The Cruelest Month

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land," *The Waste Land, TS Eliot

"Only to the timid is April the cruelest month."** **Love Me Little by Amanda Vail, copyright 1957

In my part of the world, April isn't cruel, it's fickle. The weather gives us an ice storm one day, mid-seventies the next, and a blizzard the day after that. And lilacs in April? Try the end of May, around Memorial Day.

My Aprils are filled with the birthdays of friends and family. This April, though, I lost a friend.

Jean Daugherty's life was a celebration of all things good, all things positive, all things happy. Spreading smiles was not only her goal in life, but also one of her many natural talents.

A television pioneer (and one of the first women to be so), Jean was also a writer. All 6,200 episodes of THE MAGIC TOY SHOP -- a children's program which aired on local television between 1955 and 1982 -- were scrawled in longhand, on yellow legal pads. Jean also scripted the live appearances/performances for MTS in the late fifties/early sixties. I recall seeing the cast at a now-demolished theater at a children's holiday party -- a children's holiday enchantment -- put on by my father's place of employment.

She wrote, produced, and appeared in numerous Public Affairs specials. Many of her titles and topics have become my personal cliches. The issues and solutions she presented are still pertinent: LESS THAN A TANKFUL AWAY looked at vacation destinations around Central New York when the price of gas rose in the 1980s; IN DEFENSE OF POLLYANNA explained the importance of positive thinking on one's mental and physical health.

Jean was such a local celebrity, those who knew her often forgot that she was the only sister of famed college football coach Duffy Daugherty, who allegedly coined the phrase, "A tie in football is like kissing your sister." Jean was that sister, but Duffy's comment didn't offend her. She never waivered in her belief that she (and you and I) was someone special.

Yes, April was cruel to Central New York this year, but I guess heaven just wanted another of its angels home.