35th Annual Tolman MDA Telethon
"Until There's a Cure.....There's a Telethon."
The History of the Tolman Telethon
by Peter Miller
The Apartment On Bridge Street--The First Year (1976)
Jay has probably been spending his labor day holidays watching the telethon for longer than most of us have known him. But the OFFICIAL first Jay Tolman MDA Telethon was held, not in a grand hall with dj's and dancers and the constant flow of people and food and cash, but in front of a very small black and white television in a dusty little apartment in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire.
This was where Jay was living at the time, starving his way through a fledgling acting career at a local theatre. There were only six of us in attendance for that first telethon: my then girlfriend, Becky Linn; myself; the neighbor couple, Frank and Yvette; Debbie Weber (Jay's girlfriend at the time); and, of course, Jay. Now and then some friends or fellow aspiring thespians would brave the six flights of stairs and the angry dog down the hall and, while gasping for air, drop a few pennies or nickels and sometimes as much as a dime into a bucket (embraced, for some reason, by a wooden bear) Jay kept by the door. That was back in 1976 and when it was all over, 24 hours later, we thought we had really struck it rich; we raised $50 (not $100 as reported elsewhere). We were a poor lot then--even if you allow for inflation. For his troubles, Jay was mentioned on the local T.V. station. Sort of.
"And we'd like to thank Jar Polman for his generous contribution of $50."
Well, after being called "Joy," this wasn't so bad. Just the same it was a good thing that they didn't feel it necessary to interview him in person as he was covered from head to foot (which included some delicate places inbetween) with poison ivy. I never did ask him how he got it, but, then Jay was always an adventurous (his mother had another word for it) sort, so anything was possible.
The White House (No, The Other One)--The Second Year (1977)
The following year, 1977, we held what was now known as the "annual" telethon in a much larger house with much larger dust and only a marginally larger black and white T.V. This location, probably because of its unusual color, was known as "the white house." Also located on Bridge Street, this "lodging" for actors and stage crew was being rented by the same local theatre company for whom we all worked. It was very glamorous: twenty-three men and women and two bathrooms. The upside of this arrangement was that, unlike that first September with just the six of us, there were now many people, especially those of a more "outgoing," dare I say, dramatic nature, who were happily available to go out and about the town and harass the locals for money. They were very successful. Jay doubled his previous year's tally and passed the donations along to the local T.V. station who did only slightly better when they affirmed attribution:
"We'd like to thank Guy Tolberg for his generous contribution of $100."
It's the price you pay for fame, I guess.
Incidentally, this time it was me who got the poison ivy.
The House In Hingham--The Next Ten Years
By this point, we had pretty much exhausted the good will of the people of Manchester and so the telethon moved south to Hingham where Jay's family lived. Back then, we could not luxuriate in all the resplendent comforts that the Community Center provides so we simply invaded Jay's mother's home on Pleasant Street, cleaned out her refrigerator and replaced the three dozen half-opened mayonnaise and mandarin orange containers with case upon case of beer, soda, ketchup, baloney and cream cheese. With the essentials in place, we would then proceed to set up an enviable array of lawn furniture (in various states of disrepair), hide a dilapidated leaky row boat under some old linens that were probably being saved for Ellen's, Jay's sister's, wedding, and ultimately forced his poor mother, Izzy, out of her own house to seek temporary shelter elsewhere--usually at Marna Royal's--until we were done "transforming" the place. Actually, I think she was glad to go. She would not have enjoyed watching us string cracked and exposed electrical wiring out a window in the upstairs bedroom, over trees, through some standing water and finally into the tv (which, while still small, had advanced to color--courtesy of Jay's unwitting father, John, to whom the tv actually belonged). How we kept from burning the place down is still a mystery.
The first task to be done, before anyone arrived, aside from illegally papering the neighborhood with leaflets and invitations announcing the coming weekend events, was to set up the tent. This was to prevent anything valuable from being damaged should it rain and to protect the few of us willing to brave the elements while staying up all night. The assembling fell to Jay and I. Now I suppose we could have hired someone of a professional nature to do the job for us, but that would have meant spending additional dollars which neither of us had. And Jay would never, ever take money from the proceeds to pay for anything. It was, and still is, his stern policy and, while it often made for some hardships, he felt honor bound to find other, better solutions to our financial woes. Though he never said it, the money to MDA was to flow in only one direction; thus, it was up to us to be creative when the well was dry. As it turned out, money or none, our tent erecting skills were just slightly better than our electrical expertise and yet somehow, through all those years (and one hurricane) all that cloth and metal never fell down. Maybe it was all those rusty metal stakes we drove deep into Izzy's carefully cultivated shrubbery.
With the tent in place, we could turn our attention to incidentals like food and ice. People usually ended up bringing all manner of food, but, since we had limited refrigeration, we had to constantly replenish the ice supply. Oy, so much ice. As everyone knows, it still gets hot in September and it seemed that no matter how much ice we had, there was never enough. The job of hauling, not just a few trays, but huge blocks of the solid stuff, fell to Jay's sister, Ellen and their father, John.
Ellen, first a "kid" who used give up her room to me at these annual events, then eventually a college student (who still had to give up her room to me) was as integrated into the telethon's activity as any of Jay's friends--maybe more. She was the person who could be counted on to figure out who collected the most money and she was the one you'd find sitting next to her big brother at the end of this 24 hour marathon, crying her eyes out along with him as they watched Jerry Lewis warble his way yet again through "You'll Never Walk Alone." She was also the captain of the ice brigade, an endless and, in this case, extremely chilly job. She and her father, the pilot of the ice truck (his Honda) would descend on the Yacht Club or the Rotary Club or some other unsuspecting benevolent organization and beg, cajole, inveigle or wheedle as much ice as their victims would be willing to spare without their own fish going foul. For years, before I really knew her well, I always thought of Ellen as that "dripping wet person with the bluish tint." It was years before I realized that the reason her hands were always so cold had nothing to do with her personality but that they were constantly rummaging around in some restaurant freezer or hotel ice machine. Well, you know what they say, "cold hands, warm heart."
Accommodations for all the people that came to these annual events were meager to non-existent. Since so many of us arrived from long distances with little money, what little sleeping was to be done depended on how much floor space in Izzy's tiny house one could claim. Thus, there we could be found in the darkest hours of the night, great piles of relatively young post-graduates of every imaginable sex and size laid out head to foot, back to back (and in other positions better left to the imagination) swatting mosquitoes when it was hot or covering ourselves with whatever was handy--old blankets, tablecloths, tin foil--when it was cold. Despite rumors flying around town, there were no communal showers taking place during these long weekends. And the story that one of us ran naked through a neighbor's garden hose to wash up has never been verified. Since Izzy, Jay's mom, thought of me as the most responsible one there--perhaps because, for some reason, I was in charge of the money--she gave me the dubious responsibility of "keeping an eye on things" which I interpreted to mean making sure the fireplace didn't explode, I kept the upstairs bathroom a secret, and nobody slept with Jay's sister. Well, two out of three wasn't bad.
The Years Roll By, Children Grow Up, People Move On
The house on Pleasant Street remained Telethon Central for several years even as Jay moved to California and some of the original crew either moved away, got married (me, for instance to Deborah who was drafted into her first telethon during the first fall of our romance in 1983--sort of a test, you could say), grew larger families or, sadly, passed on. It became our beacon, our Capistrano, the place we would always return, as if called by some unseen force, the first Monday of every September to go and raise money for MDA. Each year, Jay would bring with him plaques and prizes and t-shirts emblazoned with all things telethon courtesy of his generous California employer. The neighbors continued to tolerate us (barely), his mother willingly (or not) gave over her house and we proceeded to do what we were there to do: raise money (successfully).
But now it was no longer whatever pennies our very funny and late good friend Jay Ginsberg could empty from his piggy bank; or the endless pounds of nickels collected in jars from the local merchants; or the few paper dollars someone found in an old coat pocket. They were still important, to be sure. But now, we were becoming organized. Verging on corporate. We began haunting the local bars and clubs around closing time, convincing the reveling hoards to part with the last of their green. We inhabited intersections, stalked shoppers and asked anyone we saw to give till it hurt. It was embarrassing, difficult and sometimes humiliating, but everyone took it upon themselves to do whatever they could to insure that every year's total would be higher than the one before.
And so, as the years rolled on, so did the money. Jay and the increasingly larger core of people from as near as Cohasset to as far as Seattle started to come up with new and inventive ways to show their support for MDA. Prizes were awarded, gifts were offered, trophies were provided. We raffled everything we could think of: balloons, rides, haircuts, dinners at Burger King. We would have auctioned off the house if we thought Izzy wouldn't have noticed. "Everything Must Go!"
And we ate and ate and ate. I believe that if we had wanted to, we could have gained a footnote in Guinness for having the most potato chips consumed in a 24 hour period. Beer was drunk, portable bathrooms were rented (although a few of us still knew where the real ones were inside the house) and a hearty mess, but a profitable one for MDA, was made. Still, some things never changed. To wit, Jay's acknowledgment on the regional Boston TV affiliate:
"...and those of us at Channel Five would like to thank Tag Tolner for his generous contribution."
The Hingham Community Center (1988-Present)
It finally came time to move indoors. The house on Pleasant Street, where Jay had done much of what passed for growing up, was to be sold and it was time to find yet another place to hold the telethon. There seemed no reason to move the event out of Hingham since, by now, so many of its participants were from the area and we had been holding the event there for so many years. So Jay made his appeal to the town elders who agreed to let him use the community center. A venerable old building, most often used for ballet, gymnastics, town meetings, fencing and dog obedience classes, this wonderful structure in Hingham, once known as the Ensign John Thaxter House and previously owned by the Wompatuck Men's Club, now became the new home for the annual Tolman Telethon in 1988. And that is where the telethon has been held, each Labor Day, ever since.
Thirty-Three Years And Counting (2009)
This part of the MDA experience, the annual Tolman Telethon that Jay started in his living room, has now been going on for thirty-three years. We no longer sleep on the crooked floors of his mother's home or chase tent poles around the yard. And we have abandoned the gas heater and an army of army surplus sleeping bags to kept us warm. We don't all stay up all night with Jay who continues to challenge all newcomers with his insomniac fortitude. Many of the original group has moved away or passed away or just keeps away; but in their place has been added an entirely new circle of family and friends and cohorts. And somehow it's all been blended together like some exquisite concoction, a souffle created by our great epicure, Chef Tolman.
Some Final Reflections
Fifteen years ago, when only a mere twenty years of telethoning had expired, I wrote:
"I finally realize, after all this time, just how important this telethon is to Jay. And because it is so important to him, everyone else makes it important to them as well. It is contagious (not unlike the poison ivy that was our badge of courage those first two years) and the result is that the joy of giving becomes tied to the joy of being around Jay. In the end, what could have been either just a big dumb party or a big dull fund-raiser becomes a big smart, fun, fund-raiser! People sing. People entertain. People give give give. They give from their wallets which is hard, but they also give from their hearts which is easy. They are exhausted and tired and sore and bewildered; but all the time, they remain magically and remarkably caught up in this mysterious spirit that Jay has created."
All of that is still true. But it is now thirteen years later and I believe that we would all like to imagine a time when we will not have to raise money to combat this dreaded disease, when a cure will have been found and when celebrating an annual event such as this will no longer be necessary. But while we have all worked tirelessly for over three decades--no one harder than Jay--the disease and the cause is still with us. And so, like it or not, we fight on.
Having been there pretty much from the beginning, I've seen a lot people come and go. But everyone has somehow left their mark in some way. Whoever they are, those that are here and those that are not, each of them deserves thanks for helping to keep this event alive for so long and for believing that together we can indeed find an end to this terrible disease. As we march off this Labor Day to be with friends or family, whether near or far, please take a moment to remember, once again, to help by giving as best you can. It is the desire of all of us that someday, not too far in the future, we can all gather together to acknowledge, not thirty-four years of hoping, but the year that someone finally brought an end to muscular dystrophy. That, everyone would have to agree, will be a day truly worth celebrating.
