popular chain store on Delancey Street. and shopped for about an hour. When I started back the snow was falling so hard and thick it was getting hard to see. And it was piling up everywhere. By the time I got home the news reported that NYC was being hit with a heavy snowstorm and by 6:00 PM it was announced that we were being engulfed by a powerful blizzard with no end in sight.

All traffic was banned from the streets except for emergency vehicles, even the subways were halted. It was then I began to worry if I could make it to the theater in time for the 8:00 PM curtain so I decided to start walking. But when I reached the street I was astonished to see snow drifts so high it made the sidewalks impassable so everyone was walking in the middle of the streets some were even on skis.

It took a full hour to reach The Living theater on 6th Ave. and 14th St. and of course, of course! I arrived just in time to learn that the evening performance had been canceled so I turned around and trudged back home for another full hour.

The snow had blanketed the entire city and as I walked it was so quiet I could actually hear the giant snowflakes as they reached the ground.

When I arrived home the news was declaring in no uncertain terms that this was the worst blizzard in the history of New York City and that it would take days to recover. On the positive side, we were assured of a white Christmas and it would be impossible for me to ever forget my wedding anniversary.

About 10 years later I found myself back in New York so I decided to drop by Saint Stephens to pay my respects to Father Patrick Faye. We were delighted to see each other and we had a great chat and a lot of laughs recalling the wedding and the weather on that unforgettable December day in 1961. Before I left I asked him if he had the photos he took of us in the rectory that day. In fact, they were the only photos of our wedding. Unfortunately, he said he couldn’t remember what had happened to them. He apologized. Then he asked me if I was still married to Janet, I said “yes” as fast as possible. He laughed and said, “Oh, that’s wonderful, you know I’ve never had a divorce.” That was the last time I ever saw him.

I was back in New York another time 25 years later for the wedding of our daughter Renee. She was living in New York at the time when she and her fiancé, Jason decided to get married and wonder of wonders, she chose St. Stephens. So once again we gathered there with family and friends on Saturday October 11th 1997 for their beautiful ceremony and I could not have been more proud or grateful to her for choosing to honor her parents by getting married in that same sacred space we had chosen so long ago.

Afterwards we joined the 30 other guests for the reception held at The Gramercy Park Inn on Irving Pl. where we were seated at the same table with a special family friend and renowned NYPD Detective, Sonny Grasso. Sonny was the ‘go-to’ advisor for many movie and TV shows related to ‘New York’s Finest’. He even produced the TV series “Night Watch” and I had had the pleasure of working with him several times. During the dinner that night he casually asked when did I get married. When I said December 23rd 1961 he nearly fell off his chair exclaiming, “That’s the very night we cracked the famous French drug dealer case during the worst blizzard in New York City history!” Of course, Sonny was the other half of the famous cop duo with Popeye Doyle that broke up the infamous French drug ring. It was an historic case and in 1971 Hollywood made a popular award-winning film about it called “The French Connection” where Gene Hackman played Popeye Doyle and Roy Scheider played Sonny Grasso.

Now I’m often left to wonder how many other stories might be connected with December 23rd of all the good days of that year 1961.

Martin Sheen: We’re going to take a little break now, but I assure you there’s much more to come. Please stay tuned.

Welcome back. I’m glad you stayed.

And now, “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” by Emily Dickinson.

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson was an American poet who embraced the style of dark romanticism in her many works. she lived much of her life in seclusion. She wrote nearly 1800 poems, but less than a dozen were published in her lifetime. She was born December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she lived her entire life, and she died there on May 15, 1886. Emily Dickinson was 55 years old.

Consider this from Mark Twain “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”

“Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost is one of America’s most revered and beloved poets and the only one to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. He was born in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874. He died January 29, 1963, in Boston, Massachusetts. Robert Frost was 88 years old.

And now, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, perhaps her most famous and most quoted poem. “How Do I Love Thee?”

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee in the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’ss

Most quiet need, by the sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seem to lose

With my lost Saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall love thee better after death.

Martin Sheen: Born on March 6, 1806, in England, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a poet of the Victorian era. She was a prolific writer, with much of her work focusing on the theme of spirituality. She was highly regarded in her lifetime, and her writings also experienced a revival during the 1970s and 80s in support of feminist literature and the women’s movement. Her publication of the volume, simply entitled poems in 1844 was a great success and drew the attention of the writer Robert Browning, who she corresponded with and began a courtship. But her father was a controlling force in her life and greatly disapproved. Hence, Elizabeth married Robert Browning in secret, but shortly thereafter was disinherited by her father, as he did to all his children who married. The couple moved to Italy, where For the next 17 years they lived and worked till her death in Florence on July 29, 1861. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was 55 years old.

Stay tuned.

We’ll be right back.

Welcome back.

Thanks for staying with us.

And we continue. “When You are Old” by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. He was born in Sandymount, County Dublin, Ireland on June 13, 1865 and died in France, January 28, 1939. William Butler Yeats was 74 years old.

Consider this:

Winston Churchill the Optimist

It seems that optimism is getting harder to find these days, no matter where we choose to look. But I’m reminded of a story about Winston Churchill during the height of the Nazi blitz on London before the US Entered the war. It appears Churchill was always upbeat and very optimistic, no matter how bad things got. And one day when a close aide asked him how he could remain so optimistic under the circumstances, Churchill replied, “Under the circumstances, what’s the alternative?”

I invite you to delve further into the works of the poets I shared with you, and I hope you seek out writers and poets whose work speaks to your hearts and minds with the power to inspire your life. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, please subscribe to my podcast, the Martin Sheen Podcast with your host, yours truly, Martin Sheen of course, wherever you find your podcast. Yeah, I have to say that you can find a complete list of the poets and titles of their poems that I’ve chosen at our website, themartensheenpodcast.com

I want to thank the people who make this podcast possible. Our producer and research assistant Rene Esteves, who assures me that the Internet is a real thing and a safe place if not used off label. And our sound engineer and editor, Bruce Greenspan, the man behind these rich and seamless recordings. And to his dog Gracie, our studio mascot, who snores in perfect pentameter.

And so, friends, we part with the prayer from Tagore.

We are called to lift up this. Nation and all its people to that place where the heart is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Where words come out from the depths of truth and tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the of depths, dreary desert sands, of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought and action, into that heaven of freedom. Dear Father, let our country awake. Amen.

The Martin Sheen Podcast all rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written consent of the author and TE Productions. “Say Yes, Ramon” by Ramon Gerard Estevez AKA Martin Sheen is included here by granted copyright permission.