My Remarkable Journey (34 page)

They say I’ve interviewed more than forty thousand people. I really don’t have any idea. Nobody would deny that I’ve met a
lot of people. I haven’t met many who’ve impressed me like Larry Jr.

It has not only come full circle with me. It’s gone beyond. Chance and Cannon will be involved with this foundation. My kids,
Asher, Max, and Stella, will be involved many years down the road. The family will have a touch on this foundation as long
as it is needed.

Not long ago, my children were selling cupcakes at school to raise money for the foundation. I went inside and saw all these
kids walking around with little red bands on their wrists, the ones Matt made three years ago. All I can say is that this
burns within me. It tells me who I am.

My oldest son wrote a letter to my father saying how proud he is to be connected to the foundation. He’s seamlessly connected
with his grandfather. He’ll never understand I was never close with his grandfather growing up. He’ll only see what’s true
today.

We just sent a team of doctors to Uganda to help save people and train local doctors to save more in the future. My son sees
me writing a thank-you note to someone in Germany who’s donated a dollar. Here’s a person in Germany who’s connected to my
dad, who’s connected to me, who’s connected to my son.

O
NE NIGHT
, when I was young and just getting started in Miami, I came home feeling a little tired. It was a Friday night, and I’d done
my radio show, my television show, and announced at the dog track. I had the next couple of days off. So I didn’t set my alarm
clock. Whenever I get up, I figured, I get up. I had a date the next evening. Even better, if I got up early enough, I could
fit in an afternoon at the track before my big Saturday night.

So I went to sleep. When I woke up, I felt great. I looked at the clock. It said ten. Wonderful! That gave me plenty of time
to get breakfast, have a nice afternoon at the track, come home, shower, and then go on my date.

I lived in an apartment building at the time, and I walked to the lobby to get my newspaper. It was a beautiful day. I picked
up the paper and blinked. It said that it was Sunday.

Was I out of my mind? I couldn’t have slept through a whole day. I stood there and thought about it. I must have woken up
and gone to the bathroom—but I couldn’t remember. That woman who was waiting for me to pick her up on Saturday night? She
never went out with me again.

I was reminded of that day last November 19. That’s because I woke up on that morning and found out that I was seventy-five
years old. Seventy-five! How could that be? Yesterday, I was just a kid. I absolutely refused to accept seventy-five. It was
bad enough when I turned fifty. I remember getting in the car, flipping on the radio and hearing a commercial, “Over fifty?
You’re eligible to join AARP—”

I hit the switch to change the station and heard, “Fifty or over, get twenty percent off on your Metro ticket—”

But seventy-five? When my friends and I were kids and we met somebody who was seventy-five, we thought, “Oh my God!” Back
then, there weren’t that many people who lived to be that old. Suddenly, I’m seventy-five? “It’s impossible!” I said, slamming
my fist on the table over breakfast at Nate ’n Al.

“Look at the bright side,” someone said. “You may be seventy-five today. But you’re still slamming your fist on the table.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But now my hand hurts.”

When I look back, there are a few regrets. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten married eight times. But I don’t dwell on regrets.
When I think of regrets, I think of something I witnessed when I was married to Sharon. Sharon’s father was an amateur baseball
player, and he was pretty good. But he went into the Marines, and afterward his father made him take a job in the post office.
One time, I took him to an Orioles game. We were on the field during batting practice, standing behind the cage, watching
the players hit. It was a typical scene that you see game after game, year after year. But as I turned toward Sharon’s father,
I saw tears running down his face.

I said, “What’s the matter?”

He said, “I should have tried.”

I’ll never forget that. I may have regrets. But one thing I’ll never have to say is, I wish I had taken the risk.

A lot of what I do is about still being that curious kid who showed up at the radio station looking for a job in Miami. Yogi
Berra once said, “I don’t want to get the kid out of me.” I agree 100 percent. But I’ve got to be realistic. While there are
times I don’t feel seventy-five, there are other moments when I get up from the table at Nate ’n Al and hear myself utter
that other great Jewish idiom, “
Oy, abrucht
…” I love Jewish idioms. These little expressions that sound exactly like what they mean. Nothing sums up seventy-five better
than “
Oy, abrucht
.” My mother used to say it. Now I know what it means. In 2011, when my contract with CNN is up, I’ll be seventy-eight. Seventy-eight-year-olds
usually don’t get offered three- or four-year contracts.

People forget, retirement used to be at sixty-five. Walter Cronkite was retired by CBS. It was company policy. But maybe today’s
seventy-eight is yesterday’s sixty. I still get good ratings. And if I went off the air, what would it do to the ninety-nine-year-old
woman who credits her longevity to watching my show every night? I just called her up to wish her a happy birthday.

I got a wonderful letter from Peter Jennings right before he died of cancer. He said something like, “I never had much time
in the past to watch you. But since this illness, I’ve seen you frequently. I must say how good you are.”

A note like that makes it hard to imagine getting up in the morning and not having a show to do. Artie Shaw, one of the great
clarinet players of all time, just died, in his nineties. He was a brilliant guy, had an IQ of 190. When I interviewed him,
he told me he stopped playing the clarinet when he was in his fifties.

I asked, “Why?”

He said, “Nothing more to learn. Nothing more to play.”

I feel just the opposite. One of the reasons I felt so sorry for Tim Russert is because of what he missed after his sudden
death. He loved politics, breathed it. For him to not be around to witness the hubbub around Sarah Palin’s nomination was
incredibly sad to me. If he did witness it from above—as those who believe assure me he could—he must have been dying to be
here. Of course, he was already dead. But he had to be dying.

One of the hardest parts of aging, as Kirk Kerkorian told me, is that your friends die. I remember Sinatra saying near the
end, “Everyone I know is dead.” What would kill me is if Herbie, Sid, or Asher went before me. I don’t want to experience
that pain. I’d rather go before—even as much as I fear death.

But I can’t go. I can’t go because of my kids. The two youngest are so much a part of my life that it scares me. I know that
one day I’m not going to be around. I doubt I’m going to make ninety. Let’s say I get to eighty-five. That means I see Chance
and Cannon graduate from high school. Sometimes, I see athletes talk about their fathers. I’d love to see Chance and Cannon
talk about how their dad took them to play when they were kids.

Not long ago, I went in to do some estate planning. When you go to sign your will, you can’t help but think about death. All
I could think of were jokes. There’s the old Henny Young-man line at the reading of his will. “To my brother Henry, who said
that he would not be mentioned in my will, ‘Hello, Henry!’”

So I told them to write in my will: “If I’m ever hooked up on life support, and I’m still breathing and not in pain, if there’s
any chance,
don’t
pull the plug. Even if we have to go broke. Let the kids sell lemonade on the corner. Just don’t pull the plug!”

I agree with Woody Allen. I’m not that afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

And if I do go, freeze me! Being frozen is a good way to go because maybe it’s a good way to not go.

I don’t like the thought of being in the ground. And cremation, I don’t like that either. My hope is to stay around. Freeze
me—just on the chance they can bring me back.

It reminds me of that Woody Allen movie—
Sleeper
. This guy goes in for surgery for a peptic ulcer and wakes up two hundred years later after being submerged in a liquid nitrogen
tank. The beauty of the scene where he wakes up is the angle at which it was shot. You don’t hear the doctors and nurses telling
him. It’s shot from outside the window. So you only see the doctors and nurses telling him, and him jumping up and down and
going crazy.

What would I say if they woke me up two hundred years from now? “Did the Cubs ever win the World Series?” I’m sure I’d get
around to “What am I doing here?” Which would make it very much like the rest of my life.

But I really don’t have time to dwell on these things. I barely have time to stop and look at the scrapbook of my seventieth
birthday party or the picture of me and Sandy Koufax on the street corner with a bunch of kids when we were teenagers. I really
don’t look back. You know why?

My cell phone is ringing, and it will keep on ringing about twenty times every hour.

Wendy will be on the line to tell me who we’ve got lined up for tonight.

Patty, my assistant, will have twenty things for me to do.

Irwin is waiting for me to get my bets in with him for the track.

Larry Jr. will have some phone calls for me to make to tell people we’re going to pay for their heart operation. Can you believe
it? Shawn and Larry arranged with the Cubs for me and the boys to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning
stretch. How’d he know? All these years and I’d never been to Wrigley Field.

I need to go to the bank. Chance and Cannon just found out about savings accounts. Chance gave me six dollars to deposit,
and when Cannon heard about the wonders of interest he gave me fifty-eight cents to put in his account.

There are so many things to do before I pick up the kids from school.

Then I’ve got to get to the studio. There’s a show to do.

Gotta go.

There are so many people I would have to acknowledge for helping me along my remarkable journey that a simple list would fill
another book.

And I’ve got to be honest. I’ve never read an acknowledgments page in my life. So I really don’t see the sense in writing
one.

But a few people must be singled out.

I must salute Harvey Weinstein, for his enthusiasm, encouragement, and support.

Then there’s Michael Viner of Phoenix Books, and the agent David Vigliano, for their wisdom and guidance in setting
My Remarkable Journey
on just the right track.

And publisher Judy Hottensen, Kristin Powers, and everyone else at Weinstein Books, for the great spirit and execution in
bringing the book home.

Herb Cohen, Sid Young, and Asher Dan have been friends of Larry Zeiger for life.

While the writer, Cal Fussman, showed me that even at the age of seventy-five you can make a new friend.

And I can’t leave out all the fathers who hang out with me at Nate ’n Al Deli. They don’t need this book to know the story
of my life.

Of course, I have to thank the staff at
Larry King Live
—who I always depend upon. Occasionally, someone will call me boss. That makes me cringe. I just happen to be the host. We
all work together.

To everyone else, I will definitely acknowledge you when I see you on the street. If I don’t, well, then you wouldn’t have
been on this page anyway.