A tip of the hat to the inimitable George Daly, a man whose life can be described simply as — remarkable…
by: Curtis C. Morgan
George William Daly was eleven years old when he borrowed my hearing aid, connected it to the telephone wires running through his bedroom ceiling, and made a working telephone out of it. I was fourteen. I had suspected he was remarkable. This confirmed it.
We had met that summer, 1956, when our families both moved into Imperial Homes, a new development in Silver Spring, Maryland. George was the son of an engineer — a Stevens Institute man and a Navy Captain who ran a section of the Navy’s Bureau of Ships. He had apparently seen to it that his son understood how things worked before most children learn to tie their shoes. By the time I met George, at eleven, he had absorbed more practical knowledge of electronics and mechanics than most adults I knew. He was also three years behind me in school, so a few years later, when I was a senior at Northwood High School he was a freshman. George was simply more interesting than most people my own age.
He was eleven. This is who George was.
In November of 1959, I was an editor of our school’s newspaper. I wrote a feature story about a freshman swimmer named Michelle Gibbons, who was training seriously for the 1964 Olympics. The article ran under the headline “Aqua Champ Begins Swim to Olympic Title.” It won a “Quill and Scroll Society” national award, which I mention only because it explains why I was in a confident mood when I wrote the last line.
The article noted that Michelle attracted considerable attention from the boys at school. The final line read: “…none so unfortunate, perhaps, as freshman George Daly, who can’t even float.”
I had not consulted George on this point.
The day the paper came out, I was in the hall during a change of classes when George found me. I have seen George angry perhaps twice in sixty-five years of friendship. This was one of them. He was furious in the particular way of someone who has been ambushed in print in front of his entire school, and I was not able to offer much in my defense beyond the fact that it was, technically, a good line.
Then the girls started coming up to George and offering to teach him to swim.
George revised his position on the article entirely. He has spoken warmly of it ever since.
In 1961 we played tackle football on Sundays in the park. No pads, sometimes cleats, and on this particular Sunday a player named Bob Windsor. Windsor was a local kid who went on to nine seasons in the NFL, mostly with the San Francisco 49ers.
Someone pointed out the obvious: tackling Windsor was not advisable. He was six feet four inches and two hundred and twenty pounds, and he moved like someone considerably smaller.
George Daly, who weighed perhaps a hundred and forty pounds, decided to find out for himself.
At his first opportunity, he actually tackled Windsor.
Windsor got up, looked at George for a moment, and said: “Nice tackle, George.”
I have told that story many times over the years. George loved it when I ran it past him in 2005, which was when we found each other again after thirty-five years apart. I had moved away from Washington, we had lost touch, and one day I sat down and composed an email to him. I wasn’t quite ready to send it. I let it sit.
A day or two later — perhaps three — George wrote to me first.
We have been in regular contact since. He is writing a book about his own life, which I expect will be remarkable. I could nearly write one about him myself, but one good essay will have to do. There are only so many ways a man can express his admiration without embarrassing himself. George, I should mention, also bedded Janis Joplin. He mentioned this the way other men mention the weather.
Curtis C. Morgan is a personal essayist whose work has appeared in Mother Earth News, Responsible Statecraft, Drift and Dribble Miscellany, American Bee Journal, Reckon Review, Futurist Letters, and Hooghly Review. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia.
