|
The Finish Line
In Memoriam
BOB MARTIN (1922-2001)
by Chris Martin
All good things must come to an end and that included the
life of my father, Robert "Bob" Martin, who died this past
March2 at age 78. He was a news photographer; he had people
like JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, Bob
Hope, Judy Garland, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald
Reagan, Lana Turner and many other luminaries as his subjects.
He worked for the old Los Angeles tabloid, the L.A. Mirror-News,
for its entire run (1946-1962), shooting everything from
the court rooms and murders to Rose queens and sports.
He also shot all the stills on the old Steve Allen TV
show out of Hollywood, and was a newsreel cameraman for
KTTV News (Channel 11) in Los Angeles for a dozen years.
In his later years, he went to a few drag races and shot
pictures that we used in National Dragster, my "Top Fuel
Handbook," and even here in DragRacingOnline.com. He had
a good life and in the 53 years that I knew him he played
a giant role in attempting to provide that for me also.
When I saw him on his deathbed at St. Joseph's Hospital
in Burbank, I was devastated by the way he looked. His
6'-3" frame had withered from 210 lbs. down to 120 and
I knew that his days, as in the "September Song" had dwindled
down to a precious few.
In the last year, I've made attempts at poetry and this
is one written for him just before the clock stopped.
IN MY FATHER'S TIME
The clock is a precision instrument,
its undefeated past on an impassive face,
not a blip for the countdown, its hands
press on you hard … Got plenty of time to waste …
away.
We see you stretched to a fatal thread,
your full family for years amply fed,
stunned to the skin and bones of dread
knowing your rasp of seconds means
a green lawn of mouths awaiting bread.
"Dad, do you know what time it is?"
Lift a finger, make it all go away,
snap that middle one up and roar,
defy the deadline of this hopeless day.
My braille heart gropes in twilight,
until that gray sleeve pulls on the coat,
ghostly wind hand to the knob on the door,
your smoke-blue image in the window afloat,
fading with the Raven's words,
to be seen
never more.
|
