Scattershooting around the city and remembering some lost friends

Scattershooting across the skyline of Bridgeport after a season of plain old pot shots…It has been extremely gratifying to see a wide volume of tributes to Gustave Whitehead, a Bridgeport native and the first person to ever successfully fly a plane, making the historic flight on August 14, 1901. The flight was documented in periodicals across the world, but somehow the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk two years later made the history books. What is disconcerting is that even the renowned author David McCullough, one of my favorite authors, ignored all the Whitehead documentation and dismissed him in his recently published love letter to the Wright Brothers. In any event, in their indomitable style, the Bluefish honored the aviation pioneer even as intellectual frauds like McCullough turned their heads. So did the Town of Fairfield! Put that in your pipe and smoke it McCullough…A huge shout out has to go to Bridgeport wonder gal Carolyn Vermont for yet another great event that has become as unique to Bridgeport as the Barnum Parade. The thousands who swarmed McLevy Green Saturday were treated to music, fun, food, love, drink and warmth: essentially all the foods needed for the soul too survive…Isn’t about time for Mike Bellamy and Tony Reno of hardly-listened to WICC to give up the ghost and admit they were into the tank for the incumbent since Day One. For those of us actually taking the time to cover the race their fawning over Finch is infuriating…We lost two great Bridgeporters during the past two weeks and I have to talk about both of them, albeit briefly. I am only going to sketch about their lives and not touch on their deaths. Dimas Couto left us at age 58. But I got him fired when he was the head soccer coach at Harding High School nearly 20 years ago. Yes I did! I got him canned. Thankfully in the years that ensued we were both willing to look back at the episode and laugh. In those years (1998) a long-ago forgotten PAC called Education First was threatening a challenge to the Mario Testa backed Board of Education. While most party dwellers tend to keep a low profile, Dimas did not. As an enterprising young editor, I was down at Education First headquarters taking photos. My photographer editor who for anonymity’s sake we’ll call Ralph Petitti, selected a shot of Dimas on the night of the election, tabulating votes at Education First headquarters. The picture cost Dimas his job as the Harding soccer coach. So be it, but soccer was this son of Portugal’s passion. We spent hours in later years visiting soccer fields in Bridgeport that he deemed were unplayable and he wanted improvements made. And you know what? They were and still are. Don’t worry Dimas, the fight goes on…George Standing is more of a Fairfielder being the town’s Health Director for many years, but he was born in Bridgeport and spent a lot of his time there. For one thing, he was an unabashed Bluefish fan. In fact, during our last animated conversation together, he was carrying on about the lack of coverage our professional baseball team gets in the Connecticut Post. And of course, he was right. But George was more than that, he was quick with a smile, he was loyal and he was a guy who’s name you couldn’t say without cracking a smile. George was a mischievous imp with a wry sense of humor. Billy Joel once sang, “He was quick with a joke or to light up your smoke to forget about life for a while,”. In actuality, the Piano Man was singing about George Standing. George was a great rock and roll guy, and is the only human being I know who saw both bands who claim “Walk Away Renee” as their own, do it live. He saw The Left Banque do it live in Boston when it was released in the sixties and he saw Southside Johnny sing it countless times in recent years. He would have loved to have been at the upcoming Southside show in Fairfield. But he won’t be. George did pay me one of the greatest compliments of my life, though. When we were standing outside the Fairfield Theater Company awaiting entrance to a Graham Parker show, George saw me and said, “Sully. It’s great to see you, because I know when I see you I’m about to see great rock and roll.” Thanks George. You can’t say too many words of praise about the guy. He also had great taste in journalism. Every morning he would check out three things on line: the Cubs, Gil Thorp and the Bridgeport Banner. His favorite column in the latter was called Scattershooting. Godspeed George.