I’m taking a break from corona today to write about an enchanted evening with Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in Nantucket in the early 1980s at the Opera House Restaurant, jammed that night on a crowded Fourth of July.

Peggy and I were with our friend Lincoln and a friend of his.

The Opera House, a famous watering hole, that closed many years ago, where people sat very close to each other — the antithesis of social distancing. And here we were, on a long green-leather bench in a crowded bar toward the corner and on the angled corner side sat Anne and Jerry.

I’m not sure who struck up the conversation, but we chatted the night away through four or five Heinekens.

Jerry and I connected through my grandfather’s involvement in the Yiddish Theater and a play he (my grandfather) helped produce called Pins And Needles, a musical satire of current events backed by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, kind of like an early version of Saturday Night Live. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pins_and_Needles.) Jerry’s dad was connected to both the Yiddish Theater and Pins and Needles, so he was very excited to chat.

The Stiller’s had a home in Nantucket — not one of those trophy houses but a simple, modest home adjacent to Children’s Beach. Peggy remembers Anne saying, “I pinch myself every-time I come here.”

We remember them as being totally unpretentious and very interested in our lives and stories. They were absolutely not self-absorbed show biz types. They had a great marriage and a pretty normal down-to earth life, despite their profession.

We spent hours together and virtually closed the place. They gave me their personal phone number and we had some discussions about working together on some radio ideas. Stiller and Meara were doing Laughing Cow commercials for an agency that was also a client of ours.

We later bought a little home in Nantucket and our paths crossed a few times — once at a friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah, another at a comedy presentation at the Nantucket Film Festival, which they and their son Ben was involved with, also at a Yom Kippur service with the local congregation. Those times were just head nods, how-ya-doing kind of exchanges. They had no idea who we were, and we didn’t remind them of that wonderful night.

I did have one nice conversation with Jerry a few years back at Brant Point Beach at a Tashlikh service at which Jews throw pieces of bread into the sea, symbolically casting their sins away. Jerry had trouble walking and I helped him through the sand. I remember him being funny, warm and chatty, but unfortunately, I can’t recall the substance. We also walked back together toward his house a few blocks away.

Jerry, through a stuffed, talking chef Hanukkah decoration, is still around our house. You push a button and he sings the Latke Larry song (video attached at the end of this blog below.)

Jerry reportedly got into comedy for reasons that resonate today. He reportedly said, “During the Great Depression, when people laughed their worries disappeared. Audiences loved these funny men. I decided to become one.”

I do recall him saying something like that in our conversation more than 30 years ago.

One of my deep regrets, as I came across that slip of paper with their number on it when we moved to New Haven, is I never made that call. I have a feeling my life would have been richly enhanced to have continued that relationship.

And if there is any tie-in to our current situation it is to recommit ourselves to taking advantage of life-enriching opportunities when this world allows us, again, to venture out.

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Dedicated to the memory of Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller

Love and Marriage by Frank Sinatra

Jerry Stiller’s Latke Larry Video

Barry Berman was founder of CRN International and Connecticut Radio Network. He is an entrepreneur, writer and broadcaster and is starting, Sounds Great! Media a boutique digital audio (podcasting) agency and consultancy with an emphasis on health and wellness.