{"id":4822,"date":"2018-05-13T04:37:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-13T11:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=4822"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:52","slug":"204-the-day-janet-lansburgh-jumped-off-the-oakwood-avenue-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/204-the-day-janet-lansburgh-jumped-off-the-oakwood-avenue-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"#204 The Day Janet Lansburgh Jumped off the Oakwood Avenue Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article comes out on Mother’s Day, 2018. \u00a0It’s not only a salute to my mother, but all mothers who mean so much to their children, some belatedly.<\/p>\n

I think it was during my senior year in High School.\u00a0 My friends and I had become consumed with rock climbing.\u00a0 I would often spend weekends either at Yosemite or more often at Tahquitz.\u00a0 I\u2019d come home on Sunday evening filled with climbing stories and my mother was often all ears.\u00a0 I wish that I\u2019d only had the maturity to share our stories by listening more to hers.\u00a0After all, she had been the first in her family to go to College.\u00a0 And simply going to UCLA was a big deal for a woman born in 1911.\u00a0 She had not only graduated from college but had also found a career and ran Disney\u2019s publicity office for a while.\u00a0 She\u2019d married my father, who was a blossoming film maker at Disney and the two of them were among \u201cEl Grupo\u201d, the small band of Disney employees who Walt selected to go to South America with him.<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Janet and Larry Lansburgh between flights in South America.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eventually both my mother and father had quit their jobs at Disney and worked as a team, she turning the stories that he dreamed up into screenplays.\u00a0 I was in awe of her talent for writing, and I have to admit that it was the purely technical side of that pursuit that fascinated me as much as the creative.\u00a0After all, she used a big ol\u2019 typewriter into which she would sometimes feed as many as three to five sheets of onionskin paper separated by carbon paper.\u00a0 That combination enabled her to pound out five copies of a screenplay at the same time.\u00a0 An error would be a nightmare to fix and perhaps that\u2019s why she was able to type about 60 words per minute with hardly ever making a mistake!<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

My mother had a sense of adventure.\u00a0 The City Girl had become a country girl because of it and she took care of a large menagerie of animals, traveled all over the place working for Walt and with my father.\u00a0 So it should have come as no surprise that her ears pricked up as I described rappelling down a rock face.\u00a0 She wanted to try it.<\/h3>\n
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One day I was going through some slides that my father had taken. On this one I found my mother’s hand-lettered legend, “See that this picture is on my tombstone, as it epitomizes my life”. \u00a0She was cremated, but this picture hangs in a place of honor on my wall.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next thing I knew, we were hauling a bunch of gear down to the Oakwood Avenue bridge right next to our house.\u00a0 I whipped up a \u201cdiaper sling\u201d of 1inch tubular webbing.\u00a0 Then I snapped in a combination of brake bar and carabiner with which she could apply friction to the double rope down which she\u2019d slide.\u00a0 And finally, considering that she was my mother, after all, I snapped in a belaying rope so that I could protect her as she descended from the bridge rail to the sandy wash below.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

By the time she was ready to go, the whole damned neighborhood seemed to be there to watch.\u00a0 Mom carefully sidled over the rail, then leapt off.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

The sound of rope whizzing over the breakbar made a great noise which accompanied her descent.\u00a0 I think she was thrilled right up until she plopped down into the sand below.\u00a0 The neighbors all applauded.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Mom\u2019s rappel off of the Oakwood Avenue bridge was kind of symbolic of her sense of adventure. She also had a great sense of humor, which she seems to have passed on to her sons.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n
\"\"
In the bath with one of her favorite magazines.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
On location for “Mystery Lake” in Tennessee with a natural sunshade.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My brother was two and a half years older than I.\u00a0He still is.\u00a0 But when he was about fifteen, he was big enough to hoist mom over his shoulder.\u00a0 One evening, she objected to the three Lansburgh males\u2019 tradition of wrestling in the front room.\u00a0 It was a large space that our grandfather had designed with open rafters.\u00a0 As we wrestled, the three of us would sometimes use the rafters as horizontal bars from which to swing.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Larry Jr. had picked Mom up and held her over his shoulder.\u00a0 Mom wriggled from her position on my brother\u2019s shoulder.\u00a0 As he was contemplating how he would hoist mom up into the rafters, she used that time to take action.\u00a0 From her position upside down slung over his shoulder, she bit him on the butt.\u00a0 He dropped her immediately and she scampered off without having had to suffer the indignity of being tossed into the rafters.\u00a0 He left the experience with a red lipstick print on the rear end of his white jeans.<\/h3>\n
\"\"
When Walt Disney quit polo, he sold Mom his best pony for a dollar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/h3>\n

Her assumption of the leadership of the Disney publicity department, followed a stint at RKO, where she\u2019d been whistled at by the giant-sized ape dummy of King Kong as it was hauled through the back lot.\u00a0She became an animal woman and traveled all over the world.\u00a0 She rode bulls and polo ponies.\u00a0 If she were alive today, she\u2019d probably ask if I\u2019d let her loop the Cessna.\u00a0 But I will always remember her for her writing skill and her sense of humor.\u00a0 She affected me and helped to mold me into who I am today.\u00a0 For that I\u2019m grateful.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

I never thought much about Mom\u2019s influence on me while it was happening.\u00a0 Now that she is gone, it occurs to me that her influence was huge.\u00a0 Do I wish I could bring her back in order to make sure that she knows how much she was appreciated?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0But perhaps the best thing I can do to honor her is simply to be true to her influence, to be honest as I practice the things she taught me.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

Happy Mother’s Day<\/h3>\n

Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“By the time she was ready to go, the whole damned neighborhood seemed to be there to watch.\u00a0 Mom carefully sidled over the rail, then leapt off.\u00a0“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4822"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}