A huge celebrity mix-up
planned.
My husband and I headed out Thursday on a cross-country trip to attend the wedding of my college roommate’s oldest daughter. Any trip from our remote coastal marsh is a heavy lift. This one turned into an epic three-day adventure.
I will skip all the twists and turns and fast-forward to the part where we got rebooked into the fanciest of first class cabins flying from New York to San Francisco.
As I put my things down, I was suddenly face-to-face with the woman seated in the row in front of Husband.
Julia Roberts.
Yeah, that Julia Roberts. She was traveling with her teenage, son who plopped down in the seat across from her and behind me.
Julia Roberts pulled her hair to the side of her face, signaling she was in no mood to engage, just a mom traveling with her kid.
The menu looked delightful. It didn’t matter. I was too tired to enjoy it. I passed and passed out and slept for a few hours.
So did Julia Roberts.
So did her kid.
So did Husband.
About an hour before the flight ended, when everyone else was still sleeping, the very sweet flight attendant came up to me and said, “You are such a nice family. Your husband is nice. Your son is so well behaved. I’m sending you off with TWO bottles of wine.”
That’s when I realized. “Thank you,” I clarified, “but that’s not our kid.” “He’s not?”
“No, that’s her kid,” I pointed across the dark aisle, now realizing the flight attendant didn’t have a clue Hollywood royalty was on his plane. “Do you know who that is?”
Blank stare.
“That’s Julia Roberts,” I tried to whisper.
The flight attendant looked across at the sleeping figure buried under three blankets.
He smiled and gave me the wine.
When the flight landed and we were all gathering our things, I turned to my NOT son. “The flight attendant thought you were our kid and remarked how well behaved you were, what a nice family we have and gave me two bottles of wine. So, thanks for that.”
“Really? How cool!” the kid replied.
I looked over to Julia Roberts. That billion-dollar smile spread across her face, not as any huge celebrity, but as a proud mom, it was clear it’s probably her favorite role to play.
Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it
Kagan
I had no business stealing a movie star’s son.
Put it on the list for a trip that most definitely did not go as
“I had a lot of aviation books, and all the photographs were the same and I thought, boring.”
Patterson’s idea was to start putting together aviation books that took a look at planes from the inside out. Meanwhile in 1995, he received a call from a retired two-star Air Force General Ron Dick, who asked Patterson if he wanted to work on photographs for the official 50th anniversary history book of the United States Air Force.
“I ended up at the museum (of the United States Air Force) two days a week for about a year and a half,” Patterson said. “I also designed the book.”
That book, “American Eagles,” was first published in 1997 and had 465 pages, including 600 photographs with captions. Patterson and Dick worked together on a total of 18 books, including a five-book series about how aviation has changed the world, before Dick passed away from cancer in 2008.
After Dick died, Patterson was determined to keep working and published more books and produced a World War I documentary. And for the past five years, he has been teaching aviation history courses at Sinclair Community College. He developed the curriculum, building it around his life experiences, including travelling around Europe.
“Suddenly here I am writing two to three books every year,” Patterson said. “The film I produced was about the Lafayette Escadrille, the unit of Americans flying for France in World War I.”
Patterson said he never thought he’d see his name listed among movie credits and today, at age 70, he says he is still having fun in his job and intends to continue working as long as possible.
“I have slowed down a bit since January when I had my ankle replaced,” Patterson said. “I’m still writing while recovering.”
Patterson lives with his partner, Cindy, and has three adult children, Nate, who lives in Arizona, Brigitta, who is in Boston and Joe, who lives in Dayton. And he looks forward to living a long life, especially since his dad lived to be 95 and his mom, 93.
“I have a long way still to go in my life,” Patterson said. “I have an agent who is helping me a lot and I’m doing a second edition now of ‘American Eagles.’”
Also in the works in a 75th anniversary of the USAF book. Patterson started photography for this book last July and is writing all the captions. Two other books are in process with one possibly being released before the end of the year.
“I’ve had the best life,” Patterson said. “I’ve been so lucky getting to do what I’ve done. I’ve travelled the world but always come home to Dayton.”