I'm reading the above book. Meyer is pictured overlooking the Smith Houses. Murray Kempton, Pete Hamill, Juan Gonzalez, Bob Herbert and many others are all Berger protege's.
Saving Private Berger: Meyer Berger, who was born 100 years ago Tuesday, spent most of his 60 years on earth writing the most human of human interest stories. A legendary Times reporter, he found roguish tales among the mobsters of Murder Inc. and charming vignettes among the drunks on the Bowery. He invented our About New York column, and he could write it with the lilt of a St. Patrick's Day parade or the cadence of a caisson carrying war dead up Fifth Avenue. He was our master storyteller, the O. Henry of daily journalism. But in the spirit of his time, Mike Berger kept private lives private, most notably his own, no matter how illuminating the details.I'm not a fan of this Berger's work
So it has taken the better part of his century to learn one tale, about Mike himself, that he recounted only under duress and only to one man.
That man is Ben S. Laitin, a 91-year-old resident of Delray Beach, Fla. -- and the brother of Joe Laitin, whom many reporters well remember as a reliable spokesman for Federal agencies a generation ago. According to an essay that Ben Laitin has agreed to share with me, he too handled press relations, for the Belgian pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair, where he used to routinely supply colorful nuggets for Mike Berger's column about fairground fun and folly.
In that summer of '39, Laitin's family vacationed at a tourist home in the Catskills, which was run by an elderly widow named Randall and her 40-ish daughter, Lila. Ben remembers the Laitins walking a mile each day to obtain The New York Times and how they then shared it around the house.
One day, Lila Randall picked up the paper and, encountering the Berger World's Fair column, exclaimed, I know him!
Ben made no secret of his skepticism. How could this lonely and remote woman know the great Mike Berger. In response to his doubt, Lila quickly confessed that though she felt extremely close to Mike, she had never actually met him. Indeed, she had been left to wonder for 20 years why she hadn't.
Pressing for details, Laitin learned that back in 1917 a young Lila had devoured hundreds of letters published by The New York World from American doughboys in France who were looking for female pen pals. One struck her as particularly charming. It was from a Pvt. Meyer Berger, and she dared to reply. That daring act led to an exchange of dozens of letters, and Lila eventually produced most of Mike's for Laitin's inspection. And sure enough, they bore the Berger touch, describing a young soldier's life at the front, his Army buddies and, gradually, his professional ambitions and romantic yearnings. The letters promised Lila that he would come calling soon after the armistice. But he never came.
Laitin, touched by Lila's 20-year mystery, decided to risk asking why.
As he now remembers their next meeting at the World's Fair, Berger confessed at once to a ''subconscious feeling of guilt all these years.'' But Mike also betrayed an urgent curiosity about Lila's appearance and state of mind. He speculated that she must have thought him killed in action or perhaps involved with another girl. He was involved all right, he said, but strictly in his work. And then came the punch line: the one time he made an effort to keep his promise to visit Lila, he ventured forth unannounced, had a strange though perhaps irrelevant adventure and lost his nerve.
Berger told Laitin how he set out to find Lila one night, hitchhiking around upstate New York with a flashlight to flag down vehicles. One of them turned out to be a 10-ton truck from which a man suddenly emerged and shoved a shotgun at his chest, shouting, Hands up!
I'm just out of the Army and trying to hitch a ride to see my girl, Berger recalled pleading.
A veteran, huh? came the response. What outfit? What company? Who was your sergeant? You better have some good answers!
Berger said he almost fainted with relief when told that his clipped answers were satisfactory.
Well, kid, you are one lucky s.o.b. It just happens that my outfit was only a mile or so down the line from yours, and my sergeant was a buddy of yours, so you get a free pass. Go see your girl, but if you have to hitch a ride, take some other route or do it in daylight. This road's the main line down from Canada for all us rum runners and we tend to be a little jumpy when we're stopped this time of night by someone who hadn't ought to be there. Now, there's a lot of thirsty citizens down in the city, and we can't keep 'em waiting any longer. So g'bye and good luck.
It was 4 A.M. when Berger finally reached the Randall homestead, feeling cold and out of place and petrified at the thought of meeting a strange woman to whom he nonetheless had felt drawn. He camped on the porch waiting for sunrise, then started to think.
I thought what the hell was I doing there, a Jewish boy from a tough section in Brooklyn, with an unmistakable accent, heavy black-framed glasses and a growing bald spot. What if the sight of me was such a letdown for Lila that her disappointment showed? What if her parents were anti-Semitic? What if. . .what if...
I finally what-iffed myself out of any romantic notions, Berger told Laitin. I tiptoed off that porch and headed home.
Mike told Laitin he was the only person in the world to whom he had told the story he called ''Berger the Cowardly Lion.'' He doubted he would tell it even if he wrote an autobiography. But talking about it had been cathartic: Maybe that'll make it easier to wonder about the road not taken.
Laitin, still feeling for Lila, said it was not too late for at least a few steps on that road: A top reporter like you just can't leave a story unfinished.. . .It's time to write Lila. . .call her. . .meet her. . .I won't press for details; as the catalyst, I'll be satisfied to learn that I brought two star-crossed young romantics together as mature adults. Keep me posted.
Some time later, when Laitin was about to move to Chicago, he could not resist one last call to Berger to learn whether his advice was heeded, whether Mike finally made amends by revealing himself to Lila.
Yes, I did, Mike told him. We met in the city several times. She's a lovely person and we discussed the wartime episode -- without embarrassment. We parted friends. I owe you, Ben.
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