In my last video I made an American mistake.
I read the date that Alberto wrote on the photograph for his father,
6/2/58 as June 2nd, 1958.
But pretty much everyone else in the world
knows I got those numbers switched.
Only in America do we list it by month first,
then the day, then the year.
Everywhere else it's listed by the day, then the month,
then the year.
So it's not June 2nd, 1958.
It's actually the 6th of February, 1958.
It's still two months away from Holy Week,
but now it's in the other direction.
It's two months earlier, not two months later.
I could never be a spy with an obvious
American mistake like that.
There is the story of one spy who was caught
because he switched the knife and fork
after he cut his meat, another distinctly American trait.
Jack was good at noticing little things like that.
One day he met a woman for maybe a minute and a half.
Immediately afterward, Jack said "I noticed her face.
Either she'd had chemo, or she'd been on psych medications."
Bam!
Nailed it!
Maybe Jack was good at that, because he was both a skilled artist
and an actor.
And both helped him to identify tiny things about people
quickly.
I'll tell you more about that.
And I'll tell you about a couple of nuns
that picked out something interesting about Alberto Rivera.
Where shall I start?
Oh yeah...
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
In Jack's senior year at Alhambra High School
he got into forensics, skilled public speaking.
And he entered into a competition.
By March, 1942, he had become a finalist
in the Forensic Tournament of the San Gabriel League.
Jack's section was called the Humorous Declamation Division.
That's where you recite something humorous
written by somebody else, maybe even well-known.
And it is judged basically by how effectively your retelling of it
moves the audience.
Now it was Jack's turn.
He started in on his lines, then suddenly,
everything went blank.
Jack froze in position.
His face, his body, all completely still.
Then the words came back to him.
So he resumed where he had left off and finished the speech.
He was glad that at least he had gotten all his lines out.
He didn't think that with a mess-up like that
he had a chance.
When it came time to award the winners,
a judge said to Jack in front of the crowd,
"That was the most powerful use of a pregnant pause I have ever seen!"
And Jack won 1st place in his division!
Here's Jack, with a number of other
high school award winners.
Jack's prize was a two-year paid scholarship
to the Pasadena Playhouse.
The next year an aspiring actor, who was to make his debut performing,
was at the Playhouse.
And though he couldn't afford to be a student,
director Gilmour Brown made him a director.
His name was Raymond Burr.
People now think of him as Perry Mason, or Ironside.
Jack took his first semester at the Pasadena Playhouse
and started his second semester.
But on February 1, 1943 he was given a formal invitation.
Congratulations, Mr. Chick!
You are qualified to serve in the United States Army.
18 year old Jack was drafted.
In the middle of World War II.
But that's another story.
When Jack came back from the war, he got back into the program
at the Playhouse.
And he met two lifelong friends.
The first was Rex Smith.
They joked together, acted together, total friends.
Here they are in a Playhouse production,
called "Broken Dishes."
Ironically, unsaved Jack is playing the minister.
Here's another one.
There's Rex, right there.
The second was Lola Lynn Priddle.
As with many actresses, in 1948 she changed her name...
to Lola Lynn Chick!
As an actor, Jack learned to observe behaviors,
the little things that set us apart from each other, and
that communicate a personality, or even a story.
This is from a special memories book that Jack made
about the Playhouse days.
It was copyright 1947.
I have to show you this.
Jack always remembered the day that he forgot his lines.
And we all know the second influence in Jack's life:
comic art.
Jack started with airplanes and never stopped drawing.
In 1949, an early comic by Jack
appeared in Canada's Macleans magazine.
So his in-laws in Canada surely saw Jack's art there.
Jack noticed the subtle humor in things.
So here you see a sign with every possible welcome
that there is -- with a detour sign in front of it!
Welcome, but not welcome right now.
Even yesterday, Jack's friends retold the story to me,
about how Jack would be in a restaurant,
or in the car and he'd say "Look at those ears!"
or "Look at that nose!"
He was fascinated by the differences between people,
and then he would draw them.
Jack told me that early on he had drawn caricatures,
and that is an art all by itself.
He said it's very different from regular comic art.
Some of you who are my friends, who draw caricatures,
know that's true.
Jack told me he'd have to work at it, if he were ever going to do it again.
Jack observed people.
And both his acting and his public speaking,
and his comic drawing, helped Jack to be
an observer of people.
When Jack would take people to lunch,
he'd always noticed who was kind
or unkind to the help.
Jack did not respect some major missionaries
and preachers and authors,
who would act all nice to Jack, but then be rough with the server,
or not even acknowledge their existence.
Jack and I always made friends with the servers.
Any of them watching this right now
can tell you it's true!
The servers should be, and were, treated with respect by Jack.
He also observed Alberto.
Yet Jack would be the first to admit that
although he was raised around Catholics (still another story),
he didn't know the nuances that, say, a nun would recognize.
And that's where Donna Eubanks comes in.
Even the Catholic reporter for Our Sunday Visitor,
Gerard Sherry, who lied
and told Jack he was a Christian bookstore owner
in Las Vegas, had to admit that Donna
really was a nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph
for 23 years, who was promoted to teaching nun
and later to sister superior.
Donna and her Catholic nun friend, Gracie, saw Alberto
and instantly recognized that he was trained as a priest.
Here at Chick Publications, Donna and Gracie
would giggle and laugh, because they had this
private little joke.
They'd see Alberto walk and talk and behave in a way
that was normal to him.
And they'd called him, "His sacerdotal eminence"
and laughed to themselves, when he'd leave the room.
As Donna said, it, "When he'd walk into the room,
we would see: he was a priest!
He acts like one.
They have this manner about them that comes from years
of being the head honcho.
Their manner.
It was bred into them.
Alberto had it.
Donna said, "There's no doubt!"
So Donna and Gracie had that private little joke.
Because some mannerisms just don't go away that easily.
We all have our behaviors that give us away.
And according to two long-time, former nuns,
Alberto had them.
Old habits don't die that easily.
So it pays to observe, like Jack and Donna did.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.